The development of associate learning in school age children

PLoS One. 2014 Jul 11;9(7):e101750. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0101750. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Associate learning is fundamental to the acquisition of knowledge and plays a critical role in the everyday functioning of the developing child, though the developmental course is still unclear. This study investigated the development of visual associate learning in 125 school age children using the Continuous Paired Associate Learning task. As hypothesized, younger children made more errors than older children across all memory loads and evidenced decreased learning efficiency as memory load increased. Results suggest that age-related differences in performance largely reflect continued development of executive function in the context of relatively developed memory processes.

Publication types

  • Clinical Trial

MeSH terms

  • Child
  • Child, Preschool
  • Executive Function
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Learning / physiology*
  • Male
  • Memory / physiology*
  • Paired-Associate Learning / physiology*

Grants and funding

No current funding sources for this study. Authors Brian T. Harel and Paul Maruff are employed by CogState, Ltd. CogState, Ltd provided support in the form of salaries for authors BTH and PM, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.