The Contribution of Interference Control for Young Children`s Working Memory Performance: Insights from Eye-tracking

Working memory is a central theoretical construct in cognitive psychology. Although there are different theoretical conceptualisations of working memory in the literature, most researchers agree that limited capacity in working memory is a key aspect (Baddeley, 2001; Cowan, 2005; Kane & Engle, 2000, 2003). Working memory skills play an important role for a range of higher-order cognitive functions throughout the lifespan (for a recent overview see Cowan & Alloway, 2009). In the context of learning and academic achievement, individual differences in working memory predict writing performance, vocabulary acquisition, and arithmetic skills (e.g., Bull, Johnston, & Roy, 1999; Gathercole, Alloway, Willis, & Adams, 2006; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993; Lee, Ng, & Ng, 2009; St ClairThompson & Gathercole, 2006; Swanson & Kim, 2007). In addition, working memory has been found to account for substantial amounts of variance in central aspects of cognition like general fluid intelligence, reasoning or reading comprehension (e.g., Daneman & Merikle, 1996; Kyllonen & Christal, 1990; Engle, Tuholski, Laughlin, & Conway, 1999). Importantly, studies have consistently shown that working memory tasks requiring participants to retain information for immediate recall, to maintain and/or update information, and to simultaneously process additional aspects of the task, constitute better predictors for achievement and general intelligence than, for example, short-term memory capacity (e.g., Bayliss, Jarrold, Gunn, & Baddeley, 2003; Cowan & Alloway, 2009; Engle et al., 1999; Gathercole et al., 2006; Kail & Hall, 2001).