The Development Of Working Memory For Elementary Students And Its Role In The Learning Of Mathematics

Working memory is a system for temporarily storing and managing the information relevant to carry out the cognitive tasks. Working memory has been described as the central of human cognition, and it has now become One of the most active research field in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. In addition to the great quantities of studies about working memory itself, it has involved in varieties of other psychological research areas, for example, people have begun to re-interpret fluid intelligence and general intelligence with the view of working memory.Based on the Four-factor model of working memory, this study designed systematical working memory tasks. The writer selected 211 students who came from a elementary school Grades One to Four in Shanghai as participates. Having conducted an overall assessment with 9 experiment tasks, the writer came to some inspiring conclusions about the structural and developmental characteristics of working memory as well as its relationship with mathematics learning.(1) In general, the main effect in Grade was observed about working memory and its Four sub-components. From Grade One to Grade Four, working memory function improved. However, the rapid development of the sub-components occurred at different points. The most significant development of the phonological loop can be seen between Grade Three and Grade Four. The rapid development of the Visuo-spatial sketchpad concentrated in the Grade One to Grade Three stage. The development of the central executive shows fast in the first and later stages, and slow in the middle, the development between Grade Two and Grade Three was quite slow, the rapid growth occurred from Grade 1-2 and Grade 3-4. The episodic buffer grew slowly from Grade One to Grade Three, fast from Grade Three to Grade Four.(2) Significant correlations can be seen between most of the Four components, and the correlation is still significant after the Grade factor was controlled. The relationship between working memory components show different characteristics in different Grades. The relationship between the Phonological loop and the Visuo-spatial sketchpad showed certain significance in Grade Three and Grade Four.the Two storage sub-components-the phonological loop and the visual-spatial sketchpad was significantly related to the central executive from Grade Two to Grade Four, and the highest correlation occurred in the higher Grades. The relationship between the phonological loop and the episodic buffer decreased with Grades. The relationship between the Visuo-spatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer has been low and not significant.The significant correlation between the central executive and the episodic buffer occurred only in the Fourth Grade.(3) The effect of working memory in mathematics learning was mainly reflected in the Two storage sub-components. As to different Grades, the effective working memory sub-components was different, the visual-spatial sketchpad for Grade One and the visual-spatial sketchpad, followed by the Phonological loop for Grade Two. In the higher Grade, the effective components turned to the central executive. The function of shifting attention for Grade Three, and the function of divided attention followed by the focus of attention for Grade Four.