Verbal working memory and planning: learning to compare movement durations of objects.

Relations between duration judgments and verbal or visual working memory, between duration judgments and effect of learning to plan the processing of information about such judgments were investigated. A computer monitor was used to present images of two cars traveling in the same direction for various durations and distances. Participants (N=30) were asked to identify the car that had traveled for the longer duration. Then, participants learned how to solve Piagetian tasks logically. After the learning, they tried to solve the duration judgments task again. Finally, their verbal and visual working memory capacities were assessed. Results indicated the following: (a) numbers of correct answers on the Piagetian tasks were correlated with verbal and visual working memory capacity; (b) the correlations did not significantly decrease after the participants learned how to solve the Piagetian tasks.