The Use of Rhyme and Orthography in a Cued Recall Task: A Comparison of Different Age and Ability Groups

Abstract

A cued recall task was used to determine whether three groups of age-matched children at different reading levels and two groups of skilled, adult readers would show differences in their use of the phonological and orthographic code in memory. Poor readers were significantly slower in a rhyme judgement task, made more errors in detecting rhyme and recalled fewer target cue pairs. These findings support the view that poor readers have less easy access to a phonological code in memory and poorer overall memory, However, no differences were found between any of the groups in their pattern of recall across particular target-cue pairs. Poor readers were not found to make increased use of the orthographic code.