To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to test different theoretical models of working memory in childhood based on a computerized assessment. We tested this across several countries: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Italy, and UK. The present study addressed the wider macro-cultural context and how this impacts working memory. We used two economic indices to characterize the participating countries and ranked the countries based on the Global Index of Cognitive Skills and Educational Attainment. Children between 5 and 10 (...) years completed the same set of short-term and working memory tests. There were two main findings. First, there was a similar pattern in verbal working memory across countries, which suggests that this skill may be relatively consistent across different cultural groups. In contrast, the pattern for visuo-spatial working memory was different across countries, which may explained by cultural differences and educational rankings of the countries. The second main finding was that both a domain-general model and a domain-specific model provided a reasonably good fit with the data, there was the high relationship between the verbal and visuo-spatial working memory constructs across the countries in the latter model. Thus, it may be a more parsimonious choice to rely on a three-factor model. The data also suggest culture-similar patterns in a computerized assessment of working memory. (shrink)

Working Memory (WM) skills of individuals with Down’s syndrome DS tend to be very poor compared to typically developing children of similar mental age. In particular, research has found that in individuals with DS visuo-spatial WM is better preserved than verbal WM. This study investigated whether is possible to train Short-Term Memory (STM) and WM abilities in individuals with DS. The cases of two teenage children are reported: E.H., 17 years and 3 months, and A.S., 15 years and 11 months. (...) A school-based treatment targeting visuo-spatial WM was given to E.H. and A.S. for six weeks. Both prior to and after the treatment, they completed a set of assessments to measure WM abilities and their performance was compared with younger typically developing nonverbal mental age controls. The results showed that the trained participants improved their performance in some of the trained and non-trained WM tasks proposed, especially with regard to the tasks assessing visuo-spatial WM abilities. These findings are discussed on the basis of their theoretical, educational and clinical implications. (shrink)