School of Humanities and Social Science Division of Social Science 194 The Development of Information Updating in Working Memory Supervisor: CHENG Chen / SOSC Student: MUI Pui Ka / QSA Course: UROP 1100, Fall UROP 2100, Spring Preschoolers often struggle with arithmetic problems with addend unknowns. Highlighting numerical contrasts may be an effective strategy to enhance early arithmetic thinking by promoting pattern recognition and comparative analysis. This study investigated whether highlighting contrasts through alternating sequences between problems can scaffold young children’s arithmetic reasoning. Preschool participants were presented with visual demonstrations of two unknown addend problems in alternating order, highlighting contrasts between the examples. Children were subsequently asked to deduce missing addends. 49 children (mean age 6.37 years, 24 girls) participated and observed two unknown-addend problems that used cups to occlude sets of objects, the problems of which were revealed in alternating sequence. Children were then asked to apply the solution to solve a new arithmetic problem (Test trial). To probe the precision of the solution of the unknown-addend problems, children answered two post-test questions, one asking children to determine the magnitude (Comparison trial) and one to recognize the solutions (Identification trial). Significant correlations were found in between the magnitude and the test accuracy, but not the identification trial. Our study provides insights into designing developmentally appropriate maths activities that leverage core cognitive processes to strengthen foundational computational skills at a young age. This has important implications for identifying effective educational strategies tailored to preschoolers’ learning needs. The Development of Information Updating in Working Memory Supervisor: CHENG Chen / SOSC Student: QUAN Kexin / QSA Course: UROP 1100, Spring Cognitive offloading is an important strategy that human beings use to compensate for limited cognitive capacity when dealing with complex tasks. It enables people to improve performance and productivity, achieving an otherwise unattainable goal. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of how adults offload cognition to an external virtual agent when doing a working memory task. Thirty-one participants completed a working memory task in which they needed to remember 5, 7, or 9 colored circles, with or without the help of an external agent. We examined whether and how the presence of the external agent and the difficulty levels of the task changed adults’ performance, which reflected adults’ cognitive offloading behaviors and strategy. The results show that the agent improved adults’ memory performance and adults will only offload cognition strategically under certain circumstances.
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