Fitamen Christophe, Blaye Agnès, Camos Valérie
Département de Psychologie, Université de Fribourg, Switzerland.
Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, Université d'Aix-Marseille & CNRS, France.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2022 Mar;40(1):1-16. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12376. Epub 2021 Apr 23.
Preschoolers are well known for their poor working memory (WM) performance. This could result from goal neglect, which would hamper the setting of maintenance strategies. Previous studies have shown that preschoolers' WM performance can be improved in game-like tasks, because they provide cues to support goal maintenance. However, in these studies, it was unclear what features of the task (either the main toy or the motor activity required by the game) provide efficient cues. The aim of the present study was to disentangle the two features to examine cue effects in 5- to 7-year-old children. No improvement of WM performance was observed when the toy was a potential goal cue, whereas the motor activity had a detrimental effect in all age groups. The latter effect could result from a distraction of attention from attention-based maintenance activities. Hence, preschoolers' poor WM performance would not be fundamentally due to goal neglect.
学龄前儿童的工作记忆（WM）表现不佳是众所周知的。这可能是由于目标忽视导致的，而目标忽视会妨碍维持策略的设定。先前的研究表明，学龄前儿童在类似游戏的任务中工作记忆表现可以得到改善，因为这些任务提供了支持目标维持的线索。然而，在这些研究中，尚不清楚任务的哪些特征（主要玩具或游戏所需的运动活动）提供了有效的线索。本研究的目的是区分这两个特征，以检验5至7岁儿童的线索效应。当玩具是潜在的目标线索时，未观察到工作记忆表现的改善，而运动活动在所有年龄组中都有不利影响。后一种效应可能是由于注意力从基于注意力的维持活动中分散所致。因此，学龄前儿童较差的工作记忆表现从根本上来说并非是由于目标忽视。
