Identifying, locating, and sequencing picture communication symbols: Contributions from developmental visuospatial and temporal memory

Abstract

This study investigated visuospatial and temporal working memory through assessment of feature binding abilities of typically developing first-, third-, and fifth-grade school-age children. One hundred and twelve children were asked to identify, locate, and sequence various numbers and arrays of picture communication symbols during a picture span assessment task. Feature binding was assessed through analysis of object recall, location recall, object–location recall, object–sequence recall, and location–sequence recall. Significant increases in picture span occurred with increasing grade level. Objects were highly salient with most children having recall greater than 90%. Most children had difficulty with recall of location, object sequence, and location sequence. A significant increase in location–sequence binding ability was noted as grade level increased from first to third grade. When visuospatial and temporal working memory capacity is exceeded, limitations in the ability to bind multiple features (object, location, and sequence) may reduce children’s abilities to successfully use visual graphic displays for communication.

Keywords:

• Visuospatial and temporal memory
• Visual–graphic symbols
• Developmental feature binding
• Picture span

Acknowledgements:

The authors would like to thank Wayne Mock from Ball State University’s Teleplex who programmed the experimental tasks. Additionally, Jim Jones from University Computing Services (UCS) assisted with the statistical analyses. Alison Sprung was instrumental in data entry, and Olivia Swim was helpful with the general formatting of the manuscript. Lastly, this project could not have been completed without the cooperation of the faculty, staff, parents, and children from schools located in northeast central Indiana.

The opinions presented in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the Center of Media Design. The authors take sole responsibility for the content of this article and report no conflict of interest regarding the information presented.

Declaration of interest:

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Picture communication symbols (BoardMaker) are manufactured by Mayer-Johnson, Inc. (P.O. Box 1579, Solana Beach, CA 92075-7579, USA; phone: [phone]; URL: http://www.mayer-johnson.com).

² Macromedia Director 2004 MX software was published by Macromedia, Inc. (2548 Zanker Road, San Jose, CA 95131-9849; phone: [phone]; URL: http://www.macromedia.com).

³ Adobe Photoshop 7 was published by Adobe Systems, Inc. (345 Park Avenue, San Jose, CA 95110-2704; phone: [phone]; URL: http://www.adobe.com).

⁴ The Elo Touchmonitor is manufactured by Elo TouchSystems, Inc. (6500 Kaiser Drive, Fremont, CA 94555-3613; phone: [phone]; URL: http://www.elotouch.com).

⁵ iBook computers are manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. (1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014; phone: [phone]; URL: http://www.apple.com).