Children's long‐term retention is directly constrained by their working memory capacity limitations

Forsberg, Alicia; Guitard, Dominic; Adams, Eryn J.; Pattanakul, Duangporn; Cowan, Nelson

doi:10.1111/desc.13164

Cited by 16 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Our results replicate those of earlier findings in childhood development (Winsor et al, 2021), young adulthood (Wixted & Wells, 2017), and older adulthood (Colloff et al, 2017) documenting positive confidence-accuracy relations in LTM, albeit with variations in the strength of these relations across the lifespan (cf., Fandakova et al, 2013;Shing et al, 2009). Extending on these earlier studies, we found that similar confidence-accuracy relations arise in WM, the "gateway" through which new LTMs are formed (Forsberg, Guitard, Adams, et al, 2022;Forsberg, Guitard, & Cowan, 2021;Forsberg, Guitard, Greene, et al, 2022;Forsberg et al, 2023;Fukuda & Vogel, 2019;cf., Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968;Cowan, 1988Cowan, , 2019Cowan et al, 2024). Moreover, the magnitude of the confidence-accuracy relation within an age group (i.e., the difference in recognition accuracy between lowest and highest confidence levels) was usually comparable in WM and in LTM, with rare exceptions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

A lifespan study of the confidence–accuracy relation in working memory and episodic long-term memory.

Greene,

Forsberg,

Guitard

et al. 2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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The relation between an individual's memory accuracy and reported confidence in their memories can indicate self-awareness of memory strengths and weaknesses. We provide a lifespan perspective on this confidence-accuracy relation, based on two previously published experiments with 320 participants, including children aged 6-13, young adults aged 18-27, and older adults aged 65-77, across tests of working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM). Participants studied visual items in arrays of varying set sizes and completed item recognition tests featuring 6-point confidence ratings either immediately after studying each array (WM tests) or following a long period of study events (LTM tests). Confidence-accuracy characteristic analyses showed that accuracy improved with increasing confidence for all age groups and in both WM and LTM tests. These findings reflect a universal ability across the lifespan to use awareness of the strengths and limitations of one's memories to adjust reported confidence. Despite this age invariance in the confidence-accuracy relation, however, young children were more prone to high-confidence memory errors than other groups in tests of WM, whereas older adults were more susceptible to high-confidence false alarms in tests of LTM. Thus, although participants of all ages can assess when their memories are weaker or stronger, individuals with generally weaker memories are less adept at this confidence-accuracy calibration. Findings also speak to potential different sources of high-confidence memory errors for young children and older adults, relative to young adults. Public Significance StatementOur ability to accurately evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our memories is critical to how we make decisions and can influence how much confidence other people can place in our reported experiences, as in eyewitness testimony. The present study reveals a strikingly universal ability of individuals from young childhood to older adulthood in calibrating their confidence in their memory with their observed accuracy in recognition. However, young children and older adults are more susceptible to high-confidence memory errors, but during different phases of memory retention, with young children's high-confidence errors arising in working memory and those of older adults appearing mostly in longterm memory. These findings suggest that different mechanisms underlie why young children and older adults generally have poorer memory than adolescents and young adults.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

A lifespan study of the confidence–accuracy relation in working memory and episodic long-term memory.

Greene,

Forsberg,

Guitard

et al. 2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Moreover, the age-related LTM deficits observed in this study were modest; and only observed at supracapacity set sizes (4 and 6), leaving it open whether results would replicate in situations where larger age deficits are found. Interestingly, research using a very similar paradigm suggests that children’s WM limitations constrains their LTM performance in a similar way—but again, with less clear evidence at subcapacity set sizes (Forsberg et al, 2022). Nonetheless, these results have major potential implications, which we discuss next.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The proportion of working memory items recoverable from long-term memory remains fixed despite adult aging.

Forsberg¹,

Guitard²,

Greene³

et al. 2022

Psychology and Aging

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We explored whether long-term memory (LTM) retrieval is constrained by working memory (WM) limitations, in 80 younger and 80 older adults. Participants performed a WM task with images of unique everyday items, presented at varying set sizes. Subsequently, we tested participants’ LTM for items from the WM task and examined the ratio of LTM/WM retention. While older adults’ WM and LTM were generally poorer than that of younger adults, their LTM deficit was no greater than what was predicted from their WM performance. The ability to encode WM information into LTM appeared immune to age-related cognitive decline.

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“…The formation of new concepts and accumulation of information involves the manipulation of information and eventual storage into long-term memory, which requires information passing through working memory. Working memory has thus historically been viewed as a portal to long-term memory, particularly in early stages of development when learning is most important due to low levels of knowledge and automatized skills (Cowan, 2014;Forsberg et al, 2021). An individual with low working memory capacity will struggle to combine capacity, speed, knowledge, and strategies necessary for problem solving, inference making, and learning of complex skills and concepts (Alloway, 2006;Cowan, 2014;Halford et al, 1998;Reid, 2009).…”

Section: Education Learning and Child Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of attention control in complex real-world tasks

et al. 2022

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Working memory capacity is an important psychological construct, and many real-world phenomena are strongly associated with individual differences in working memory functioning. Although working memory and attention are intertwined, several studies have recently shown that individual differences in the general ability to control attention is more strongly predictive of human behavior than working memory capacity. In this review, we argue that researchers would therefore generally be better suited to studying the role of attention control rather than memory-based abilities in explaining real-world behavior and performance in humans. The review begins with a discussion of relevant literature on the nature and measurement of both working memory capacity and attention control, including recent developments in the study of individual differences of attention control. We then selectively review existing literature on the role of both working memory and attention in various applied settings and explain, in each case, why a switch in emphasis to attention control is warranted. Topics covered include psychological testing, cognitive training, education, sports, police decision-making, human factors, and disorders within clinical psychology. The review concludes with general recommendations and best practices for researchers interested in conducting studies of individual differences in attention control.

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Children's long‐term retention is directly constrained by their working memory capacity limitations

Cited by 16 publications

References 38 publications

A lifespan study of the confidence–accuracy relation in working memory and episodic long-term memory.

A lifespan study of the confidence–accuracy relation in working memory and episodic long-term memory.

The proportion of working memory items recoverable from long-term memory remains fixed despite adult aging.

The role of attention control in complex real-world tasks

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