Working memory develops at a similar rate across diverse stimuli

Abstract

Children’s working memory improves with age. We examined whether the rate of improvement varies across different classes of stimuli or is instead constant across classes of stimuli. We tested between these two possibilities by having participants (N = 99) from four age groups (7 years, 9 years, 11 years, and adults) complete simple span tasks using items from six stimulus classes. Participants’ span improved with age and varied across the different stimulus classes. Crucially, age-related improvements were mostly similar across the different stimulus classes. These findings suggest that age-related improvements in working memory result from an increase in capacity and not from gains in the ability to form chunks or from growing familiarity with certain classes of stimuli. Moreover, the findings build on previous studies on adults showing that working memory performance varies across different stimulus classes by revealing that these differences occur in young children and remain stable across development.