Working memory, attention, and time: Childhood development and adult function

描述（由申请人提供）：这是一个竞争延续/续期的修订。2001年1月7日至2006年6月30日期间继续开展自1984年以来资助的工作。在此期间，有1本书，37篇期刊文章和14本书的章节与工作记忆及其在儿童时期的发展有关。工作记忆是将有限的信息以一种特别容易获得的形式保存下来，以便在持续的认知任务中使用的过程的集合。在理论进展的基础上，我强调了最近对两种过程的作用的研究：需要注意和努力的过程，以及自动发生的过程。我们对小学儿童和成人工作记忆的研究正在加深对这一时间范围内发展的概念，包括注意力范围和控制的变化（例如，科万、弗里斯托等人，出版中）。我们的儿童研究也提供了对成人处理理论的深入了解。例如，最能预测心理能力的工作记忆任务似乎是那些不能有效利用内隐言语排练的任务;而不一定是传统智慧所建议的包括单独存储和处理组件的任务（科万，埃利奥特等人，2005年）。我们目前的目标是解决三个基本问题：（1）工作记忆存储的作用是什么，它的形式足够抽象，可以扩展到不同类型的代码（即，中央存储器）？(2)注意力是用来储存信息的，还是仅仅用来保护储存的信息不受干扰？最后，（3）容量和检索速度是如何相关的？尽管检索速度和记忆能力之间的相关性很高，但通过实验提高这种速度并不能提高儿童的记忆能力（科万，埃利奥特等人，2006年）。为了研究注意在工作记忆存储中的作用，拟议的后续研究涉及各种程序（例如，双任务设计以探测哪些过程干扰哪种类型的记忆;言语-空间关联记忆测试以识别抽象的、交叉代码的、中央类型的记忆）。言语反应计时与多词组块教学程序相结合来估计组块中注意相关工作记忆的容量。这项研究可能有助于澄清一系列涉及工作记忆的认知障碍（例如，学习和语言障碍以及注意力缺陷）。它可以表明工作记忆的正常功能是否依赖于注意力的存储或只是处理信息，这是在制定临床治疗和诊断计划的实际意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a revision of a competing continuation / renewal. The period 7/1/2001 - 6/30/2006 continued work funded since 1984. This period resulted in 1 book, 37 journal articles, and 14 book chapters related to working memory and its development in childhood. Working memory is the collection of processes that keep limited information in an especially accessible form for use in ongoing cognitive tasks. To build on theoretical progress, I emphasize recent research on the roles of two types of processes: those requiring attention and effort, and those taking place automatically. Our research on working memory in elementary school children and adults is sharpening notions of what develops in that time range, including changes in both the scope and control of attention (e.g., Cowan, Fristoe et al., in press). Our child research also provides insight into theories of adult processing. For example, the working memory tasks that best predict mental aptitudes seem to be those for which covert verbal rehearsal cannot be used efficiently; not necessarily tasks that include separate storage and processing components as conventional wisdom suggests (Cowan, Elliott et al., 2005). Our current aims address three basic questions: (1) What is the role of working-memory storage in a form abstract enough to extend across different types of codes (i.e., a central memory)? (2) Is attention used to store information, or only to defend the stored information from interference? Finally, (3) How are capacity and retrieval speed related? Even though correlations between retrieval speed and memory ability are high, experimentally increasing this speed did not improve capacity in children (Cowan, Elliott et al., 2006). To examine the role of attention in working-memory storage, the proposed followup research involves various procedures (e.g., dual-task designs to probe which processes interfere with which types of memory; verbal-spatial association memory tests to identify an abstract, cross-code, central type of memory). Speech response timing is used with multi-word chunk teaching procedures to estimate the capacity of attention- related working memory in chunks. The research could help to clarify a wide range of cognitive disorders that involve working memory (e.g., learning and language disabilities and attention deficits). It could indicate whether normal functioning of working memory depends on attention for storage or just for processing information that is of practical import in formulating plans for clinical treatment and diagnosis.