How semantic organisation influences primary school children’s working memory

Effects of semantic relationship and preactivation on memory updating

Semantic relationship modulates working memory (WM) processes by promoting recall but impairing recognition. Updating is a core mechanism of WM responsible for its stability and flexibility; it allows maintenance of relevant information while removing no-longer relevant one. To our knowledge, no studies specifically investigated how WM updating may benefit from the processing of semantically related material. In the current study, two experiments were run with this aim. In Experiment 1, we found an advantage for semantically related words (vs. unrelated) regardless of their association type (i.e., taxonomic or thematic). A second experiment was run boosting semantic association through preactivation. Findings replicated those of Experiment 1 suggesting that preactivation was effective and improved semantic superiority. In sum, we demonstrated that long-term semantic associations benefitted the updating process, or more generally, overall WM function. In addition, pre-activating semantic nodes of a given word appears likely a process supporting WM and updating; thus, this may be the mechanism favoring word process and memorization in a semantically related text.

Sensitivity detection in memory recognition: interference control as index of taxonomic memory development?

We investigated how long-term memory modulates recognition accuracy performance in typically developing primary school children (aged 7 vs. 9 years). We devised a verbal working memory task where words associations were manipulated to obtain different types of semantic associations (i.e., taxonomic, thematic). Sensitivity detection measures were operationalised as difference between hits and false alarms (for both internal and external intrusions). As our main result, we found sensitivity detection for taxonomic associations was greater in older children than younger. In turn, this showed that taxonomies produce more interference in younger children, and thus, they are not able to take advantage from taxonomic associations, as older children do. These results are helpful in sketching a developmental trend of how semantic memory impacts recognition processes in memory.

[Formula: see text] Developmental dyslexia: How taxonomic and thematic organization affect working memory recall

Semantic long-term memory (LTM) representations can be distinguished in two main classes: taxonomic (i.e., abstract) and thematic (i.e., concrete, experiential). In typically developing children, taxonomies are usually acquired after thematic representations. In the current study, we investigated how LTM semantic representations modulate working memory (WM) recall in children with developmental dyslexia (DD). A sample of children with DD from primary and secondary school paired with a control group for age, gender, schooling, and IQ was administered a semantic WM (SWM) dual task. Here, children had to listen to groups of lists composed of words semantically related (taxonomic, e.g., shop- drugstore-coffee; or thematic, e.g., light-heat-fire) or arbitrarily related, and afterward to recall the last words among each group. Both taxonomic and thematic organizations supported recall in the two groups of children. More specifically, data showed that in typically developing children the taxonomic organization boosted WM recall (vs. the thematic one). On the contrary, in children with DD, the taxonomic organization did not better support recall and yielded effects similar to thematic organization. In children with DD, abstract taxonomic knowledge seems to be less frequently used than thematic knowledge. Findings contribute to sketch memory functioning across different memory systems in DD.