ABSTRACT
Though the TBRS model was mainly developed and tested on adults, it was initially inspired by unanticipated developmental phenomena. The TBRS model puts forward a new conception of the relationships between processing and storage in which the core mechanisms are time-constrained. Gavens and Barrouillet observed similar findings in a complex span task in which, contrary to the previous experiments, we took care to impede articulatory rehearsal. Developmental psychology has from its inception tended to account for development by age-related changes in some core system underpinning cognition. The predictive power of the new span tasks echoes previous observations by Fry and Hale, who observed that performance on complex span tasks as simple as reporting the colours of items while maintaining their identities or locations in view of their subsequent recall was highly correlated with fluid intelligence. The old question of the roots of cognitive development has consequently been refocused on the search for the determinants of working memory development.
