Brief Report The endurance of children’s working memory: A recall time analysis John N. Towse a, * , Graham J. Hitch b , Z. Hamilton c , Sarah Pirrie a a Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK b Department of Psychology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK c Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK article info Article history: Received 10 September 2007 Revised 31 March 2008 Available online 13 May 2008 Keywords: Working memory abstract We analyze the timing of recall as a source of information about children’s performance in complex working memory tasks. A group of 8-year-olds performed a traditional operation span task in which sequence length increased across trials and an operation period task in which processing requirements were extended across trials of constant sequence length. Interword pauses were longer than are commonly found in immediate serial recall tasks yet shorter than for reading span. These pauses increased with the demands of recall, decreased across the output sequence, and were to some extent predictive of scholastic ability. Overall, timing data illustrate that recall in working memory tasks involves subtle processes of item access rather than simple readout of information from an immediate store. Ó 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction Working memory refers to the limited capacity systems and processes responsible for both acting on and retaining transient representations (Baddeley, 1986; Baddeley & Hitch, 2000). The concept has been used for a particular architectural model of largely domain-specific memory devices (Halliday & Hitch, 1988; Hitch & Halliday, 1983) and for a more general framework describing active maintenance phenomena occurring alongside other cognitive activities (Conway, Jarrold, Kane, Miyake, & Towse, 2007). Here we focus on the general concept of working memory rather than on any specific model. 0022-0965/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2008.03.009 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: j.towse@lancs.ac.uk (J.N. Towse). Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 101 (2008) 156–163 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Child Psychology