Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education, Université de Genève, Genève, Switzerland.
Dev Sci. 2021 Sep;24(5):e13104. doi: 10.1111/desc.13104. Epub 2021 Mar 6.
The capacity of working memory is limited and undergoes important developmental changes during childhood. One proposed reason for the expansion of working memory capacity during childhood is the emergence and increased efficiency of active maintenance mechanisms, such as that of refreshing. Refreshing is a proposed mechanism to keep information active in working memory by bringing memory items back into the focus of attention. One prevalent view is that the spontaneous use of refreshing emerges around the age of 7 and becomes more efficient during middle childhood and beyond. Using a novel approach to examine refreshing in children in Experiment 1, we show, against common conceptions, that simply giving free time in a basic working memory task does not lead to spontaneous refreshing in 9-12-year-old children. Instead, their focus of attention appears to linger on the last-presented memory item, even when ample time for refreshing is provided. Experimentally imposing the use of refreshing in Experiment 2, however, showed that children in this age range are able to switch their focus of attention away from the last-presented item in switch to another memory item. Thus, the current study uncovers that children in middle childhood do not always spontaneously switch attention away from the last-presented memory item to refresh the entire list, even though they are able to switch attention away from the last-presented memory item when instructed to do so. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
工作记忆容量有限，并在儿童期经历重要的发展变化。工作记忆容量在儿童期扩展的一个提出的原因是主动维持机制（例如刷新）的出现和效率提高。刷新是一种将信息保持在工作记忆中活跃的机制，通过将记忆项目带回注意力焦点。一种流行的观点是，刷新的自发使用大约在 7 岁左右出现，并在儿童中期及以后变得更加高效。在实验 1 中，我们使用一种新颖的方法来检验儿童的刷新能力，与常见的观念相反，我们表明，在基本的工作记忆任务中仅仅给予自由时间并不会导致 9-12 岁儿童自发刷新。相反，他们的注意力似乎会停留在最后呈现的记忆项目上，即使提供了充足的刷新时间。然而，在实验 2 中强制使用刷新，表明这个年龄段的儿童能够将注意力从最后呈现的项目转移到另一个记忆项目上，从而刷新整个列表。因此，本研究揭示了儿童在儿童中期并不总是自发地将注意力从最后呈现的记忆项目上转移开，以刷新整个列表，即使他们能够在被指示这样做时将注意力从最后呈现的记忆项目上转移开。这些发现的理论意义将在讨论中阐述。
