Changes in audio-spatial working memory abilities during childhood: The role of spatial and phonological development

Working memory is a cognitive system devoted to storage and retrieval processing of information.
Numerous studies on the development of working memory have investigated the
processing of visuo-spatial and verbal non-spatialized information; however, little is known
regarding the refinement of acoustic spatial and memory abilities across development.
Here, we hypothesize that audio-spatial memory skills improve over development, due to
strengthening spatial and cognitive skills such as semantic elaboration. We asked children
aged 6 to 11 years old (n = 55) to pair spatialized animal calls with the corresponding animal
spoken name. Spatialized sounds were emitted from an audio-haptic device, haptically
explored by children with the dominant hand’s index finger. Children younger than 8
anchored their exploration strategy on previously discovered sounds instead of holding this
information in working memory and performed worse than older peers when asked to pair
the spoken word with the corresponding animal call. In line with our hypothesis, these findings
demonstrate that age-related improvements in spatial exploration and verbal coding
memorization strategies affect how children learn and memorize items belonging to a complex
acoustic spatial layout. Similar to vision, audio-spatial memory abilities strongly depend
on cognitive development in early years of life.