Abstract:
This
study
investigated
abilities
of
typically
developing
third-‐grade
children
and
college-‐
aged
adults
to
identify,
locate,
and
sequence
picture
communication
symbols.
Participants
where
asked
to
recreate
4
x
4
grid
displays
during
a
working
memory
task
that
assessed
visuospatial
and
temporal
memory
through
feature
binding.
Results
revealed
that
children
and
adults
demonstrated
an
equal
mean
proportion
of
recall
on
such
features
as
object
recall,
location
recall,
and
object-‐location
binding,
with
a
range
of
performance
between
74%-‐to-‐100%.
Additionally,
developmental
trends
were
obtained
between
the
two
groups
on
object-‐sequence
and
location
sequence
binding,
with
children
recalling
approximately
25%
and
adults
recalling
55%
(for
both
features).
These
data
suggest
that
feature
binding,
especially
object-‐sequence
and
location-‐sequence,
undergoes
maturation
with
age
through
adulthood.
Nevertheless,
it
appears
that
without
explicit
feature
binding
intervention,
both
children
and
adults
will
demonstrate
some
challenges
with
visual-‐graphic
communication
given
that
feature
binding
ability
for
complex
working
memory
tasks
remains
marginal
in
performance
through
adulthood.
