Short-term Memory In Children Research Articles

Do two separate speech measures constrain verbal short-term memory in children?

Previous research has indicated that 2 processing rates may constrain verbal short-term memory performance. These have been linked to individual differences in (a) the time taken to articulate spoken words and (b) the duration of pauses that occur between words in the output responses to memory tasks. Two experiments examined whether evidence for these effects on memory can be obtained for measures taken from a single speech sample. Children articulated pairs of words as rapidly as possible. In both experiments, the spoken duration of words and the length of the pauses between them predicted significant variance in verbal short-term memory performance. It is argued that the duration of words is linked to memory performance through the processes underlying time-based forgetting in short-term memory. In contrast, the duration of pauses in speeded articulation may index individual differences in speech planning processes.

Do two separate speech measures contrain verbal short-term memory in children?

Do two separate speech measures contrain verbal short-term memory in children?

Language-specific knowledge and short-term memory in bilingual and non-bilingual children.

The sensitivity of children's phonological short-term memory performance to language-specific knowledge was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, monolingual English children, English-French bilingual children, and English children who were learning French as a second language were compared on measures of phonological short-term memory and vocabulary in the two languages. The children's short-term memory performance in each language mirrored their familiarity with English and French, with greater vocabulary knowledge being associated with higher levels of recall of both words and nonwords in that language. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, in which two groups of children with good knowledge of English and French were examined: native bilingual children who had comparable knowledge of the two languages and non-native bilingual children who had a greater knowledge of their native than second language. The findings indicate that phonological short-term memory is not a language-independent system but, rather, functions in a highly language-specific way.

Verbal and visuospatial short-term memory in children: evidence for common and distinct mechanisms.

This study was designed to identify whether verbal and visuospatial short-term memory performance in children is served by common or distinct mechanisms. Five- and 8-year-old children were tested on their verbal recall of spoken letter names and digits, and on their recall of tapped sequences of blocks. The performance of the children on the verbal and visuospatial serial recall tasks was largely unrelated, extending evidence for dissociable memory systems found in adults. Detailed characteristics of recall, such as serial position functions, migration patterns, and distribution of error types, were similar in the tasks requiring recall of letters and of blocks, although order errors predominated in the block but not the letter recall task for the older children. These results appear to reflect the application of common processes specialized for the extraction of serial order information from the phonological and visuospatial components of short-term memory.

Short-term memory in children with Williams syndrome: A reduced contribution of lexical-semantic knowledge to word span

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic syndrome of abnormal neurodevelopment, characterised by a specific linguistic pattern. Comparing performances of WS subjects with those of normal children in a word span task, we found that WS subjects revealed normal phonological similarity and length effects but a reduced frequency effect. Our results suggest comparable phonological encoding mechanisms in WS and normal controls and, at the same time, it provides evidence for an impaired access to lexical-semantic knowledge in WS subjects. This dissociation fits well with the particular pattern of linguistic abilities of these subjects.

The Development of Short-term Visual Memory in Young Children

A probed memory task was used to investigate children's short-term visual memory for an object's spatial location or colour. In Experiment 1, 5-yearolds recognised the location of one of three coloured shapes that had appeared in a random spatio-temporal order. Two aspects of the children's performance confirmed their reliance on visual memory. First, performance was impaired when the shapes were visually similar. Secondly, the serial position curve was characteristic of visual memory, with a final-item recency effect and no primacy effect. Experiment 2 assessed 5and 7-year-old children's memory for a shape's colour or its spatial location. Although there was developmental improvement in memory for spatial location, that was confined to pre-recency items, there was no effect of age with regard to the recall of colour. The results go against Hasher and Zacks' (1979) proposal that, in contrast to colour, spatial location would not show developmental improvement because it is remembered automatically. The concept of an object file, that was devised specifically to explain how different visual features of an object are represented (Kahneman & Treisman, 1984), is considered as a potential explanation of both the serial position curve and the distinctive behaviour of different visual features. It is suggested that although 5-year-olds are as adept as 7-year-olds at creating and immediately accessing an object file, they are less able to access information about the visual features of objects whose files are no longer current.

Are children with Down syndrome able to maintain skills learned from a short-term memory training program?

