Probed Serial Recall in Williams Syndrome

Williams syndrome is a genetic disorder that, it has been claimed, results in an unusual pattern of linguistic strengths and weaknesses. The current study investigated the hypothesis that there is a reduced influence of lexical knowledge on phonological short-term memory in Williams syndrome. Fourteen children with Williams syndrome and 2 vocabulary-matched control groups, 20 typically developing children and 13 children with learning difficulties, were tested on 2 probed serial-recall tasks. On the basis of previous findings, it was predicted that children with Williams syndrome would demonstrate (a) a reduced effect of lexicality on the recall of list items, (b) relatively poorer recall of list items compared with recall of serial order, and (c) a reduced tendency to produce lexicalization errors in the recall of nonwords. In fact, none of these predictions were supported. Alternative explanations for previous findings and implications for accounts of language development in Williams syndrome are discussed.

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Language Influences on Verbal Short-Term Memory Performance in Down Syndrome

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/1092-4388(2004/100) ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 47 (6) ◽

pp. 1334-1346 ◽

Cited By ~ 35

Author(s):

Jon Brock ◽

Christopher Jarrold

Keyword(s):

Down Syndrome ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Memory Task ◽

Vocabulary Knowledge ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

Short Term ◽

Language Abilities ◽

Term Memory

Down syndrome is associated with severe deficits in language and verbal short-term memory, but the causal relationship between these deficits is unclear. The current study therefore investigated the influence of language abilities on verbal short-term memory performance in Down syndrome. Twenty-one individuals with Down syndrome and 29 younger typically developing children were tested on memory for words and nonwords using 2 immediate recognition tasks: an order memory task that was a relatively pure measure of verbal short-term memory and an item memory task that was more sensitive to language ability. Despite having superior vocabulary knowledge to the typically developing children, individuals with Down syndrome were impaired on both order and item tasks. This impairment was particularly marked on the item task, where individuals with Down syndrome showed an atypically large lexicality effect. These results are interpreted in terms of an underlying verbal short-term memory deficit in Down syndrome that is compounded by poor phonological discrimination abilities.

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Nonword repetition and serial recall: Equivalent measures of verbal short-term memory?

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716407070324 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 28 (4) ◽

pp. 587-606 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

LISA M. D. ARCHIBALD ◽

SUSAN E. GATHERCOLE

Keyword(s):

Serial Recall ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Nonword Repetition ◽

School Age Children ◽

Sequence Length ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Prosodic Cues ◽

Memory Support

Evidence that the abilities to repeat nonwords and to learn language are very closely related to one another has led to widespread interest in the cognitive processes underlying nonword repetition. One suggestion is that nonword repetition is a relatively pure measure of phonological short-term memory closely associated with other measures of short-term memory such as serial recall. The present study compared serial recall of lists of monosyllabic nonwords and repetition of matched phonological forms presented as a multisyllabic nonword in typically developing school-age children. Results revealed that whereas both serial recall and nonword repetition responses showed classic short-term memory characteristics such as a serial position curve and decreasing accuracy with increasing sequence length, nonword repetition was associated with more accurate repetition overall and errors that were more closely matched to the target. Consonants benefited from nonword repetition to a greater extent than vowels. These findings indicate that factors in addition to short-term memory support retention in nonword repetition. It is suggested that coarticulatory and prosodic cues may play important roles in the recall of multisyllabic phonological forms.

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Children With Williams Syndrome: Language, Cognitive, and Behavioral Characteristics and Their Implications for Intervention

Perspectives on Language Learning and Education ◽

10.1044/lle18.3.98 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 98-107 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Carolyn B. Mervis ◽

Shelley L. Velleman

Keyword(s):

Williams Syndrome ◽

Phonological Processing ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Genetic Disorder ◽

Failure To Thrive ◽

Language Intervention ◽

Behavioral Characteristics ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Conceptual Language

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder characterized by heart disease, failure to thrive, hearing loss, intellectual or learning disability, speech and language delay, gregariousness, and nonsocial anxiety. The WS psycholinguistic profile is complex, including relative strengths in concrete vocabulary, phonological processing, and verbal short-term memory; and relative weaknesses in relational/conceptual language, reading comprehension, and pragmatics. Many children evidence difficulties with finiteness marking and complex grammatical constructions. Speech-language intervention, support, and advocacy are crucial.

