Development Of Visuospatial Memory Research Articles

Development of visuospatial memory in preterm infants: A new paradigm to assess short-term and working memory

ABSTRACT Preterm infants have a higher risk of showing visuospatial memory impairment, the function that allows to encode and remember visual and spatial information. It has been studied in late childhood in preterm children. Studies on visuospatial memory throughout the first 2 years of life are still scarce. Behavior, temperament, and overall cognition could be altered in preterm children affecting memory performance. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to evaluate short-term and visuospatial working memory performance in a preterm sample followed longitudinally at 12, 15, 18, and 22 months (N = 15), and compare their performance with that of full-term children (N = 65). The secondary aim was to analyze the course of mnesic development in preterm infants and relate their memory performance to other cognitive abilities and behavioral tendencies. Assessment included previously published tasks and an experimental paradigm. Results showed that preterm children scored lower than full-term children on visuospatial short-term and working memory at 12 and 22 months of age, although these results varied depending on the memory test used. Preterm children’s memory results showed that these skills improve in this population between the first and second year of life. Finally, memory performance was directly associated with the level of cognitive development and the presence of proactive behaviors, while being inversely correlated with the presence of disruptive behaviors and a difficult temperamental style. These preliminary findings suggest that it is possible to detect visuospatial memory difficulties in the preterm population before the age of two.

The Development of Visuo-spatial Memory: How to Remember Location

Recent studies on developmental differences in spatial memory have reported equivocal results. Some found an age-dependent improvement of memory performance whereas others did not. The two studies reported here investigate age differences in memory for visual-spatial information. A picture reconstruction task with simultaneous presentation of scene-like visual-spatial arrangements was used. Subjects had to recognise objects and to reconstruct the initial spatial arrangement. The first study with 5to 10year-olds produced the typical age-dependent improvement in recognising visual material as well as in remembering the locations of specific objects. No effect for age was obtained in memory for the critical loci themselves. The second study with 4to 6-year-olds revealed similar results. Error analyses indicated that in younger children the association between object identity and object location is weaker than in older children. The results are considered as evidence for the assumption that spatial information is not necessarily represented as a feature of an item. Alternative types of representations of spatial information in the picture reconstruction task are discussed.