About our studies with children

Our lab is specialized in studying working memory in children and adults. Our main aim is to understand:

(1) how children and adults maintain information short-term in working memory
(2) how and why this changes over time, and
(3) how the limited capacity of working memory can limit high-level cognitive activities during development (for example learning, mental calculation, reasoning, and problem-solving).

In order to shed light on these questions, we study children and young adults' performance in working memory tasks. In these tasks, the child or adult is typically asked to keep in mind some information for a short period of time. For example, we can show the child or adult four sequentially presented words to maintain which are then asked to be recalled in the presented order.

Examining the child or adult's performance to the task can help us understand how participants use their working memory to execute a certain task and how this changes over time. 

 

With our research, we want to define and explain the functioning of working memory and its development over time.  

Our studies with children are typically done in collaboration with schools in the canton of Geneva. By going to these schools, we also aim to create partnerships between the schools and our research group. After data collection, we always try to organize a workshop about the brain, cognition, and working memory in the schools that have helped us out with our research