Impact of working memory capacity on temporal processing in preschool children

Since working memory capacity (WMC) predicts individual differences in the wide range of abilities, this experiment tested the effect of WMC on time perception in preschool children. At first, 108 children’s working memory capacity were measured by CANTAB tests and then 21 children with high working memory capacity and 20 children with low working memory capacity were assigned. Then, both groups performed two reproduction tasks; they instructed to reproduce 700 and 3000 millisecond intervals in mono task, and to reproduce 3000 ms with a performing concurrent non-temporal task as a dual task. Data analyzed by mixed design ANOVA and post hoc tests. Results showed that in mono task, accuracy of high WMC was better than the low WMC group. In dual task, although there was no significant difference in the accuracy of reproduction task, children with high WMC had better performance in non-temporal task. Furthermore, children with low WMC were more variable performance than high WMC in all intervals.