Working Memory, Processing Speed And Thinking Development

In recent years studies on mental mechanism of thinking development have become an attractive theme in the respect of thinking development. Taking processing speed, working memory as targets to explore mental mechanism of children and teenagers' thinking development has become a leading theme of developing research.This study, beginning with behaviour and taking 248 healthy children and teenagers aged 10-18 as subjects expounds the role that processing speed and working memory play in thinking development, defines the relationship between processing speed and working memory in thinking development and therefore has a comprehensive and systematic knowledge of mental mechanism of children and teenagers' thinking development.The study covers the relationship among developing characteristics of children and teenagers' processing speed, working memory and thinking, and the relationship between processing speed and working memory.Use the tasks of digit and letter copying, and the tasks of pattern and letter comparison to measure processing speed. Use the tasks of digit working memory and visuospatial working memory to measure working memory. Use digit reasoning test, Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices and Cattell's Culture Fair Test to measure thinking. The tests on processing speed and thinking tasks are all paper-and- pencil tests of unified timing groups. The tests of working memory tasks are conducted on the computer every three weeks.Probe and analyse the obtained data including using the method One-Way ANOVA, hierarchical multiple regression analysis, univariate analysis of variance, repeated measures analysis of variance etc, to measure various variables, observe the roles and relationship between processing speed and working memory in thinking development.The synthetical analysis and research results are as follows:(1) Children and teenagers' processing speed, working memory and thinking all have notable age difference. The ability of processing speed, working memory and thinking increases with age(10-18 years old) growth in the form of precise growth functions.(2) From different aspects and levels, hierarchical multiple regression analysis, univariate analysis of variance and repeated measures analysis of variance prove: thesynthetical effective amount of working memory and processing speed to thinking is separately about 85.18%, 68.75%, 66.67%. The effective amount of working memory to thinking is separately about 72.76%, 56.34%, 51.19%. The effective amount of processing speed to thinking is separately about 63.73%, 46.31%, 42.40%. This suggests that working memory and processing speed play an important part in thinking development and working memory play a better part than processing speed in thinking development.(3) Further hierarchical regression analysis works out that effective amount of processing speed to working memory is 65.18%. The effective amount of working memory to processing speed is 57.66%. The effective amount of processing speed to working memory is larger than that of working memory to processing speed. This shows that processing speed is probably a media to age and working memory.(4) Working memory may play a direct role in thinking development, the development of working memory may base on the growth of processing speed of relative age, and processing speed may only play a direct role in the development of working memory, working memory may play a more direct and general role than processing speed in thinking development.From this study the points of mental mechanism of thinking development can be summarized as follows: Working memory and processing speed play an important part in thinking development and working memory play a better part than processing speed in thinking development. Processing speed is probably a media to age and working memory, and may only play a direct role in the development of working memory. Working memory may play a direct role in thinking development, and may play a more direct and general role than processing speed in thinkin...