Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 74-81, January/February 2003

RESEARCH PAPER
Audiospatial and Visuospatial Working Memory in 6-13 Year Old School Children

¹ Institute of Biomedicine/Physiology, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; ² Neuroscience Unit, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki Helsinki Brain Research Center, Helsinki, Finland; ³ Hospital for Children and Adolescents, Child Psychiatry, FIN-00029 Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland; ⁴ Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Laboratory Animal Unit, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; ⁵ Functional Brain Imaging Unit, FIN-00029 Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki Brain Research Center, Helsinki, Finland

The neural processes subserving working memory, and brain structures underlying this system, continue to develop during childhood. We investigated the effects of age and gender on audiospatial and visuospatial working memory in a nonclinical sample of school-aged children using n-back tasks. The results showed that auditory and visual working memory performance improves with age, suggesting functional maturation of underlying cognitive processes and brain areas. The gender differences found in the performance of working memory tasks suggest a larger degree of immaturity in boys than girls at the age period of 6-10 yr. The differences observed between the mastering of auditory and visual working memory tasks may indicate that visual working memory reaches functional maturity earlier than the corresponding auditory system.