Developmental aspects of delayed matching-to-sample task performance in children

The influence of age, sex, and intelligence (IQ) on performance of a delaye d matching-to-sample (DMTS) task, commonly used with animals and adult huma n subjects to study aspects of short-term memory, was examined for 674 chil dren, 5 to 13 years old. The data suggest that younger children were less a ccurate at short delays and displayed a greater decrease in accuracy as rec all delay increased than older children. Children with lower IQs demonstrat ed consistent impairment in recall of information when compared to children with higher IQs. No significant differences in task performance were obser ved between boys and girls. These normative data provide insights into the developmental time course of behaviors thought to serve as metrics of short -term memory. These data will be critical for ongoing and future studies in determining whether specific clinical diagnoses, drug treatments, or other risk factors (e.g., perinatal drug exposure, pregnancy complications, expo sure to toxicants) are associated with differences on specific aspects of t ask performance. The use of tasks that are also applicable to animal models provides great opportunities for the conduct of important comparative stud ies. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.