Working memory capacity increases with age independently of knowledge, encoding speed, and articulation¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · reviewr3·q2
Currency · newest study 2014 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2019: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Age differences in working memory capacity persist when knowledge, filtering ability, encoding speed, and articulation are controlled, suggesting a primary maturational change. → Cowan Nelson 2014
Evidence¶
Cowan Nelson 2014¶
Cowan Nelson. (2014). Working Memory Underpins Cognitive Development, Learning, and Education. Educational Psychology Review. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207727/
q2 · i? · review · r3
The review reports a series of experiments using a change-detection procedure with colored items. Slow one-item-per-second presentation and an articulatory suppression manipulation left the developmental effect unchanged, and filtering of irrelevant shapes matched across age groups, so "neither encoding speed nor articulation could account for the age differences."
"It appears that neither encoding speed nor articulation could account for the age differences. So we believe that age differences in capacity may be primary rather than derived from another process."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Phonological memory gains disappeared when central executive was controlled, but visuospatial memory gains remained substantial, suggesting different underlying mechanisms — related
- A unitary EC factor is preferred over separate working memory and inhibitory control factors at age 5.25 even after accounting for processing speed and language — related
- Children's ability to shield attention against distraction develops until the second decade of life alongside prefrontal cortex maturation — related
- Children's understanding of whole number advances by one developmental level per additional unit of working memory capacity — related
- Analytical degrees of freedom in the primary study (prior-knowledge filtering and control-variable selection) affected its results: removing prior knowledge as a control rendered the comprehension interaction nonsignificant — reports the opposite
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
developmental-capacity-gain-primary |
title |
Working memory capacity increases with age independently of knowledge, encoding speed, and articulation |
description |
Working memory capacity increases with age independently of knowledge, encoding speed, and articulation |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2014 |
recheck_by |
2019 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-17 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — cowan-nelson-2014 |
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