Preschool; Strategy; Toddlerhood; Verbal ability; Visuospatial skills; Working memory; Child; Humans; Child, Preschool; Cues; Cognition; Attention; Memory, Short-Term; Space Perception; Experimental and Cognitive Psychology; Developmental and Educational Psychology
Abstract :
[en] Using spatial cues such as shape, orientation, and pattern aids visuospatial working memory because it allows strategies that reduce the load on this cognitive resource. One such strategy, namely taking advantage of patterned spatial distributions, remains understudied to date. This strategy demands keeping track of already-searched locations and excluding them from further search and so correlates with visuospatial working memory. The use of such strategies should, in principle, develop in early childhood, but because most studies focus on chunking, the development of other strategies reducing the load on working memory is understudied in young children. Therefore, in this study we tested whether children aged 2 to 4.5 years (N = 97) could take advantage of spatial cues in their search and whether this ability correlated with their age, verbal ability, and visuospatial working memory. The results showed that the ability to use a patterned spatial distribution (searching a row of locations from one side to the other instead of a random search) significantly improved with visuospatial working memory but not with age or verbal ability. These results suggest that visuospatial abilities may rapidly develop from 2 to 4.5 years of age, and given their impact on later mathematic achievement, demand increased attention in cognitive developmental research and early childhood education.
Disciplines :
Neurosciences & behavior
Author, co-author :
Bobrowicz, Katarzyna ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de Psychologie > Mémoire et langage ; Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Campus Belval, L-4365 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, Department of Psychology, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden. Electronic address: katarzyna.bobrowicz@uni.lu
Weber, Anke; Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Campus Belval, L-4365 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
Greiff, Samuel; Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Campus Belval, L-4365 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
Language :
English
Title :
The successful use of a search strategy improves with visuospatial working memory in 2- to 4.5-year-olds.
Materials devised in the study were financed by the Stiftelsen Roy och Maj Franzéns fond (RFv2018-0221) awarded to Katarzyna Bobrowicz. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank Elia Psouni for the supervision of data collection and thank Felicia Lindström, Marcus Lindblom Lovén, Johan Sahlström, Klara Thorstensson, Brigitta Nagy, Helena Kelber, and Therese Wikström for their help with data collection and coding. We also gratefully acknowledge the Lund University Humanities Lab. Katarzyna Bobrowicz: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, formal analysis, writing–original draft, writing–review & editing, visualization, and funding acquisition; Anke Weber: writing–review & editing; Samuel Greiff: writing–review & editing. The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The study analysis code is available in Online Supplemental Material 1.Materials devised in the study were financed by the Stiftelsen Roy och Maj Franzéns fond ( RFv2018-0221 ) awarded to Katarzyna Bobrowicz. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank Elia Psouni for the supervision of data collection and thank Felicia Lindström, Marcus Lindblom Lovén, Johan Sahlström, Klara Thorstensson, Brigitta Nagy, Helena Kelber, and Therese Wikström for their help with data collection and coding. We also gratefully acknowledge the Lund University Humanities Lab.
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