The ability of children with Down syndrome to maintain a set of trained short-term memory skills was assessed by follow up of a group who had previously undergone training in using rehearsal and organisation based memory strategies. That first study (Broadley and MacDonald, 1993) found that training in rehearsal and organisation skills led to an improvement in short-term memory ability in children with Down syndrome. That study also found that the effects applied across a wide age range; that the training could be conducted effectively by different people and that the type of training (rehearsal or organisation) acts independently, affecting only the targeted memory measures. The study reported here assesses the trained children's short-term memory abilities, 2 months and 8 months after the training had ended. Comparison with their own baseline performance and with a group of untrained children allowed assessment of the long and short term gains in memory performance. It was found that the trained children maintained the level of performance attained at the end of the training study. Training by keyworkers showed advantages for maintenance of some of the gains.

Verbal Short-Term Memory Span in Speech-Disordered Children: Implications for Articulatory Coding in Short-Term Memory

One influential explanation of the development of verbal short-term memory in children argues that short-term memory capacity is a direct function of speech rate. This theory predicts that children with pathologically slow speech will show reduced verbal short-term memory capacity and will show less evidence of speech-base coding on verbal memory tasks. To test this prediction, verbal short-term memory span was assessed using a task that did not require a verbal response in 37 speech-disordered children and 37 age- and sex-matched controls (age range 4-15 years). The speech-disordered group had a significantly lower short-term memory capacity, a smaller word length effect, and reduced speech-motor activity during rehearsal periods. Covariance analyses revealed that these differences were not a function of general intellectual or motor speed differences between the groups, and that speech rate as a covariate abolished group differences in short-term memory. These results suggest that speech rate may be a causal determinant of verbal short-term memory capacity.

The Effects of Word Length and Phonemic Similarity in Young Children's Short-term Memory

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that word length and phonemic similarity effects in young children's recall with auditory presentation result from verbal output, and not: (1) rehearsal in the case of word length effects; (2) confusion at input in the case of phonemic similarity effects. In an auditorily presented probed recall task, where there were no full verbal output requirements, children aged five years did not show either effect. Children aged seven years showed both word length and phonemic similarity effects. It was concluded that, in children of age five, word length effects can not necessarily be taken as evidence for rehearsal, nor can the phonemic similarity effect be assumed to result from confusion at input. It is suggested that the process of saying a list verbally may cause both of these effects, and that care must be taken to distinguish input and output processes in the development of children's short-term memory.

Verbal short-term memory in children: The role of the articulator loop

Abstract Three experiments investigated immediate memory for drawings of familiar objects in children of different ages. The aim was to investigate the effect of articulatory suppression on word length and phonemic similarity effects. Experiment 1 showed that, with pictorial presentation, 11-year-old children showed word length effects in memory span which were abolished by suppression, whereas 5-year-olds did not. Experiment 2 provided similar results in relation to the phonemic similarity effect. Experiment 3 showed that the absence of word length and phonemic similarity effects in the younger children was not due to a floor effect, because similar results were obtained in the serial recall of lists of fixed length. In all three experiments the processing demands of the suppression task were controlled for by comparing it with a simple motor task involving tapping. In the younger children, suppression and tapping had the same effect; in the older children, tapping reduced performance but did not abolish...

The Isolation Effect in Children's Short Term Memory

Summary Two short-term memory probe experiments involving the isolation effect (IE) were each done with two groups of children (5–6 and 9–11 years). Strong evidence was found for the IE. In simultaneously presented lists there was evidence for an overall list facilitation due to isolation, and younger children actually performed better on the isolate. The IE in children was described as a short-term perceptual process which is more active in younger than in older children.

Limitations on children's short-term memory for left-right orientation

The time course of kindergarten children's memory for left-right orientation during the first 2 1 2 sec after receptor stimulation was investigated by means of a successive matching-to-sample task with tachistoscopically presented abstract figures. The first study indicated that young children have difficulty encoding left-right orientation into short-term memory and treat left-right orientation as low-priority information that is likely to be lost when there is an information overload. A second study indicated that kindergarten children who are able to encode left-right orientation do so more slowly than adults. An unexpected finding occurring in both studies was that the presentation of the comparison figures appeared to terminate initial processing of the standard figure. It is argued that this effect was due to cognitively based visual masking.

