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

描述(由申请人提供)：这是竞争续展/续签的修订版。自1984年以来，7/1/2001-6/30/2006期间继续开展工作。在此期间，产生了1本书，37篇期刊文章，以及14个与儿童工作记忆及其发展有关的书籍章节。工作记忆是以一种特别容易获得的形式保存有限信息的过程的集合，以供进行中的认知任务使用。为了建立在理论进展的基础上，我强调最近对两类过程的作用的研究：那些需要注意和努力的过程，以及那些自动发生的过程。我们对小学生和成年人工作记忆的研究正在加深人们对在这一时间范围内发生的事情的看法，包括注意力范围和控制的变化(例如，考恩、弗里斯托伊等人，在出版中)。我们的儿童研究也提供了对成人加工理论的洞察。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使用隐蔽言语彩排的任务；不一定像传统智慧所建议的那样，包括独立的存储和处理部分(Cowan，Elliott等人，2005)。我们目前的目标是解决三个基本问题：(1)工作记忆存储以足够抽象的形式扩展到不同类型的代码(即中央存储器)中，其作用是什么？(2)注意力是用来存储信息的，还是仅仅用来保护存储的信息不受干扰？最后，(3)容量和检索速度有什么关系？尽管提取速度和记忆能力之间的相关性很高，但实验性地提高这种速度并没有改善儿童的能力(Cowan，Elliott等人，2006)。为了考察注意在工作记忆存储中的作用，建议的后续研究涉及各种程序(例如，探索哪些加工干扰哪些类型的记忆的双任务设计；识别抽象的、跨代码的、中央类型的记忆的言语-空间联系记忆测试)。语音反应计时与多词块教学程序一起被用来估计与注意相关的工作记忆在块中的容量。这项研究可能有助于澄清涉及工作记忆的广泛认知障碍(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对存储的注意，或者仅仅是对信息的处理，这在制定临床治疗和诊断计划时具有实际意义。

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.