The complexities of complex memory span: Storage and processing deficits in specific language impairment

Abstract

This study investigated the verbal and visuospatial processing and storage skills of children with SLI and typically developing children. Fourteen school-age children with SLI, and two groups of typically developing children matched either for age or language abilities, completed measures of processing speed and storage capacity, and a set of complex memory tasks that systematically combined verbal and visuospatial processing and storage. The SLI group was slower at processing verbal and visuospatial information, and was impaired in the ability to remember verbal material, compared with same-age peers. Recall accuracy was reduced in the SLI group on the complex memory tasks that combined verbal storage with either verbal or visuospatial processing, to a greater extent than the younger language control group. This deficit could not be accounted for by impairments in verbal storage alone. These results indicate that deficits in verbal storage, possibly twinned with slower processing, underlie the substantial SLI impairments on complex memory activities.