News Finding: For instance, the difference between search times, with and without naming the target object, indicate a key role for a kind of brief visual memory known as working memory, that helps us remember what we just saw as we look to something new.
Paper Finding: This specific result thus extends those of Experiment 1 by showing that the labeling effect occurs even when targets and distractors differ only in shape.
News Context: Vales said their research results "begin to tell us precisely how words help, the kinds of cognitive processes words tap into to change how children behave. For instance, the difference between search times, with and without naming the target object, indicate a key role for a kind of brief visual memory known as working memory, that helps us remember what we just saw as we look to something new. Words put ideas in working memory faster than images."
Paper Context: The analysis yielded a significant main effect of Labeling [F(1, 60) = 11.10, p < .01], resulting from the overall lower RT in the Label conditions -replicating the main finding from Experiment 1 that labels decrease overall search time. This specific result thus extends those of Experiment 1 by showing that the labeling effect occurs even when targets and distractors differ only in shape. The analysis also yielded a significant main effect of Discriminability [F(1, 60) = 9.86, p < .01], as participants were overall faster when the target was placed amidst distractors that were easier to discriminate from the target, and a significant main effect of distractor set size [F(2, 120 In sum, and within the limits of these measures with young children, the results of Experiment 3 support three conclusions: First, labeling the target decreases overall search time in a task in which only shape varied, a result consistent with the hypothesis that labeling the target enhances the working memory encoding and representation of category-relevant shape.