ERIC Number: EJ686294
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004-Feb
Pages: 12
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0964-2633
EISSN: N/A
Sentence Memory of Individuals with Down's Syndrome and Typically Developing Children
Seung, H.-K.; Chapman, R.
Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, v48 n2 p160-171 Feb 2004
Individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) have an auditory short-term memory span disproportionately shorter than the non-verbal mental age (MA). This study evaluated the Baddeley model's claim that verbal short-term memory deficits might arise from slower speaking rates (and thus less material rehearsed in a 2 s passive store) by using the sentence memory subtest of the Stanford-Binet. Previous work had shown digit span recall speaking rate to be comparable to the examiner's slow rate (one syllable per second) for both DS and language-matched participants. Thirty individuals with DS were compared to two control groups non-verbal MA-matched and mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched] on the sentence span and speaking rate for the longest verbatim recalled sentence. Sentence stimuli were presented at a normal speaking rate. The DS group had shorter sentence memory span than the MA-matched group and a faster, rather than slower, speaking rate (syllables per second) than the MLU-matched controls. Language production level accounted for a substantial portion of the variance in the sentence memory span in the DS group. Thus, language production skill, rather than speaking rate, predicts variability in verbal memory span.
Descriptors: Speech Skills, Sentences, Mental Age, Down Syndrome, Short Term Memory, Language Skills, Verbal Ability, Language Processing, Children
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A