Study title

United Kingdom

Individual

This study used an empirical, experimental data collection method. All tasks, apart from the standardised measures of reading and mathematics were programmed using Runtime Revolution software and presented on MacBook Pro laptop computers.A total of 180 words were used in processing elements of the tasks, which were familiar concrete nouns, with age of acquisition of under 6.2 years. No words were repeated within or between tasks in a single testing session. All audio material was presented through the internal laptop speakers using pre-recorded male voices. Where a processing task was used in any of the tasks (including decision making in the memory scanning task), reaction times (RTs) were recorded when the child selected their response key (z or /) on the computer keyboard. ‘z’ corresponded to correct, and ‘/’ to incorrect in every task. Participants were assessed individually in three testing sessions lasting approximately 30 minutes each. In sessions 1 and 3, children completed 4 tasks, and in the middle session they were tested on 3 tasks. In session 1, they completed the first verbal and visual baseline processing assessment, digit span, and memory scanning, in that order. In session 2, they completed verbal-visual complex span, articulation speed, and verbal forgetting, in that order. In session 3, they completed the second verbal and visual baseline processing assessment, verbal-verbal complex span, and visual forgetting, in that order (see attached 'methodology' file for details on these tasks). In addition to the memory measures given in these experimental testing sessions, all children were tested on the Sentence Completion Forms of the NFER-Nelson (1998) Group Reading Test II Form A (6-14) and the age appropriate test from the NFER-Nelson (1994) Mathematics 6-14 series in separate sessions. The full sample consisted of 112 children (51 males, mean age 7 years 1 month, range 5 years 8 months to 8 years 8 months, 64 in School Year 1 and 48 in School Year 3). Eight participants were absent during phases of the data collection and so failed to complete the experimental memory tasks. Equipment failure resulted in a further 9 participants’ data being lost for the articulation speed task. Eleven participants were absent at the time when the reading and mathematics assessments were given. As a result, a full data set that include all measures is available for 87 children (50 in Year 1, 37 in Year 3).