The Development Of Working Memory For Chinese Characters In Young Primary School Childern

The study of visual working memory of expert objects is an important frontier issue.Visual working memory is one of the core modules of human information processing,and plays an important role in many cognitive processes(such as reasoning,visual search,attention control,etc.).Recently,researchers have begun to pay attention to the research on the capacity of visual working memory of complex objects.Chinese characters and faces are two kinds of important expertise stimuli,whereas their visual working memory capacity is unclear.Exploring visual working memory capacity from the perspective of development is an important way to solve scientific problems in related fields.Recently,some remarkable advances have been made in the development of cognitive processing of Chinese characters.However,the researchers mainly focus on the inversion effect and the composite effect.There is still a lack of systematic researches on the working memory capacity of Chinese characters and their development trajectory.In addition,a large number of studies have shown that there are many internal links between the processing of words and faces.It is of great significance to reveal the processing of expert objects by exploring the relationship between the development of the working memory of Chinese characters and that of faces.This study applied the classic change detection paradigm to measure the working memory capacity of Chinese characters and faces,with the K value as the dependent variable.The participants included the primary students of Grade 2,4,and 6 and the adults.Experiment 1 used Chinese characters and human faces as experimental materials to systematically investigate the development of the visual working memory capacity of faces and Chinese characters,as well as the relationship between them.Experiment 2 used the true words,pseudo-words,false words,and combinations of strokes as materials to further examine the development trajectory of the visual working memory capacity of Chinese characters with different features.Experiment 3 used Chinese double-character words as experimental materials.The study found that:(1)Under all types of experimental conditions for participants at any age,the working memory capacity of Chinese characters is significantly higher than that of the faces,and the capacity Chinese characters are significantly related to that of the faces.This shows that there are differences in the working memory capacity of faces and Chinese characters,but they are related to each other.(2)For both Chinese character and double-character words,the working memory capacity of adults is significantly higher than those of the participants on Grade 2 and 4.Moreover,the capacity of the sixth graders is significantly higher than that of the second graders.However the difference between Grade 2 and Grade 4,as well as the difference between adults and sixth graders are both not significant.These results show that the working memory capacity of Chinese characters has experienced an important stage of development from Grade 2 and Grade 4 to Grade 6,which is close to that of the adults.(3)The results of face processing show that the working memory capacity of adults was significantly higher than that of primary school students(namely Grade 2,Grade 4,and Grade 6),but there was no significant difference among elementary grades.This reveals that the face working memory capacity is relatively stable in primary school,but the working memory capacity of the face is increasing during the time between the primary school and the adult stage.(4)The working memory capacity of true words is significantly higher than that of false words(orthographic illegality)and pseudo-words(orthographic legality),and there is no significant difference in working memory capacity between the Grade 2,Grade 6,and university students.The familiarity of these prompt words significantly affects the working memory capacity,and the orthographic method does not affect the working memory capacity of the Chinese characters.In short,this study obtained the scientific data on Chinese children's working memory capacity and its development of Chinese characters for the first time,and initially clarified the relationship between the working memory capacity of Chinese characters and the face working memory capacity.