Developmental associations between verbal and visual short-term memory and the acquisition of decoding skill

Abstract

This study longitudinally investigated the relationships between verbaland visual short-term memory (STM) and the acquisition of decoding from thepre-reading through the early acquisition stages in 63 Hebrew-speakingchildren Test waves occurred in kindergarten, first grade and second grade.IQ, visual and verbal STM and decoding ability were assessed. The dataindicated that while both verbal and visual STM in kindergarten were significantlycorrelated to later decoding skill, pre-reading visual STM was a stronger predictor.The results further showed that pre-reading performance on the WISC-R BlockDesign test predicted later decoding ability, while performance on theWISC-R Vocabulary test did not. Lastly decoding skill in grade 1 was foundto predict only visual in grade 2. These results indicate that visualparameters may make a crucial contribution to the acquisition of decodingskills. The size of pre-reading visual STM capacity appears to play a rolein this process. The relationship between visual STM and decoding may bebidirectional, as learning to decode appears to develop visual STM. It issuggested that either language-related or task-related factors may accountfor these counter-to-mainstream results.