The Relationship Between Working Memory, Spatial Orientation And Traffic Safety Cognition Of Children With Mental Retardation

Working Memory is a limited-resource system, used to maintain and manipulate complex cognition and thinking information. Working Memory span(Working Memory capacity) is often seen as an important limitation on the ability of cognitive processing,which is an important measure of working memory. Space is a cognitive object that is decomposed and abstracted from concrete things. Spatial ability is an important component of human intelligence, and the concept of spatial orientation is the basic component of spatial ability. "up/down", "before/after", "left/right", "inside/outside" are the most basic orientations. Traffic safety awareness refers to the general knowledge and safety awareness of road traffic, including traffic signs, traffic rules and traffic security.Researches have confirmed that working memory span plays an important role on the spatial concept and traffic safety awareness and the concept of spatial concept has effects on the awareness of traffic safety. But the research of interaction between them, especially for children with moderate mental retardation, is still relatively weak.This study explored the relationship of 90 Mentally Retarded children’s working memory span, spatial orientation concept and traffic safety awareness, in order to provide theoretical guidance for the children’s cognitive research and educational practice. The conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) Overall, 7-15 years old Mentally Retarded children’s average scores on working memory span, spatial orientation concept and traffic safety awareness are increasing with age,the key development period is from 10 to 12 years old.(2) In the task of spatial orientation concept, there was significant difference between the different sexes of children with mental retardation. But working memory span and traffic safety cognitive scores in gender differences were not significant.(3) In working memory span tasks, the score of children with moderate mental retardation in spatial working memory span task was significantly higher than that in digit and verbal working memory span.(4) In the tasks of spatial orientation concept, the average accuracy of children with moderate mental retardation in the verbal task was significantly lower than that in the action task; the average accuracy in the object-centered task was significantly lower than that in the self-centered task; the average accuracy in the tasks of "left / right" and "before / behind" were significantly lower than that in the tasks of "on / under" and "in / out".(5) In the tasks of traffic safety awareness, the average accuracy of children with moderate mental retardation in the traffic sign cognition task is significantly higher than that in the traffic rules cognition task and traffic safety cognition task; the average correct rate in the traffic rules cognition task was significantly higher than that in the traffic safety cognition task.(6) The scores of working memory span, spatial orientation concept and traffic safety cognitive correlated significantly between each other.(7) The spatial orientation of children plays an intermediary role between working memory span and traffic safety cognitive, indirect effects accounted for 48.89% of the total effect.