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Sebastian & Hernandez-Gil: Contemporary Study - Coggle Diagram
Sebastian & Hernandez-Gil: Contemporary Study
Aims
To investigate the development of the phonological loop & digit span
To investigate whether digit span declines with age
To investigate whether language affects digit span
Digit span: The quantity of numbers which can be held in STM at any one time
Procedure
Digit sequences were read aloud for each participants
Sample 1
570 School children
All children were tested beforehand for cognitive impairments, reading impairments/disabilities, vision impairments
Elementary school in Madrid
Field experiment
Strength: High in ecological validity (external validity)
Weakness: Difficult to control extraneous variables
Aged 5-17 years old
Strength: Large sample size, meaning it is representative of the target population & high in generalisability
Sample 2
25 Alzheimer's patients
25 healthy elderly participants (control group)
9 Frontotemporal Dementia patients
Increased by one digit, every 3 seconds
Children were tested during break times
Children were asked to recall digit sequences in order
Digit span was recorded as the maximum digits recalled without error
Results
Digit span increased with age
Increased from 3.7 (5yo) to 5.9 (17yo)
A significant increase from age 5-8 shows that the ability to subvocally recall develops at age 7
Increase in digit span slowed and stabilised from age 11 to 17
Conclusions