A Naturalistic Assessment of the Organization of Children's Memories Predicts Cognitive Functioning and Reading Ability

Abstract

To explore the relationship between memory and early school performance, we used graph theory to investigate memory reports from 76 children aged 6–8 years. The reports comprised autobiographical memories of events days to years past, and memories of novel images reported immediately after encoding. We also measured intelligence quotient (IQ) and theory of mind (ToM). Reading and Mathematics were assessed before classes began (December 2013), around the time of report collection (June 2014), and at the end of the academic year (December 2014). IQ and ToM correlated positively with word diversity and word‐to‐word connectivity, and negatively with word recurrence. Connectivity correlated positively with Reading in June 2014 as well as December 2014, even after adjusting for IQ and ToM. To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating a link between the structure of children's memories and their cognitive or academic performance.

Verbal Short‐Term Memory Underlies Typical Development of “Thought Organization” Measured as Speech Connectedness

“…As a first step, it is necessary to more deeply understand the relationship between speech graph attributes and cognitive development. Two prior findings (Mota et al, ) established the grounds for the present study. First, it was found that nonverbal IQ and ToM scores could not explain the relationship between the LSC for the story narratives and reading (Mota et al, ).…”

“…For instance, FTD symptoms such as aberrant word flow are amenable to precise mathematical estimation. Nonsemantic word graphs, in which each node represents a word, and each directed edge represents the temporal order of consecutive words, have been shown to be quite informative even in the case of the limited samples of oral discourse collected in naturalistic settings, such as clinics or schools (Mota et al, , ; Mota, Copelli, & Ribeiro, ; Mota, Furtado, Maia, Copelli, & Ribeiro, ; Mota, Sigman, Cecchi, Copelli, & Ribeiro, ; Palaniyappan et al, ).…”

“…What attributes of nonsemantic word graphs increase as a child develops? These questions began to be addressed in a sample of typical children who are 6–8 years old (yo), undergoing literacy acquisition, and assessed in the school setting ( n = 76) (Mota et al, ), which revealed a complex association between speech connectedness and reading skills (Mota et al, ). In this study the children were asked to tell stories about images that they had just seen (short‐term memory reports), and also stories anchored on autobiographic memories (long‐term memory reports).…”

“…These oral narratives were audio recorded, transcribed, and represented as nonsemantic word graphs. The LSC from short‐term memory reports was correlated with the intelligence quotient (IQ) and with “theory of mind” (ToM) measures, and was predictive of the national reading exam performance 5 months later (Mota et al, ). The larger the LSC was, the higher the IQ, (ToM), and reading performances (Mota et al, ).…”

“…As the LSC and reading performance were correlated with both IQ and ToM, a possible explanation would be that IQ and/or ToM mediated an indirect relationship between the LSC and reading. However, after adjustments, it was found that the correlation between the LSC and reading performance was independent from both IQ and ToM (Mota et al, ).…”