Gender Differences in Working Memory of Teenagers and its association with Academic Performance
Authors: Mehta Bharati , Kamble Prathamesh Haridas , Gadhvi Mahesh 
Published: June 2021

Working memory is a form of short‐term memory that keeps information available, while the individual plans action based on it. So, a well‐func‐tion‐ing work‐ing memory forms a productive basis for successfully completing many complex activities that require reasoning, understanding and learning. It is also intricately linked to attention and other cognitive processes. Thus, children with deficits in working memory may have learning difficulties and eventually poor academic performance.

A classic way of studying working memory is the use of the n‐back task, a type of serial working memory task wherein a person must hold a series of information in working memory. We hypothesized that the low score of n‐back test would result in poor academic performance in school.

After taking approval from Institution Ethics Committee, the study was performed on 114 school students; 62 boys and 52 girls (age 13.8 ± 0.91 and 13.65 ± 0.88 years respectively). 1‐back and 2‐back visual tasks were employed in two blocks; each block consisting of 20 trials of geometric images presented to them in a random order. The image appeared for 0.5 sec and next image appeared after 2.5 sec. In 1‐back, the student was supposed to respond if the image appeared was the same as the previous trial and in 2‐back test the correct response was the image that appeared two trials earlier. The total correct and incorrect responses were recorded and the accuracy of each of the tests was calculated.

The academic performance of the students was obtained from the school authorities and the average score in all the subjects in all the assessments of that academic year was calculated. We divided the students into 4 groups according to their academic scores; Excellent (>75%), Good (74–60%), Average (59–36%) and Poor (<35%). The n‐back score was tested for gender differences and correlation, if any, with the academic performance.

ANOVA test for baseline parameters like age, height, weight, BMI was statistically not significant which means our population was matched and the groups were comparable.

The total n‐back score (1‐back and 2‐back) was 51.31 ± 18.52 and 50.24 ± 16.40 in males and females respectively which was statistically not significant (p=0.249). The academic performance score was respectively 63.99 ± 19.28 and 69.35 ± 19.99; not significant (p=0.887).

Comparison of all 4 academic groups with 1‐back test by analysis of variance was statistically significant (p=0.049). Although the 2‐back score and total n‐back scores were statistically not significant, they showed a trend of decreasing scores with decreased academic performance. Pearson correlation test showed a significant correlation between total n‐back score and academic performance (p<0.05).

The results of this study can represent a foundation for understanding the role of working memory in academic achievements. The significant positive correlation can enable us to identify slow learners, who can be given career counseling or increased attention while teaching. Further, some forms of working memory trainings may be beneficial for slow learners to enhance their learning and improve their academic performance.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.