Working memory and learning in children: a matter of attention

National audienceMemorizing is crucial for human beings because it constitutes the fundamental step in acquiring knowledge. Among the different memory systems, the one called "working memory" works continuously to simultaneously memorize and process information. It is particularly important in children who are continually confronted to learning situations. It has long been considered that memorizing required verbalizing and repeating. The present paper offers an alternative conception: working memory relies on attentional mechanisms constrained by time and do not depend on verbal characteristics. The empirical analyses we present here do not only conduct to important theoretical conclusions, they also give a glimpse of practical applications for preventing school failure

Impact de la nature et du rythme de réalisation de la tâche secondaire dans les tâches d'empan et de mémoire de travail

National audienceLes tâches d'empan de mémoire de travail sont des tâches dans lesquelles des items doivent être maintenus en mémoire à court terme pendant qu'un traitement concurrent est effectué. Le but de la présente étude était de déterminer si, comme le soutient le modèle de partage temporel des ressources (Barrouillet, Bernardin, & Camos, 2004), les traitements gênent le maintien parce que les deux composantes entrent en compétition pour des processus communs ou plus simplement parce que les stratégies de maintien des items à rappeler sont perturbées par l'intrusion de l'information à traiter simultanément. Quatre-vingt sujets adultes étaient soumis à une tâche d'empan où ils devaient maintenir des lettres en même temps qu'ils devaient juger soit de la parité soit de la position spatiale de nombre présentés successivement à l'écran. Par ailleurs, ces nombres apparaissaient à un rythme régulier et donc prévisible ou bien aléatoire. Conformément à nos attentes, et contrairement à l'hypothèse d'une perturbation des stratégies de maintien, les jugements de parité qui nécessitent des récupérations en mémoire entraînaient de plus faibles empans que la tâche spatiale qui ne requiert qu'une sélection de réponse alors que le rythme de réalisation de la tâche secondaire n'avait pas d'effet sur les empans

Motor programming disrupts verbal maintenance

The functional organization of the PFC from anterior to posterior regions reflects a hierarchy of cognitive control whereby progressively anterior sub-regions are associated with higher-order control. The present study aimed at providing behavioral evidence for two predictions issuing from this cascade model. First, even the lower-most sub-part of the cognitive control hierarchy, i.e. motor programming, should interfere with higher controlled processes such as maintenance in working memory. Second, this effect should be commensurate with the time during which control is required. In a computer-paced complex span task, adults had to maintain letters while they performed a secondary task. The demand imposed by this task was manipulated either at the selection or at the motor programming stage of response preparation. Results revealed that both manipulations have a disruptive effect on verbal memory, and that this effect is commensurate with the extra-time during which response selection and motor programming require cognitive control

Distinguishing the Impact of Age on Semantic and Non-Semantic Associations in Episodic Memory

Objectives. Refreshing, or the act of briefly foregrounding recently presented but now perceptually absent representations, has been identified as a possible source of age differences in working memory and episodic memory. We investigated whether the refreshing deficit contributes to the well-known age-related deficit for retrieving non-semantic associations, but has no impact on existing semantic associations. Method. Younger and older adults judged the relatedness of stimulus word pairs (e.g., pink–blue or pink–cop) after repeating or refreshing one of the words. During a later source recognition memory test, participants determined whether each item recognized as old was presented on the left or right (non-semantic source memory) and presented in a related or unrelated pair (semantic source memory). The data were analyzed using a hierarchical Bayesian implementation of a multinomial model of multidimensional source memory. Results. Neither age group exhibited a refreshing benefit to non-semantic or semantic source memory parameters. There was a large age difference in non-semantic source memory, but no age difference in semantic source memory. Discussion. The study suggests that the nature of the association is most important to episodic memory performance in older age, irrespective of refreshing, such that source memory is unimpaired for semantically meaningful information

Étude de la validité d’une mesure de l’attention auto-rapportée en milieu scolaire

