Abstract
We confirmed the proposal made by Gathercole & Baddeley (1989, 1993), in experiments using the Japanese language, in which little contribution from phoneme-level phonological sensitivity is involved in vocabulary acquisition. They claimed that the capacity for of phonological short-term memory is the foundation of vocabulary acquisition, and that phonological short-term memory can be measured by nonword repetition tasks. Bowey (1996), moreover has argued that both phonological short-term memory and phoneme-level phonological sensitivity contribute to vocabulary acquisition. Thus, we have conducted two studies using the Japanese language, which has little contribution of phoneme-level phonological sensitivity. In study 1, we experimented 92 five-year-old to examine the relationship between vocabulary acquisition and phonological short-term memory using Japanese nonword. The correlation coefficient between vocabulary acquisition and Japanese nonword was r = .31. By applying the results to structural equation modeling, we confirmed Baddeley’s working memory model. In study 2, we experimented 90 five-year-old to test both Japanese nonword and English nonword as well as phonological sensitivity tasks in both Japanese and English in order to examine their correlation with vocabulary acquisition. We have found that there are significant correlations between vocabulary acquisition and Japanese nonword, as well as between vocabulary acquisition and Japanese phonological sensitivity (r = .27 with Japanese nonword, r = .30 with Japanese phonological sensitivity, whereas r = .17 with English nonword and r = .17 with English phonological sensitivity), which indicates that phoneme-level phonological sensitivity (i.e. English phonological sensitivity) has low involvement in vocabulary acquisition for Japanese children. In addition, we further discuss the relationship between vocabulary acquisition and phonological sensitivity that is unique to each specific language.
Highlights
There are many studies which have examined the relationship between vocabulary and phonological abilities of the young children who speak English
They claimed that the capacity for of phonological short-term memory is the foundation of vocabulary acquisition, and that phonological short-term memory can be measured by nonword repetition tasks
In study 1, we used Japanese nonword tasks to measure phonological short-term memory, but we have indications that these tasks may have measured Mora-unit based phonological sensitivity, which is unique to Japanese
Summary
Among these various studies, Gathercole and her colleagues have claimed that phonological short-term memory capacity is the foundation of vocabulary development and that it can be measured by nonword repetition tasks Gathercole and her colleagues have claimed that phonological short-term memory capacity is the foundation of vocabulary development and that it can be measured by nonword repetition tasks Based on the proposal by Gathercole et al and various arguments surrounding it, this study will repeat their experiments in young children who speak Japanese, a language which is thought to require little contribution of phonological sensitivity. Hereinafter, we will describe the details of previous studies, as well as the details regarding the reasons why we chose the Japanese language, and the purpose of this study
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