scholarly journals The structure of preliteracy competence in children aged five to seven years

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Ivanka Bider Petelin ◽  
Martina Ozbič
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Early Literacy ◽  
Verbal Memory ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Oblimin Rotation

Children´s early literacy development is a key contributor to later literacy skills and overall academic achievement. We have developed a set of tests that assesses preliteracy competence based on well-established foreign and Slovenian instruments or tools. A sample of 307 children aged from five to seven years were tested. A high Cronbach alpha coefficient (alpha = 0.87) indicates that the design instrument is an internally reliable instrument. This paper showcases and describes the differences in the development of preliteracy competence in different age group. The results show that children between 5 and 7 show the greatest development of the abilities to discern the initial sound, to analyse the sound, to notice the removal of sounds or syllables from a meaningless word, and to recall words on a given phoneme. Exploratory factor analysis with oblimin rotation revealed that preliteracy competence is best understood as a four-dimensional construct among children aged five to seven years. The first dimension is defined by higher-level phonological awareness, verbal memory, and rapid automatic naming, so it is metaphonology. The second factor, named perceptual language structure, expresses macro-linguistic structure (syllable, rhymes) and discrimination of words that sound similar. The third factor, named vocabulary, is saturated mostly by syllable analysis, vocabulary and word comprehension. The fourth factor is visual processing and capturing, which enable storage and refreshing of non-verbal information and the discrimination of symbols. The differences in development of preliteracy competency indicate intervention in the following areas: phonological awareness, verbal short-term memory, visual processing (discrimination and short-term memory) and vocabulary knowledge.

scholarly journals A-65 Verbal Abilities May Influence Performance in Assessment of Verbal Short-Term Memory Tasks

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 925-925
Author(s):  
A Guerra ◽  
J Moses ◽  
J Rivera ◽  
M Davis ◽  
K Hakinson
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Memory ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Word Association ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Factor Solution ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Verbal Abilities ◽  
Three Factor

Abstract Objective Examine whether verbal abilities may help explain the learning strategies people employ when completing a short-term verbal memory task. Methods The assessment records of 296 American Veterans with diverse neuropsychiatric conditions were analyzed using Exploratory Factor Analyses. There were no exclusion criteria. All participants completed the Benton Serial Digit Learning Test – 9 Digits (SDL-9) and Visual Naming (VisNam), Sentence Repetition (SenRep), Controlled Word Association (COWA), and Token Tests of the Multilingual Aphasia Examination (MAE). Individual assessment instruments were factored using Principal Component Analyses (PCA). A three-factor solution of the SDL-9 was co-factored with the verbal components of the MAE to identify common sources of variance. Results A three-factor solution of the SDL-9 separated trials into three overlapping factors consisting of early (SDL-9_Early), middle (SDL-9_Middle), and late (SDL-9_Late) trials. Co-factoring the three new scales with the verbal components of the MAE produced a four-factor model explaining 67.85% of the shared variance: 1) SenRep loaded with SDL-9_Early, 2) COWAT loaded with SDL-9_Middle and SDL-9_Late, 3) Token loaded with SDL-9_Late, and 4) Vis Nam loaded with SDL-9_Late. Conclusions The results suggest that individuals may engage verbal abilities differently as they progress from simpler to more difficult verbal short-term memory tasks. It appears performance in early trials is mostly associated with rote repetition and performance on middle trials is mostly associated with verbal fluency, while performance on the late trials is associated with a combination of verbal fluency, auditory comprehension, and conceptual organization/naming. This may therefore indicate a shift in learning strategy to meet increased cognitive demands.

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

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 1334-1346 ◽  
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.

Phonological Awareness and Verbal Short-Term Memory

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (10) ◽  
pp. 592-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia A. Mann ◽  
Isabelle Y. Liberman
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Awareness ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory

Capacity limitations in short-term memory in schizophrenia: tests of competing hypotheses

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 665-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. E. GOLDBERG ◽  
K. J. PATTERSON ◽  
Y. TAQQU ◽  
K. WILDER
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Memory ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Digit Span ◽  
Span Task ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Interference Task ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Capacity Limitation ◽  
Set Size ◽  
Normal Controls

Background. Capacity limitation theories have proved to be surprisingly resilient in characterizing some of the cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. However, this perspective has not generally been applied to short-term verbal memory tasks. We explored this issue by first attempting to ascertain if gross misallocations of processing resources might explain impairments in short-term memory in schizophrenia on a classic digit span task and in a second study by attempting to determine what effects delay and memory set size had on a divided attention short-term verbal memory paradigm.Methods. In the first study 16 patients with schizophrenia and 21 normal controls received 40 trials of a three digit task and 20 trials of a six digit span task. As the absolute number of digits presented and duration of presentation in two conditions were identical, subjects thus had equivalent ‘opportunities’ to make errors if distraction, in the sense of misallocation of cognitive resources, were at the root of poor performance. In the second study 15 patients with schizophrenia and 15 normal controls were tested in conditions in which two, four or six words were presented and in which rehearsal was prevented by an interference task (colour naming) for delays of 5, 10 or 15 s.Results. Patients had disproportionate difficulty on the six digit rather than the three digit condition, suggesting that deficits in the verbal working memory short-term store may not be the result of attentional factors. In the second study, patients' performance was differentially worsened by the interference task, by memory set size (i.e. a capacity limitation) and by delay, a measure of decay rate.Conclusions. In concert, these studies demonstrate that schizophrenia patients have difficulties on verbal short-term memory span tasks not because of misallocation of resources, but rather because of limitations in ‘representational capacity’ and maintenance of information over delays.

scholarly journals The strength of attentional biases reduces as visual short-term memory load increases

2013 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Shimi ◽  
D. E. Astle
Keyword(s):  
Visual Processing ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Perceptual Similarity ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Visual Short Term Memory

Despite our visual system receiving irrelevant input that competes with task-relevant signals, we are able to pursue our perceptual goals. Attention enhances our visual processing by biasing the processing of the input that is relevant to the task at hand. The top-down signals enabling these biases are therefore important for regulating lower level sensory mechanisms. In three experiments, we examined whether we apply similar biases to successfully maintain information in visual short-term memory (VSTM). We presented participants with targets alongside distracters and we graded their perceptual similarity to vary the extent to which they competed. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the more items held in VSTM before the onset of the distracters, the more perceptually distinct the distracters needed to be for participants to retain the target accurately. Experiment 3 extended these behavioral findings by demonstrating that the perceptual similarity between target and distracters exerted a significantly greater effect on occipital alpha amplitudes, depending on the number of items already held in VSTM. The trade-off between VSTM load and target-distracter competition suggests that VSTM and perceptual competition share a partially overlapping mechanism, namely top-down inputs into sensory areas.

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