Position Saliency and Limited Capacity in Children's Short Term Memory for Graphic Patterns

A short term recognition memory task which varied the number of letters distinguishing target and comparison stimuli was used to assess the ability of prereaders and beginning readers to utilize graphic information in a three letter graphic pattern. In Experiment 1 the Exposure Time of the target stimulus and the Retention Interval were varied. Results indicated that children were not able to process the graphic pattern as a single unit. Children based their same-different judgments on only limited graphic information and displayed clear saliency effects of the initial letter position. In fact, stimuli distinguished by an initial letter difference were more discriminable than those which differed in both middle and final letter positions. An Exposure Time × Position interaction supports the interpretation that position saliency is in part the result of serial encoding. Contrary to some explanations of position saliency, both readers and non-readers demonstrated the effect. In Experiment 2, beginning kindergarten children failed to demonstrate an effect of position. These studies indicate that early reading or prereading activities result in serial encoding strategies.

The Effects of Incentives on Rehearsal and Short-Term Memory in Children with Reading Problems

Researchers and practitioners are focusing increased attention on the apparent lack of intrinsic involvement and motivation exhibited by disabled learners. This study seems to support the idea that one of the causes of failure in disabled learners is their lack of motivation to perform at their best. Specifically, this study investigated the effects of incentives for good performance on the selection and use of an efficient task strategy by children who were experiencing difficulty learning to read. Both good and poor readers in the incentive group increased their recall and rehearsal between sessions, while the performance of the control group remained stable. Incentives led not only to an increase in the amount of rehearsal shown by poor readers, but also to an increase in the number of children reporting that they used the strategy.

Absolute judgment of recency: A reexamination of children's short-term memory data.

Absolute judgment of recency: A reexamination of children's short-term memory data.

Absolute judgment of recency: A reexamination of children's short-term memory data.

Absolute judgment of recency: A reexamination of children's short-term memory data.

Transfer of Cumulative-Rehearsal Strategies in Children's Short-Term Memory

GRUENENFELDER, THOMAS M., and BORKOWSKI, JOHN G. Transfer of Cumulative-Rehearsal Strategies in Children's Short-Term Memory. CHLD DEVELOPMENT, 1975, 46, 1019-1024. The effects of cumulative-rehearsal instructions and degree of overlearning on the acquisition and transfer of rehearsal strategies were investigated in first-grade children. Half of 60 children were given cumulative-rehearsal instructions; the other half were given no rehearsal instructions. Each child then received 1 of 3 levels of practice in learning a 9-item serial list. 1 week later a new serial list was presented with no additional instructions. Although the strategy was effective in facilitating learning for all cumulative-rehearsal grotips, only 65% of the instructed children showed pronounced long-term strategy transfer. Overlearning had no facilitating effect on transfer.

Transfer of Cumulative-Rehearsal Strategies in Children's Short-Term Memory

Transfer of Cumulative-Rehearsal Strategies in Children's Short-Term Memory

Distinctive feature codes in the short-term memory of children

The present studies investigated the use of distinctive feature codes in shortterm memory tasks by young, school-aged children. Each child was presented with 30 lists of consonant-vowel (CV) syllables for recall. In each list, the initial consonants were different, being drawn from the set of six English stop consonants. The data of interest were the errors in recall, which were not random as would be the case had the encoding unit been the entire consonantal phone. Rather the errors had distinctive features in common with the presented sound. Thus, children encode the consonantal phones into sets of unique features which are recalled independently at times.

The effects of retention interval on preschool children's short-term memory of verbal items

The short-term recall of word-triads was tested, comparing retention over three types of intervals within 24 preschoolers. Retention was significantly lower in the 16 sec unfilled interval condition than in the immediate test condition. This result, predicted from preschoolers' rehearsal deficiency, differs from those obtained in previous adult and child studies. A filled interval condition, requiring irrelevant verbal activity during the 16 sec period, significantly reduced recall from that of the unfilled interval condition. Recognition of the word items on a subsequent recognition test was greater than chance and was not affected by interval condition. This suggests that the condition effects in short-term recall did not disrupt the long-term storage of the items.