Children live in a dynamic environment, in which objects continually change locations and move into and out of occlusion. Children must therefore rely on working memory to store information from the environment and to update those stored representations as the environment changes. Previous work suggests that the ability to store information in working memory increases through infancy and childhood. However, less is known about the development of the ability to update stored information. Participants were 63 4-7-year-old children (37 girls; 34 caregivers completed optional demographic forms, and those children were reported as Asian [one], Asian/White [four], Black [one], Middle East/Arab [one], or White [27]; two were Hispanic/Latinx). We asked children to keep track of arrays of hidden items that either remained where they were hidden (static trials) or swapped locations (swap trials) and then to identify from two alternatives which item was hidden in a particular location. We manipulated the number of items in the arrays and the number of times the items swapped locations in order to investigate how increasing storage and updating load impacted children's performance. We found that children's ability to update working memory developed significantly across our age range. Updating appeared to impose a significant one-time cost to working memory performance, regardless of the number of times items swapped. Our results yield new insights into the developmental trajectories of storage and updating in working memory across early childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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4-7岁儿童工作记忆更新的发展。

孩子们生活在一个动态的环境中，在这个环境中，物体不断地改变位置并移入和移出遮挡。因此，儿童必须依靠工作记忆来存储来自环境的信息，并随着环境的变化更新这些存储的表示。以前的研究表明，在工作记忆中存储信息的能力在婴儿期和儿童期有所增加。然而，人们对更新存储信息的能力发展知之甚少。参与者是 63 名 4-7 岁儿童（37 名女孩；34 名看护人填写了可选的人口统计表格，这些儿童被报告为亚洲人 [1]、亚洲/白人 [4]、黑人 [1]、中东/阿拉伯 [一个]，或白人 [27]；两个是西班牙裔/拉丁裔）。我们要求孩子们跟踪隐藏物品的数组，这些物品要么保留在它们被隐藏的地方（静态试验），要么交换位置（交换试验），然后从两个备选方案中确定哪个物品隐藏在特定位置。我们操纵了数组中的项目数量和项目交换位置的次数，以研究增加存储和更新负载如何影响儿童的表现。我们发现，儿童更新工作记忆的能力在我们这个年龄段都有显着提高。无论项目交换的次数如何，更新似乎都会对工作内存性能造成重大的一次性成本。我们的研究结果对儿童早期工作记忆中存储和更新的发展轨迹产生了新的见解。