It is better than you think: fluid intelligence across the lifespan

The growth and decline of fluid intelligence is associated with brain structural changes. For example, development of fluid IQ is associated with cortex thickness during the critical period between 6 to 12 years old. On the other end of the lifespan, poor performance in cognitive functioning is attributed to a decrease of frontal gray matter density in elderly populations. In particular, there is a sharp decline in fluid IQ scores after 65 years of age. There is substantial evidence that working memory and fluid intelligence (Gf) share neural substrates, such as the prefrontal and parietal cortices. However, very little research has examined whether the pattern of growth and decline in working memory mirrors that of fluid intelligence. For example, does the decline of working memory skills in elderly populations mirror fluid intelligence? Is the rate of working memory decline similar to the rate of growth

Working memory: Is it the new IQ?

Working memory, our ability to process and remember information, is linked to a range of cognitive activities from reasoning tasks to verbal comprehension. There is also extensive evidence of the relationship between working memory and learning outcomes. However, some researchers suggest that working memory is simply a proxy for IQ and does not make a unique contribution to learning outcomes. Here we show that children's working memory skills at 5 years of age was the best predictor of reading, spelling, and math outcomes six years later. IQ, in contrast, accounted for a smaller portion of unique variance to reading and math skills, and was not a significant predictor of spelling performance. Our results demonstrate that working memory is not a proxy for IQ, but rather represents a dissociable cognitive skill with unique links to learning outcomes. Critically, we find that working memory at the start of formal education is a more powerful predictor of subsequent academic success than IQ. This result has important implications for education, particularly with respect to developing intervention and training. It appears that we should target our efforts in developing working memory skills in order to see gains in learning

Seeing ahead: Experiences and language in spatial perspective

Spatial perspective can be directed by various reference frames, as well as by the direction of motion. In the present study, we explored how ambiguity in spatial tasks can be resolved. Participants were presented with virtual reality environments in order to stimulate a spatial reference frame based on motion. They interacted with an ego-moving spatial system in Experiment 1 and an object-moving spatial system in Experiment 2. While interacting with the virtual environment, the participants were presented with either a question representing a motion system different from that of the virtual environment or a nonspatial question relating to physical features of the virtual environment. They then performed the target task: assign the label front in an ambiguous spatial task. The findings indicate that the disambiguation of spatial terms can be influenced by embodied experiences, as represented by the virtual environment, as well as by linguistic context

How does working memory work in the classroom?

Working memory plays a key role in supporting children’s learning over the school years, and beyond this into adulthood. It is proposed here that working memory is crucially required to store information while other material is being mentally manipulated during the classroom learning activities that form the foundations for the acquisition of complex skills and knowledge. A child with a poor working memory capacity will struggle and often fail in such activities, disrupting and delaying learning. The aim of this review is to present the case that working memory makes a vital contribution to classroom learning. Following a brief introduction to working memory and its assessment, links between working memory skills and scholastic progress is reviewed and illustrated. Next, the classroom behaviour of children with very poor working memory functions, and in particular their characteristic failures in learning activities, is described. Finally, the implications of this research for classroom practice is considered; this includes an intervention programme designed to improve learning outcomes for children with poor working memory function that is based on the theoretical analysis of working memory and learning advanced here

Working memory and short-term sentence recall in young children

The primary objective of this study was to investigate links between phonological memory and short-term sentence recall. Errors in immediate sentence recall were compared for children with relatively good and relatively poor phonological short-term memory skills,matched on general nonverbal ability. The results indicate marked differences in the overall accuracy of recall between the two groups,with the high phonological memory group making fewer errors in sentence recall. Although the frequency of the different types of errors (lexi¬cal substitutions and nonsubstitutions) differed significantly between the groups, the serial position profiles of sentence recall accuracy was similar. Both groups were also more likely to substitute target words with synonyms rather than un¬related words,a finding suggesting that mechanisms responsible for maintain¬ing semantic information may also play an important role in performance of sentence recall tasks

Speak before you think: the role of language in verb concepts

This study investigates the role of language on verb concepts in a cross-linguistic environment. The inflectional morphology of verbs in Tamil is contrasted with Mandarin, a language that does not explicitly reflect tense changes in the same manner as Tamil and English. In the baseline condition in experiment 1, participants were required to rate the similarity of object picture pairs; and in the experimental condition, they were asked to rate the similarity of action picture pairs. In experiment 2, participants’ similarity judgments and response latencies were recorded when they were presented with the object and action picture pairs. This allowed us to investigate the strength of linguistic influence when representing event concepts. Data from this study revealed a moderate influence of language on verb concepts in the target populations. There was a significant different in the response latencies of the Tamil and Chinese participants, although both language groups exhibited a similar response pattern in the action picture judgment task. This finding suggests that while both groups perceived the events similarly, language may be mediating their responses, resulting in longer response times for the Chinese participants. This could be because considering tense in Mandarin is not ‘automatic’ and requires extra work, possibly because it is not intrinsic to the verb

Working memory in children with developmental disorders

The aim of the present study was to directly compare working memory skills across students with different developmental disorders to investigate whether the uniqueness of their diagnosis would impact memory skills. The authors report findings confirming differential memory profiles on the basis of the following developmental disorders: Specific Language Impairment, Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and Asperger syndrome(AS). Specifically, language impairments were associated with selective deficits in verbal short-term and working memory, whereas motor impairments (DCD) were associated with selective deficits in visuospatial short-term and working memory. Children with attention problems were impaired in working memory in both verbal and visuospatial domains, whereas the children with AS had deficits in verbal short-term memory but not in any other memory component. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of support for learning

Comparing Language Profiles: Children with Specific Language Impairment and Developmental Coordination Disorder

Background: Although it is widely recognized that substantial heterogeneity exists in the cognitive profiles of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), very little is known about the language skills of this group. Aims: To compare the language abilities of children with DCD with a group whose language impairment has been well described: children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Methods & Procedures: Eleven children with DCD and 11 with SLI completed standardized and non-standardized assessments of vocabulary, grammatical skill, non-word repetition, sentence recall, story retelling, and articulation rate. Performance on the non-standardized measures was compared with a group of typically developing children of the same age. Outcomes & Results: Children with DCD were impaired on tasks involving verbal recall and story retelling. Almost half of those in the DCD group performed similarly to the children with SLI over several expressive language measures, while 18% had deficits in non-word repetition and story retelling only. Poor non-word repetition was observed for both the DCD and the SLI groups. The articulation rate of the children with SLI was slower than that of the DCD group, which was slower than that of typically developing children. Conclusions: Language impairment is a common co-occurring condition in DCD. The language profile of children with either DCD or SLI was similar in the majority of, but not all, cases