Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Psychology Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Developmental Psychology

University of Nebraska - Lincoln

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

2012

Articles 1 - 1 of 1

Full-Text Articles in Psychology

The Impact Of Distractor Duration On Spatial Working Memory In Early Childhood, Brian Keiser Aug 2012

The Impact Of Distractor Duration On Spatial Working Memory In Early Childhood, Brian Keiser

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Spatial attention appears to act as a rehearsal mechanism in spatial working memory (Awh, 1999; Awh & Jonides, 2001) as adults have trouble maintaining spatial information in their mind when required to shift their attention to locations unrelated to the to-be-retained location. Futhermore, adults increase intentional directed attention to the to-be remembered location when warned ahead of time that distractors will be present during the memory delay (Awh, 2003). Our initial study looked at the presence of a distractor and its impacts on spatial working memory in children. We found that the distractor did impact three and six year old …