Whereas considerable developmental memory research has examined the contributions of short-term memory, processing efficiency, retention duration, and scope of attention to complex memory span, little is known about the influence of controlled attention. The present study investigated the relative influence of three understudied attention mechanisms on the verbal working memory span of school-age children: memory updating; attention focus switching; and sustained attention. Results of general linear modeling revealed that, after controlling for age, only updating accuracy emerged as a significant predictor of verbal working memory span. Memory updating speed (that subsumed attention focus switching speed) also contributed but was mediated by age. The results extend the developmental memory literature by implicating the mechanism of memory updating and developmental improvement in speed of attention focus switching and updating as critical contributors to children’s verbal working memory. Theoretically, the results provide substantively new information about the role of domain-general executive attention in children’s verbal working memory. 1. Introduction Working memory (WM) refers to a limited-capacity system that functions to encode, store, and retrieve information being processed in any cognitive task [1–6]. Working memory is conventionally measured using complex memory span tasks that are characterized by maintenance of items during processing [7, 8]. Developmental memory research indicates that children’s WM system comprises the components of short-term memory storage, processing speed [9–11], and a central executive [2, 12–20]. There are considerable developmental data focusing on the influence of storage and processing speed on children’s WM [10, 13, 21–24]. However, few studies have directly explored the contribution of attention mechanisms on WM [25]. The present study, therefore, was designed to directly investigate the contribution of attention to school-age children’s verbal WM. Working memory, functionally defined as the ability to manage information storage and retrieval during an ongoing cognitive task, requires controlled attention toward both storage and processing [13, 14, 16, 19, 26–29]. Individuals with better controlled attention are better able than those with poorer attention to maintain more items while performing a cognitive activity [19]. Cowan and colleagues have proposed that WM is defined functionally as the number of information units/chunks that can be held in the scope of attention at any given point and attention control
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