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Sebastian and Hernadez-Gill (2012) - contemporary study - Ao1 - Coggle…
Sebastian and Hernadez-Gill (2012) - contemporary study - Ao1
AIM
To study the developmental pattern of working memory over time, including changes from ageing or dementia.
To analyse the developmental pattern of the phonological loop in children aged 5-17 years old. This involved looking at the age at which the digit span stopped increasing in adulthood / adolescence.
To look at the decline of digit span in older people, including those with two types of dementia – Alzheimer’s and fronto-temporal dementia. (They did this by using previous findings). We will only refer to this in the results.
To see if Anglo-Saxon data, which found 15 years to be the age at which digit span stops developing further, were replicated or whether digit span would be higher for Spanish speakers. This is because word length might affect the digit span and Spanish word length differs from Anglo-Saxon.
SAMPLE
570 (272 male, 298 female) Spanish children aged between 5 and 17. This was a field experiment conducted in schools. The IV was the year of schooling and the DV was verbal digit span. The participants were from pre-primary, primary and secondary schools in Madrid. All children were born in Spain. None of the children had repeated a school year and none presented with hearing disorders, reading or writing difficulties or any other cognitive impairment.
PROCEDURE
Participants were tested individually, during their breaktimes at school. Each participant was given a digit span memory test. This involved the participants hearing a sequence of numbers read out loud at 1 number a second. After hearing the sequence, participants had to repeat back the numbers they heard in the right order. Each time a participant correctly repeated the sequence*, another digit was added and the participant tried again. Participants kept going until they could no longer recall the digits they heard. Digit span is defined as the longest sequence a child could recall two time out of three presented, in order and without error.
RESULTS
The results showed digit span increased with age. The youngest group (5 years) had a significantly lower mean digit span of 3.76 than the other age groups. Digit span increased up to 11 years with a mean of 5.28. The rate of increased then slowed up to 17 years with a mean of 5.91.
The researchers then compared the data they collected for their study to data from another study. During this other study, Spanish children were tested using an intelligence test called the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children IV (WISC-IV). The WISC-IV also tested participants’ digit spans.
Digit spans’ were ranked according to 1) their school year and 2) their age range (5 years old, 6-8 years, 9-11 years, 12-14 years and 15-17 years old). Due to the fact that samples were uneven across the groups, the Games-Howell Pairwise Comparison test was computed.
The data can be compared with the WISC-IV as well as English data. The same pattern in development was found – that digit span increased to age 16. Although Sebastian and Hernandez-Gil showed digit span increases till age 17, the same pattern of digit span increasing in childhood and adolescence is found.
COMPARRISON TO ELDERLY
The researchers compared their findings to a previous study done in 2010. the researchers wanted to look at older people. The researchers had previously used the same digit span memory test on 3 groups of older people: healthy older people, older people with
Alzheimer's dementia, and older people with fronto-temporal dementia
When compared to Anglo-Saxon healthy elderly participants, their digit span was significantly higher than the 5 and 6 year old children, but not different from the 17 year old children. This was the same for patients with dementia. The comparison of dementia groups, healthy elderly people and schoolchildren suggest the capacity of the phonological loop is more affected by age than by dementia.
COMPARRISON ENGLISH TO SPANISH
This study was conducted on Spanish participants and found that digit span increases with age up to 17 years old. However, a previous study (Gathercole and Alloway 2008) tested English speaking participants (Anglo-Saxon data) using the same digit span test and found some differences between Spanish and English-speaking participants.
Both Spanish and English-speaking participants aged 4-5 years old showed similar digit spans.
However, differences appeared at age 7 and above. English speaking participants would generally remember one digit more than Spanish speaking participants.
The researchers thought the reason for this was due to the differences between the English language and Spanish. Spanish words (especially numbers) generally have more syllables in them compared to English words.
The researchers also said that children begin using their subvocal rehearsal at age 7. So, this also explains why the differences between Spanish speaking and English speaking participants only appeared after 7 years old.