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Short-Term Memory Performance in 7- and 8-Year-Old Children: The Relationship Between Phonological and Pitch Processing

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2016_jslhr-h-14-0317 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 59 (5) ◽

pp. 1208-1217

Author(s):

Ashley Gaal Flagge ◽

Julie M. Estis ◽

Robert E. Moore

Keyword(s):

Short Term Memory ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Nonword Repetition ◽

Pitch Discrimination ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Task Differences ◽

The Relationship

PurposeThe relationship between short-term memory for phonology and pitch was explored by examining accuracy scores for typically developing children for 5 experimental tasks: immediate nonword repetition (NWR), nonword repetition with an 8-s silent interference (NWRS), pitch discrimination (PD), pitch discrimination with an 8-s silent interference (PDS), and pitch matching (PM).MethodThirty-six 7- and 8-year-old children (21 girls, 15 boys) with normal hearing, language, and cognition were asked to listen to and repeat nonsense words (NWR, NWRS), make a same versus different decision between 2 tones (PD, PDS), and listen to and then vocally reproduce a tone (PM).ResultsResults showed no significant correlations between tasks of phonological memory and tests of pitch memory, that participants scored significantly better on nonword repetition tasks than PD and PM tasks, and that participants performed significantly better on tasks with no silent interference.DiscussionThese findings suggest that, for typically developing children, pitch may be stored and rehearsed in a separate location than phonological information. Because of fundamental task differences, further research is needed to corroborate these data and determine the presence of developmental effects and neuroanatomical locations where a potential language/music overlap is occurring in children.

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Abnormalities in Pattern of Lateralization in Relation to Visuospatial Short Term Memory in Children with Williams Syndrome

Child Development Research ◽

10.1155/2014/491458 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 2014 ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Antonios Chasouris ◽

Peter Mayer ◽

Ian Stuart-Hamilton ◽

Martin Graff ◽

Lance Workman

Keyword(s):

Williams Syndrome ◽

Search Task ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Visual Search Task ◽

Genetic Disorder ◽

Dorsal Stream ◽

Memory Test ◽

Visuospatial Memory ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder characterised by significant intellectual disability. Initial studies indicate that children with WS have a profound bias for information in the top left of visual arrays. Study 1, using a visuospatial memory test for items presented in a 3×3 matrix, found a significant top left bias in WS children relative to controls. Study 2 used a probe-based memory test with arrays in which items appeared with equal probability in each position. Relative to controls, WS children showed a significant top and left bias. In Study 3, the same children engaged in a visual search task and again, a top and left bias was found in the WS group. It is concluded that children with WS display atypical laterality, which might be explained by abnormal saccadic movements, by abnormalities involving development of the dorsal stream or by uneven cortical development.

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Working, Declarative, and Procedural Memory in Children With Developmental Language Disorder

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00135 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 63 (12) ◽

pp. 4162-4178

Author(s):

Emily Jackson ◽

Suze Leitão ◽

Mary Claessen ◽

Mark Boyes

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Language Disorder ◽

Declarative Memory ◽

Memory Systems ◽

Procedural Memory ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Visual Spatial

Purpose Previous research into the working, declarative, and procedural memory systems in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) has yielded inconsistent results. The purpose of this research was to profile these memory systems in children with DLD and their typically developing peers. Method One hundred four 5- to 8-year-old children participated in the study. Fifty had DLD, and 54 were typically developing. Aspects of the working memory system (verbal short-term memory, verbal working memory, and visual–spatial short-term memory) were assessed using a nonword repetition test and subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children. Verbal and visual–spatial declarative memory were measured using the Children's Memory Scale, and an audiovisual serial reaction time task was used to evaluate procedural memory. Results The children with DLD demonstrated significant impairments in verbal short-term and working memory, visual–spatial short-term memory, verbal declarative memory, and procedural memory. However, verbal declarative memory and procedural memory were no longer impaired after controlling for working memory and nonverbal IQ. Declarative memory for visual–spatial information was unimpaired. Conclusions These findings indicate that children with DLD have deficits in the working memory system. While verbal declarative memory and procedural memory also appear to be impaired, these deficits could largely be accounted for by working memory skills. The results have implications for our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying language impairment in the DLD population; however, further investigation of the relationships between the memory systems is required using tasks that measure learning over long-term intervals. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13250180