S’il paraît assez trivial pour un enseignant d’appréhender le niveau global de concentration d’un groupe d’élèves en classe, il n’est pas si évident de mesurer simplement, rapidement et objectivement le niveau d’attention de chaque élève. Pourtant, l’attention est un facteur déterminant des apprentissages scolaires. L’objectif de cet article est de tester la validité d’une mesure qui permettrait d’évaluer l’attention des élèves de manière auto-rapportée. Cent soixante-trois élèves âgés entre 11 et 12 ans issus de 9 collèges ont rempli un questionnaire permettant d’évaluer leur attention durant le temps scolaire. En parallèle, leurs enseignants ont évalué leurs niveaux de maîtrise scolaire et d'attention à travers une échelle éprouvée (SWAN-F). Cette étude montre que les élèves enquêtés ont une bonne connaissance de leurs propres capacités d'attention en classe qui est significativement liée à l'évaluation qu'en font leurs enseignants. Une telle mesure auto-rapportée est donc un outil simple qui peut s'avérer utile en classe pour les enseignants comme pour les chercheurs.This seems trivial for a teacher to understand the global level of concentration of students in class. However, this is not evident to measure easily, rapidly, and objectively the level of attention of each student. Yet, attention is a main factor for school-based learning. The goal of this paper is to test the validity of a measure allowing to evaluate the students’ self-reported attention. One hundred and sixty-three students between 11 and 12 years old from 9 middle schools completed a questionnaire evaluating their attention during school time. At the same time, teachers assessed their scholar expertise level and attention with a proven scale (SWAN-F). This study shows that students surveyed have good knowledge about their attentional capacities in class, which is significantly related to the evaluations from their teachers. This measure is a simple tool that can be helpful in class for teachers as well as researchers

The impact of cognitive load on delayed recall

Recent studies have suggested that long-term retention of items studied in a working memory span task depends on the refreshing of memory items—more specifically, on the number of refreshing opportunities. However, it was previously shown that refreshing depends on the cognitive load of the concurrent task introduced in the working memory span task. Thus, cognitive load should determine the long-term retention of items assessed in a delayed-recall test if such retention relies on refreshing. In two experiments, while the amount of refreshing opportunities remained constant, we varied the cognitive load of the concurrent task by either introducing tasks differing in their attentional demands or varying the pace of the concurrent task. To verify that this effect was related to refreshing and not to any maintenance mechanism, we also manipulated the availability of subvocal rehearsal. Replicating previous results, increasing cognitive load reduced immediate recall. This increase also had a detrimental effect on delayed recall. Conversely, the addition of concurrent articulation reduced immediate but not delayed recall. This study shows that both working and episodic memory traces depend on the cognitive load of the concurrent task, whereas the use of rehearsal affects only working memory performance. These findings add further evidence of the dissociation between subvocal rehearsal and attentional refreshing

A Computational Model of Working Memory Integrating Time-Based Decay and Interference

International audienceThere is still a strong debate in the working memory literature about the cause of forgetting, with many articles providing evidence for the existence of temporal decay and as many publications providing evidence compatible with interference being the only mechanism involved in forgetting. In order to reconcile the two views, this article describes TBRS *-I (for Time-Based Resource-Sharing *-Interference), a computational model of working memory which incorporates an interference-based mechanism to the decay-based implementation TBRS * within the TBRS theoretical framework. At encoding, memoranda are associated to their context, namely their position in the list. Temporal decay decreases the strength of these associations, but a refreshing process may reactivate it during free time. Distractors may alter the distributed representation of memoranda but refreshing can restore them based on the long-term memory representations. Refreshing is therefore twofold: reactivation plus restoration, each one counteracting the detrimental time-based and interference-based decays, respectively. Two types of interference are implemented: interference by confusion which depends on the degree of overlap between memoranda and distractors and interference by superposition which depends on the similarity between them. TBRS *-I was tested on six benchmark findings on retention-interval and distractor-processing effects by means of millions of simulations testing the effects of seven factors on memory performance: the number of memoranda, the duration of distractor attentional capture, the duration of free time, the number of distractors, the amount of overlap between memoranda and distractors, the similarity between memoranda and distractors and the homogeneity of distractors (all identical or all distinct). TBRS *-I replicated classical effects and proved to be a suitable hybrid model integrating both interference and time-based decay. The article also discusses the compatibility of TBRS *-I with a unitary or dual view of memory and the issue of integrating time and interference in a single model. Computer codes and data are available at https://osf.io/65sna/