Short-term memory is essential for our work or any other daily activity. It does not admit much information simultaneously and it is very active and time limited. In addition, it determines the so-called long-term memory, which structures all our memories.
The differences between the different stages of the individual are very obvious relating to memory. “Children present more problems to remember in comparison with adults, who have more resources. Nevertheless, the evolution of memory is inverted U-shaped because when we get old certain aspects of our memory is in decline”, explains Teresa Bajo Molina.
Teresa Bajo Molina has supervised a study with children from schools of Granada and Jaén, who were administered computerized tests previously completed by an adult population. For example, children aged 8 and 13 were presented simple sentences about characters carrying out different actions. Children presented difficulties to organize these actions in short stories and their memory suffered because actions interfered with each other.
In addition, even when sentences were presented organized in short stories, the youngest could remember worst than the oldest as they could not integrate the information of the sentences to reduce the interference. The group Memory and development of the University of Granada, supervised by professor Bajo, has also adapted these tests to study these memory processes in children in preverbal age.
Scientists observed that children do not manage to integrate the stories, as they lack knowledge base and it takes them much to organize the information. Furthermore, dismissing (inhibiting) irrelevant information for the objective pursued is more difficult for them than for adults.
These differences on inhibition were also observed in a test in which twelve words were presented to children and they only had to remember the three referring to the biggest objects. Children presented again more problems to remember because they were not able to remove from their short-term memory the names referring to the smallest objects. The lack of integration and the inefficiency of the inhibition processes are the main reasons for the great interference of children’s memory. The origin is, to a great extent, determined by biology: the development of prefrontal cortex area.
Professional memory
As regards language interpreters, according to Bajo Molina, “we have analysed these professionals´ short-term memory and it is above average. They can carry out different tasks simultaneously (understanding and speaking two different languages); something difficult to achieve by most people”. Translators do not find as many difficulties to memorize as most people do, as it is an essential feature for the carrying out of their work as interpreters, fruit of a systematic training directed towards such goal.
As a result of these research works, Professor Bajo Molina says that “it is possible to change memory mechanisms by training, such processes can be modified”. It does not mean that there are nor clear memory limitations and differences between persons, but “memory problems can be partially solved with specific training and it is possible to get more efficiency in concrete works through specialization to use memory more efficiently”.
Further information: Prof Teresa Bajo Molina
Research group Memory and development.
Dpt. of Experimental Psychology and Behaviour Physiology. University of Granada
Phone number: 958 24 37 69 / 243763.
E-mail: mbajo@ugr.es