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Retroactive Effects of Irrelevant Sound on Serial Recall from Short-Term Memory of Chinese Characters

Acta Psychologica Sinica ◽

10.3724/sp.j.1041.2013.00626 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 45 (6) ◽

pp. 626-635

Author(s):

Defang MU ◽

Yaowu SONG ◽

Jiangfeng GAO

Keyword(s):

Serial Recall ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Chinese Characters ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Irrelevant Sound

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Sensitivity to distributional properties of the orthography in the spelling of Italian children with dyslexia

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1177/1747021821998925 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 174702182199892

Author(s):

Chiara Valeria Marinelli ◽

Marika Iaia ◽

Cristina Burani ◽

Paola Angelelli

Keyword(s):

Low Frequency ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

Lexical Knowledge ◽

Priming Effects ◽

Lexical Priming ◽

Distributional Properties ◽

Developing Readers ◽

Priming Paradigm ◽

Italian Children

The study examines statistical learning in the spelling of Italian children with dyslexia and typically developing readers by studying their sensitivity to probabilistic cues in phoneme-grapheme mappings. In the first experiment children spelled to dictation regular words and words with unpredictable spelling that contained either a high- or a low-frequency (i.e., typical or atypical) sound-spelling mappings. Children with dyslexia were found to rely on probabilistic cues in writing stimuli with unpredictable spelling to a greater extent than typically developing children. The difficulties of children with dyslexia on words with unpredictable spelling were limited to those containing atypical mappings. In the second experiment children spelled new stimuli, that is, pseudowords, containing phonological segments with unpredictable mappings. The interaction between lexical knowledge and reliance on probabilistic cues was examined through a lexical priming paradigm in which pseudowords were primed by words containing related typical or atypical sound-to-spelling mappings. In spelling pseudowords, children with dyslexia showed sensitivity to probabilistic cues in the phoneme-to-grapheme mapping but lexical priming effects were also found, although to a smaller extent than in typically developing readers. The results suggest that children with dyslexia have a limited orthographic lexicon but are able to extract regularities from the orthographic system and rely on probabilistic cues in spelling words and pseudowords.

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Lower verbalizability of visual stimuli modulates differences in estimates of working memory capacity between children with and without developmental language disorders

Autism & Developmental Language Impairments ◽

10.1177/2396941520945519 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. 239694152094551

Author(s):

Seçkin Arslan ◽

Lucie Broc ◽

Fabien Mathy

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Memory ◽

Language Disorder ◽

Working Memory Capacity ◽

Visual Stimuli ◽

Memory Capacity ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Developmental Language Disorder ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

Short Term

Background and aims Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) often perform below their typically developing peers on verbal memory tasks. However, the picture is less clear on visual memory tasks. Research has generally shown that visual memory can be facilitated by verbal representations, but few studies have been conducted using visual materials that are not easy to verbalize. Therefore, we attempted to construct non-verbalizable stimuli to investigate the impact of working memory capacity. Method and results We manipulated verbalizability in visual span tasks and tested whether minimizing verbalizability could help reduce visual recall performance differences across children with and without developmental language disorder. Visuals that could be easily verbalized or not were selected based on a pretest with non-developmental language disorder young adults. We tested groups of children with developmental language disorder (N = 23) and their typically developing peers (N = 65) using these high and low verbalizable classes of visual stimuli. The memory span of the children with developmental language disorder varied across the different stimulus conditions, but critically, although their storage capacity for visual information was virtually unimpaired, the children with developmental language disorder still had difficulty in recalling verbalizable images with simple drawings. Also, recalling complex (galaxy) images with low verbalizability proved difficult in both groups of children. An item-based analysis on correctly recalled items showed that higher levels of verbalizability enhanced visual recall in the typically developing children to a greater extent than the children with developmental language disorder. Conclusions and clinical implication: We suggest that visual short-term memory in typically developing children might be mediated with verbal encoding to a larger extent than in children with developmental language disorder, thus leading to poorer performance on visual capacity tasks. Our findings cast doubts on the idea that short-term storage impairments are limited to the verbal domain, but they also challenge the idea that visual tasks are essentially visual. Therefore, our findings suggest to clinicians working with children experiencing developmental language difficulties that visual memory deficits may not necessarily be due to reduced non-verbal skills but may be due to the high amount of verbal cues in visual stimuli, from which they do not benefit in comparison to their peers.

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