A study for development and validation of the computer-based working memory tasks for school-aged children

Abstract

Introduction

Working memory (WM) is the ability to retain and manipulate information during a short period of time. According to previous studies, children who have neurocognitive dysfunctions, such as ADHD and learning disorder were found to have a WM problem, which was associated with frontal lobe dysfunction, especially dysfunctions in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Objectives

In the present study, we developed the computer-based WM tasks for school-aged children, which help to provide a timely assessment of risk and preventive intervention for children with subclinical attention problems.

Aims

We evaluated the construct and concurrent validity of newly developed WM tasks.

Methods

A hundred and fourteen 8- to 10-year-old children were recruited. The newly developed, computer-based WM tasks consist of two domains:

– auditory-verbal WM;

– visual-spatial WM.

We examined the construct validity of the tasks through examining the developmental trend of the WM abilities with age. To determine the concurrent validity of those tasks, we conducted correlation analyses between the participants’ scores and their scores on well-known measures of verbal and visual WM; Arithmetic and Letter-Number Sequencing subtest of intelligence scale (KEDI WISC), and Corsi block test.

Results

There are marked linear increasing trends of the response accuracy with age. Further, there were high correlations between the scores of two WM tasks and the corresponding scores of standardized assessment tools.

Conclusions

This study showed promising evidence for the validity of computer-based tasks assessing WM, which might have the utility for school-aged children in research and clinical settings.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.