Esteban, L., Vivas, A.B., Fuentes, L.J. et al. (1 more author) (2015) Spatial working memory is enhanced in children by differential outcomes. Scientific Reports, 5. 17112. ISSN 2045-2322
Abstract
Working memory (WM) is essential to academic achievement. Any enhancement of WM abilities may improve children's school performance. We tested the usefulness of the differential outcomes procedure (DOP) to enhance typically developing children's performance on a spatial WM task. The DOP involves a conditional discriminative learning task in which a correct choice response to a specific stimulus-stimulus association is reinforced with a particular reinforcer (outcome). We adapted a spatial memory task to be used with the DOP. Participants had to learn and retain in their WM four target locations of eight possible locations where a shape could be presented. Two groups of 5- and 7-year-old children performed the low-attentional version of the spatial task, and an additional group of 7-year-old children performed the high-attentional version. The results showed that compared with the standard non-differential outcomes procedure (NOP), the DOP produced better memory-based performance in 5-year-old children with the low-attentional task and in 7-year-old children with the high-attentional task. Additionally, delay intervals impaired performance in the NOP but not in the DOP. These findings suggest that the DOP may be a useful complement to other WM intervention programs targeted to improve children's academic performance at school.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Attention; Child; Child, Preschool; Discrimination Learning; Female; Humans; Male; Memory, Short-Term; Reinforcement (Psychology); Spatial Memory |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 22 Nov 2019 15:51 |
Last Modified: | 22 Nov 2019 18:49 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Research |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/srep17112 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:152260 |
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