Children’s Working Memory Development during School Year and Summer Months: A Nationally-Representative Sample

• In Event: 2-005 - A Focus on Executive Function

Abstract

Working memory (WM) represents children’s abilities to hold, update, and manipulate information in the mind over short periods of time (Diamond, 2013) and develops through the elementary school years (Gathercole et al., 2004). WM is predictive of children’s academic achievement over and above IQ skills (Alloway & Copello, 2013), as well as children’s relationships with teachers and peers (de Wilde et al., 2016). School experiences, both in the classroom and on the playground, may provide students with opportunities to improve and practice their WM skills. Following literature in the early childhood period, the benefits of school attendance may be particularly impactful for lower-income children (e.g. McCartney et al., 2007) who begin school with lower WM than their higher-income peers (e.g. Farah et al. 2006).

The current study leverages the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 – the first nationally-representative dataset with direct assessments of children’s WM (N = 18,170). Assessments of WM (Numbers Reversed task) in the fall and spring of three years allowed us to disentangle school year from summer growth. Prior research has focused on smaller, community-based samples and explored WM growth in a linear fashion. This study examines how children’s WM grows during school and summer months from kindergarten through second grade and analyzes whether children’s WM growth trajectories are moderated by household income.

Multilevel growth models show children’s growth rates during each school year and summer from kindergarten entry through the end of second grade. As highlighted in Figure 1, children’s WM skills grow more when school is in session compared to when it is not. Model 1 shows that children gain the most per month of kindergarten and monotonically less during first and second grade months. In contrast, children showed less WM improvement during the summer months. Model 2 demonstrates that growth rates are moderated by household income, such that WM gaps between children from lower- and higher-income families are decreasing during kindergarten and first grade, and the summer between.

Findings suggest that school environments provide children with unique opportunities to grow their WM skills and that the earliest school experiences are the most impactful for children’s WM development. This study is the first to show that gaps between lower- and higher-income children are closing during the first two years of school at a national-level. Next steps involve examining specific school and home factors that explain variation in children’s WM growth rates.

Author

• Jenna Elizabeth Finch, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  Presenting Author