Development of the ability to combine visual and acoustic information in working memory

Presentation of two kinds of materials in working memory (visual and acoustic), with the requirement to attend to one or both modalities, poses an interesting case for working memory development because competing predictions can be formulated. In two experiments, we assessed such predictions with children 7-13 years old and adults. With development, the ability to hold more information in the focus of attention could lead to an increase in the size of the trade-off between modalities; if attention can hold A items during unimodal-attention trials, then on average attention should hold A/2 of those same items during bimodal-attention trials. If A increases with age, so would the dual-task cost, A/2. The results clearly ruled out that possibility. It was the modality- or code-specific components of working memory that improved with age and not the central component. We discuss various mechanisms that could have produced these results, including alternative attention-based mechanisms. The findings point to a rich field for continued research.