Adaptation of the Missing Scan Task to a touchscreen format for assessing working memory capacity in children

Elizabeth Renner; Rosyl S. Somai; Stefan Van der Stigchel; Clare Campbell; Donna Kean; Christine A. Caldwell

doi:10.1002/icd.2277

Adaptation of the Missing Scan Task to a touchscreen format for assessing working memory capacity in children

Elizabeth Renner^*, Rosyl S. Somai, Stefan Van der Stigchel, Clare Campbell, Donna Kean, Christine A. Caldwell

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Assessing children's working memory capacity (WMC) can be challenging for a variety of reasons, including the rapid increase in WMC across early childhood. Here, we developed and piloted an adapted WMC task, which involved minimal equipment, could be performed rapidly, and did not rely on verbal production ability (to facilitate the use of the task with younger children). In our adaptation, we portrayed the events of the object-based Missing Scan Task (creatures hiding in and emerging from a house) in a touchscreen format. In the full experiment, 67 participants aged 23 to 90 months achieved the longest set size (LSS) scores that were distributed across the full range of possible scores. A comparison of these scores with those obtained using object-based formats indicated general agreement between the versions of the task. Scores were found to increase with child age. We propose this (freely available) touchscreen adaptation as a suitable WMC task for use with children aged 2 to 7 years.

Original language	English
Article number	e2277
Pages (from-to)	1-11
Journal	Infant and Child Development
Volume	30
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2277
Publication status	Published - 1 Nov 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank the University of Stirling Psychology Kindergarten staff for research support during piloting. We thank Daliburgh Primary School for research support. We thank Anda-Jay Burgess for assistance with data collection in the Psychology Kindergarten. We thank the parents and children who took part in the Stirling Summer Science Festival, and the organizers who facilitated it.

Funding Information:
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, Grant/Award Number: ERC grant no. 648841 RATCHETCOG ERC‐2014‐CoG (to CAC) Funding information

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Funding

We thank the University of Stirling Psychology Kindergarten staff for research support during piloting. We thank Daliburgh Primary School for research support. We thank Anda-Jay Burgess for assistance with data collection in the Psychology Kindergarten. We thank the parents and children who took part in the Stirling Summer Science Festival, and the organizers who facilitated it. Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, Grant/Award Number: ERC grant no. 648841 RATCHETCOG ERC‐2014‐CoG (to CAC) Funding information

Keywords

children
developmental psychology
preschool
touchscreen
working memory

Access to Document

10.1002/icd.2277

Infant and Child Development - 2021 - Renner - Adaptation of the Missing Scan Task to a touchscreen format for assessingFinal published version, 1.11 MBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

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abstract = "Assessing children's working memory capacity (WMC) can be challenging for a variety of reasons, including the rapid increase in WMC across early childhood. Here, we developed and piloted an adapted WMC task, which involved minimal equipment, could be performed rapidly, and did not rely on verbal production ability (to facilitate the use of the task with younger children). In our adaptation, we portrayed the events of the object-based Missing Scan Task (creatures hiding in and emerging from a house) in a touchscreen format. In the full experiment, 67 participants aged 23 to 90 months achieved the longest set size (LSS) scores that were distributed across the full range of possible scores. A comparison of these scores with those obtained using object-based formats indicated general agreement between the versions of the task. Scores were found to increase with child age. We propose this (freely available) touchscreen adaptation as a suitable WMC task for use with children aged 2 to 7 years.",

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Adaptation of the Missing Scan Task to a touchscreen format for assessing working memory capacity in children

Abstract

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Keywords

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