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Age Differences in the Verbal Span of Apprehension Child Development, September/October 1999, Volume 70, Number 5, Pages 1082–1097 The Role of Attention in the Development of Short-Term Memory: Age Differences in the Verbal Span of Apprehension Nelson Cowan, Lara D. Nugent, Emily M. Elliott, Igor Ponomarev, and J. Scott Saults In previous studies of memory span, participants have attended to the stimuli while they were presented, and therefore have had the opportunity to use a variety of mnemonic strategies. In the main portion of the present study, participants (first- and fourth-grade children, and adults; 24 per age group) carried out a visual task while hearing lists of spoken digits and received a post-list digit recall cue only occasionally, for some lists. Under these conditions, list information presumably must be extracted from a passively held store such as au- ditory sensory memory. The results suggest that each individual has a core memory capacity limit that can be observed clearly in circumstances in which it cannot be supplemented by mnemonic strategies, and that the ca- pacity limit appears to increase with age during childhood. Other, attention-demanding processes also contrib- ute to memory for attended lists. INTRODUCTION included in tests of intelligence, increases with age in childhood (Dempster, 1985). The explanations of short- Years of effort have been devoted to an understand- term memory development, however, have varied ing of short-term memory (see Case, 1995; Cowan, widely (Cowan, 1997). They have focused primarily 1995; Engle and Oransky, 1999), by which we mean on increases in knowledge, metaknowledge, and strat- the temporarily increased availability of information egies (e.g., Case, Kurland, & Goldberg, 1982; Naus, in memory that may be used to carry out various Ornstein, & Aivano, 1977), with considerable empha- types of mental tasks. By all accounts, the capacity of sis also on the speed of various processes (e.g., Cowan short-term memory is limited, which constrains the et al., 1998; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993; Hitch & quality of human performance. Researchers do not Towse, 1995; Kail & Park, 1994). What has been rela- agree, however, on any particular theoretical explana- tively rare, though, is research emphasizing the pos- tion of the observed limitations in short-term mem- sibility of developmental change in the capacity of ory. Proposals have included storage capacity limita- short-term memory; that is, the number of items that tions (Case, 1995; Halford, Maybery, & Bain, 1988; can be held in mind at a time (Cowan, 1999; Halford Miller, 1956), time limitations because of memory de- et al., 1988; Halford, Mayberry, O’Hare, & Grant, cay (Baddeley, 1986), limitations in the speed and effi- 1994; Pascual-Leone, 1970). ciency of mnemonic strategies such as rehearsal (Bad- It is difficult to identify one basic short-term mem- deley, 1986) or short-term memory search (Cowan et ory faculty separated from all others. Nevertheless, al., 1998), limitations in knowledge about the stimuli considerable research suggests that there is an identi- (Hulme et al., 1997), and limitations in how well at- fiable faculty: a short-term memory store with a ca- tention can be controlled and irrelevant information pacity considerably smaller than the typical digit inhibited (Engle, Conway, Tuholski, & Shisler, 1995). span, as discussed by Broadbent (1975). As Miller There also are principles of item distinctiveness, ret- (1956) noted, adults can remember lists composed of roactive and proactive interference between items, about seven meaningful items or “chunks.” That and mental structure, which are certain to influence memory limit is undoubtedly reached, however, with performance on memory tasks in general, including the use of a variety of mnemonic strategies. Partici- those taken to index short-term memory processes pants may enhance memory by repeating items to (Baddeley & Hitch, 1993; Cowan, Wood, Nugent, & themselves and forming new, meaningful associa- Treisman, 1997; Nairne, Neath, Serra, & Byun, 1997). tions between items shortly after they are presented It is difficult to determine which limitations are criti- (i.e., through rote and elaborative rehearsal; see Naveh- cal in particular tasks. Benjamin & Jonides, 1984). When one examines as- The debate about the nature of short-term memory pects of short-term memory that are unlikely to be in- limitations has important implications also for the de- fluenced by such strategies, one finds a limit in adults velopment of short-term memory in childhood. It has long been known that performance on simple short- © 1999 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. term memory tasks, such as the digit span task that is All rights reserved. 