PURPOSE: to evaluate the working memory analyzing the retention ability of auditory stimuli (verbal span) and visual stimuli (visual span), and to establish its relation to gender (male and female). METHOD: 20 subjects - 10 female children and 10 male children - from six and five months to seven years old took part in this study. All subjects were submitted to evaluation tests for both verbal and visual spans in direct and inverse orders. RESULTS: there was a significant variance between genders only in the test involving disyllabic words with phonology similar to and semantics different from verbal span. Female children showed a better performance in relation to the other gender, as well as a better retention ability as for two-syllable words with different phonology and semantics. In the tests for visual span (direct and inverse orders) the male children showed a better performance, but the differences were not significant. In relation to age, there was no any difference in the retention of stimuli. CONCLUSION: in this study, female children showed a trend to achieve a better performance in the verbal span, and the male children showed a trend to achieve a better performance in the visual span. However, this study is limited, due to the reduced number of subjects in the sample.
Memory, Short-Term; Employee Performance Appraisal; Executive Function
