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Sentence memory of individuals with Down's syndrome and typically developing children
Author(s) -
Seung H.K.,
Chapman R.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of intellectual disability research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1365-2788
pISSN - 0964-2633
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2788.2004.00526.x
Subject(s) - memory span , psychology , sentence , mean length of utterance , audiology , recall , short term memory , syllable , utterance , developmental psychology , working memory , cognition , language development , linguistics , cognitive psychology , medicine , philosophy , neuroscience
Background 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. Method 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. Results 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. Conclusions 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.