0009-3920/99/7005-0004 Cowan et al. 1083 of about three or four items, not seven. Evidence of There is a logical explanation for why the span of this limit includes the maximum number of items that apprehension that Sperling (1960) and Darwin et al. participants group together in recall, the maximum (1972) observed was appreciably smaller than the list length resulting in errorless performance, and the short-term memory limit that Miller (1956) observed. list length for which proactive interference from pre- Miller concentrated on procedures in which items vious, similar items is not obtained (Broadbent, 1975; were presented one at a time. Under those circum- Halford et al., 1988). This memory limit might reflect stances, mnemonic strategies, like rehearsal, can be the amount that can be subsumed in the focus of at- used during the list presentation. In contrast, when an tention at one time (Cowan, 1995). It also appears to array is presented, there are too many concurrent items be the same as what Sperling (1960) called the “span for mnemonic strategies to be applied efficiently. The of apprehension.” In the present article, develop- number recalled then may represent the number that mental changes in this span of apprehension will be can be processed in parallel in a very short time, with examined in children and adults. little chance of enhancing performance with strate- Sperling’s (1960) well-known study was designed gies requiring serial processing. to examine visual sensory memory, and it demon- The presentation of spatial or spatiotemporal ar- strated that that form of memory has a very large ca- rays may cause particular difficulties when the partic- pacity. The study, however, also established a span of ipants are young children, who may become con- apprehension. The procedure involved very-briefly- fused about how to report the items. To examine the presented character arrays. In a “partial report” pro- development of the span of apprehension in a simpler cedure, a postarray cue indicated which row of the manner, we have developed a modification of the whole array to report. With a short postarray delay before report procedure that permits the serial presentation the cue, participants could typically report at least of items. Lists of spoken digits were presented. To three of the items in a single cued row, suggesting that limit the contribution of mnemonic strategies, in one most items in the array were temporarily available for condition the participants were asked to ignore most report. In the “whole report” procedure, there was no of the spoken lists and play a silent computer game, post-array cue, and the entire array was to be reported. both to hold attention and to tie up articulatory pro- However, participants could only report about four cesses that otherwise could be used for covert verbal items in the entire array. In the partial report condition, rehearsal. Only occasionally within this procedure, increases in the delay before the cue impaired perfor- the game was interrupted by a postlist signal to recall mance and, when the cue was delayed 1 s, the propor- the most recent list of digits. We presumed that partic- tion of the cued row that was recalled was no greater ipants could do this by searching through a sensory than recall of the same row in the whole report condi- memory record of the series of recent spoken events tion. This suggested that the whole report limit repre- to identify some of the digits, which could then be sented a basic capacity limit of about four items. saved in a capacity-limited form of storage. The re- Sperling inferred that the mechanism is as follows. sults suggest that such a process was indeed possible, A large number of items is at first represented in an un- and that a procedure logically analogous to Sperling’s processed form in sensory memory storage. This mem- whole report procedure works for serial lists of spo- ory, however, quickly fades. A limited number of items ken stimuli. (about four in adults) can be processed from this sen- Past research gives few clues about the ages at which sory store, and they become represented in a capacity- capacity limits in storage should increase. Memory limited short-term store. Items must be entered into span increases steadily during the ages of 3 to 10 capacity-limited storage before they fade from sensory years (e.g., Dempster, 1985), but the basis of this in- memory, and a postarray cue in the partial report pro- crease is unclear. We investigate whether a develop- cedure simply limits the items that the participant is mental change in the short-term memory capacity asked to process before sensory memory fades. The limit is a viable account of at least some of the devel- same processes appear to take place in audition. Dar- opmental change in span. win, Turvey, and Crowder’s (1972) results using spa- Performance also was examined in a condition in tiotemporal arrays of spoken items were analogous to which the spoken items were to be attended when those of Sperling (1960), though the value of the partial they were presented. The magnitude of capacity- report cue persisted in this modality until the cue was limited storage should be the same for both attended delayed by 4 s (as compared to 1 s in vision).
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