Witt Marcus
Adv Cogn Psychol. 2011;7:7-15. doi: 10.2478/v10053-008-0083-3. Epub 2011 Jul 20.
Working memory is a complex cognitive system responsible for the concurrent storage and processing of information. Ggiven that a complex cognitive task like mental arithmetic clearly places demands on working memory (e.g., in remembering partial results, monitoring progress through a multi-step calculation), there is surprisingly little research exploring the possibility of increasing young children's working memory capacity through systematic school-based training. Tthis study reports the preliminary results of a working memory training programme, targeting executive processes such as inhibiting unwanted information, monitoring processes, and the concurrent storage and processing of information. Tthe findings suggest that children who received working memory training made significantly greater gains in the trained working memory task, and in a non-trained visual-spatial working memory task, than a matched control group. Moreover, the training group made significant improvements in their mathematical functioning as measured by the number of errors made in an addition task compared to the control group. Tthese findings, although preliminary, suggest that school-based measures to train working memory could have benefits in terms of improved performance in mathematics.
工作记忆是一个负责同时存储和处理信息的复杂认知系统。鉴于像心算这样的复杂认知任务显然对工作记忆有要求（例如，记住部分结果，监测多步计算的进度），令人惊讶的是，很少有研究探索通过系统的学校培训提高幼儿工作记忆容量的可能性。本研究报告了一项工作记忆训练计划的初步结果，该计划针对执行过程，如抑制不必要的信息、监测过程以及同时存储和处理信息。研究结果表明，接受工作记忆训练的儿童在经过训练的工作记忆任务以及未经过训练的视觉空间工作记忆任务中，比匹配的对照组取得了显著更大的进步。此外，与对照组相比，训练组在加法任务中所犯错误数量衡量的数学功能方面有显著改善。这些发现虽然是初步的，但表明基于学校的工作记忆训练措施在提高数学成绩方面可能有益。
