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The digit span test has long been used in the study and evaluation of memory processes in children. The study of memory processes in bilingual children has received only limited attention. The purpose of the present study was to examine the influences of bilingual interference, English proficiency, and item familiarity on a task of short-term memory. One-hundred nineteen third grade subjects were assigned to one of four groups based on their language background and ethnicity. Subjects were administered the Digit Span subtest from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised in English as well as a test of general ability, the Coloured Progressive Matrices, and a reaction time measure, item identification. The data were analyzed using ANOVA and multiple regression procedures. Results showed that Mexican-American bilingual subjects who were proficient in English performed comparably to monolingual Mexican-American subjects. These results were discussed in terms of their support for the dual storage and independence positions of bilingual memory. Results of the data analysis also revealed a small but significant direct causal link between English proficiency level and digit span. This finding was discussed in terms of its support for the use of digit span measures with bilingual Mexican-American children providing the students have been determined to be proficient in English on a standardized measure. A final finding of the present study concerned the absence of a role for item familiarity as an intervening variable between English proficiency level and digit span. Results showed a direct association between English proficiency level and reaction time, but no significant association between reaction time and digit span. Implications of the current findings were discussed in relation to relevant theory and prior research findings.

This study investigated the development of acquisition and long term retention processes in Learning Disabled (LD) and Non-Learning Disabled children aged 7-12. One hundred six subjects were randomly assigned to memorize either a list of unrelated words (with free recall), or a list of taxonomically related words (with recall cued by category). Each subject had a 16 word list presented in visual and auditory modes. The repeated recall paradigm alternated study and test trials, with a buffer activity between trials. The acquisition phase ended when the subject reached 100% criterion. After an interval of two weeks, each subject was given 5 additional recall tests. Acquisition results indicated significant main effects for age, group (LD, Non-LD) and list type (unrelated, categorized) on measures of trial-of-last-error and total-errors. Overall, the groups which acquired the lists most quickly were the older and Non-LD subjects, with the categorized list. There was a List x Group interaction on the trial-of-last-error. With the categorized list, only age was significant, and conversely, with the unrelated list, only group was significant. On the retention measures, there were main effects for list and group, with a List x Group interaction. The only significant age effect was with total-words on the categorized list. Over the five trials (repeated measures), there was a significant effect for trials. A consistent hypermnesia effect (increase in net recall) was predominant. Further model-based analyses (Brainerd, Kingma, Howe, & Reyna, 1988) revealed storage failure, rather than retrieval failure to be the major action in children's forgetting. Learning Disabled children had significantly more storage failure than the Non-LD children. Both groups had more storage failure on the unrelated lists. There was retrieval relearning with all groups. Results are discussed within the framework of the disintegration/redintegration theory, which pertains to the gradual weakening and redintegration of bonds that unite features to form a trace.

It is well known that crystallized measures of intelligence are highly susceptible to educational, resource, language and socio-economic influences, and that the implications of using these kinds of measures are manifold affecting school and university entrance as well as employment opportunities. In South Africa, wherein tests are regarded with suspicion as a consequence of test misuse during the Apartheid era, there is an urgent need for the development of measures which are resilient to these influences. In answer to this, working memory measures have been identified as possible measures which minimize these biases. Consequently the following study investigated whether working memory tests were less susceptible to socioeconomic influences than the more traditional, crystallized measures of vocabulary and non-verbal IQ in a volunteer sample of 60 grade one learners from schools identified as high and low in socioeconomic status. The results demonstrated that working memory measures were consistently less affected by socio-economic status as compared to the traditional vocabulary and non-verbal IQ measures. However, socioeconomic status and language were found to be so closely correlated that it is not clear whether test performance in the vocabulary measures, was related one or both of these variables. In light of the fact that this study was correlational in nature, it is recommended that future studies focus on limiting the impact of extraneous variables to better understand the impact of socioeconomic status on test performance. Furthermore future studies should test children in their home language to avoid language contamination effects.

Although there is agreement in the literature that memory is required for language, there is disagreement as to whether certain memory abilities are prerequisite for language. There has been a significant amount of research in the field of memory development as it relates to language; however, little research has been done in the area of memory and language development in the preschool aged child. This study examined two aspects of auditory memory and language development in the preschool child: (a) the auditory memory abilities of delayed language children versus normal language children, and (b) determining if there is a relationship between auditory memory and language development. The subjects used in this study included 14 ''normal talkers" and 14 children with "slow expressive language development'' (SELD), as determined by the Language Development Survey (Rescorla, 1989) given when the subjects were between 24-34 months of age. When the subjects were 3 years-old they were given the verbal and digit imitation section of the Preschool Language Scale (PLS) as a measure of auditory short-term memory. The results were compared with the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language-Revised (TACL-R), the Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) and the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test (NSST-E) all given at age three. A further comparison was made with the PLS and the Test of Language Development-Primary (TOLD-P) and the DSSJ given at age 4. The Spearman rank correlational statistic was used to determine if a significant relationship existed between memory and language development as seen on the PLS (age 3) and the other language measures given at ages 3 and 4. This study showed that SELD children performed more poorly on verbal and digit memory tasks than their normally speaking peers. Correlational analysis revealed that the PLS-Digit and the PLS-Sentence memory recall tasks were significantly correlated with the DSS given at the same point in time for the normal group, and between the PLS-Sentence and the NSST-E given at the same time for the SELD group. This suggests that a relationship exists between memory and expressive language at the same point in development. Because the relationship exists at the same time, and not across-ages, these findings seem to support the theory that language and memory are related in development, but memory skills at one time do not predict language skills at another. As language and memory seem to be related at the same point in time, testing auditory short-term memory skills in children with language delays will not add new information above what is learned in language testing itself. Further research in this area might investigate whether, as some literature suggests (Kail, 1990), teaching memory strategies to young children with language delays may improve language learning.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-65).

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Victoria University of Wellington, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.