Working memory in children: A developmental approach to the phonological coding of pictorial material

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of age, speech, articulatory suppression and phonemic similarity on the phonological coding of pictorial material. A serial recall task was employed to assess the effects of phonemic similarity in children aged between 3 and 11. Half of the subjects in each age group overtly named the pictures at presentation and the others remained silent. For suppression subjects who named the pictures these two tasks were performed concurrently. It was hypothesized that the effects of phonemic similarity would be affected by age and speech. This was supported, with older children showing a greater effect of phonemic similarity and subjects scoring more when allowed to overtly name the items. It was also hypothesized that the youngest children would benefit most from the overt naming of items. Analysis of the results indicated that the overt naming of items facilitated phonological recoding amongst the younger children, thereby supporting this hypothesis. The possibility that these results are due to the maturation of a phonemic store prior to the development of subvocal rehearsal processes is discussed.

Sociocultural influences on the development of verbal mediation: Private speech and phonological recoding in Saudi Arabian and British samples.

“…Although there is some disagreement about the precise chronology of the shift to phonological recoding (Ford & Silber, 1994;Hulme, 1987;Palmer, 2000a), there is a consensus that children undergo a fundamental shift in strategy at around age 6, away from visuospatial coding of visually presented material and toward phonological Verbal Mediation 8 recoding. This shift has been related variously to children's adoption of a conscious strategy for memorizing visually presented material (Flavell, Beach, & Chinsky, 1966), to the gradual decoupling of the phonological short-term memory system from the stimulus of overt speech (Hitch, Halliday, Schaafstal, & Heffernan, 1991), and to changes in central executive functioning (Palmer, 2000a).…”

“…The possibility that children's use of self-regulatory speech might relate to memory performance was first raised in a landmark study by Flavell et al (1966) Although researchers in the field of memory development have continued to be interested in the shift to phonological recoding as part of a general transition toward the verbal mediation of cognitive processes (Ford & Silber, 1994;Hitch et al, 1991) …”

“…Although there is some disagreement about the precise chronology of the shift to phonological recoding (Ford & Silber, 1994;Hulme, 1987;Palmer, 2000a), there is a consensus that children undergo a fundamental shift in strategy at around age 6, away from visuospatial coding of visually presented material and toward phonological Verbal Mediation 8…”

“…At a slightly later stage in development, children show susceptibility to the phonological similarity effect (PSE) in visual presentation, where recall of phonologically similar items (e.g., man, map, mat) is worse than recall of phonologically dissimilar items (e.g., clock, horse, fish) (Baddeley, 1966(Baddeley, , 1986Conrad, 1971;Gathercole & Hitch, 1993). Within the working memory framework (Baddeley, 1986;Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), the PSE is attributed to the phonological recoding of visually presented material so that it can be rehearsed using the articulatory loop.Whereas spoken material is thought to have automatic access to the articulatory loop, visual inputs such as pictures must be recoded phonologically before they can be held in this component of working memory (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993).Although there is some disagreement about the precise chronology of the shift to phonological recoding (Ford & Silber, 1994;Hulme, 1987;Palmer, 2000a), there is a consensus that children undergo a fundamental shift in strategy at around age 6, away from visuospatial coding of visually presented material and toward phonological Verbal Mediation 8recoding. This shift has been related variously to children's adoption of a conscious strategy for memorizing visually presented material (Flavell, Beach, & Chinsky, 1966), to the gradual decoupling of the phonological short-term memory system from the stimulus of overt speech (Hitch, Halliday, Schaafstal, & Heffernan, 1991), and to changes in central executive functioning (Palmer, 2000a Lloyd & Fernyhough, 1999), and the influence of sociocultural variables on this process has yet to be determined.…”

Phonological, visual, and semantic coding strategies and children's short-term picture memory span

“…Hitch, Halliday, Schaafstal and Heffernan (1991) went on to underline the importance of auditory input, demonstrating that phonological similarity effects emerged in 5-year-olds when either the child or the Experimenter 'labelled' pictures during presentation (see also Ford & Silber, 1994;but note Palmer, 2000b, who argued that preventing labelling by the child made no difference to the findings). Hitch et al (1991) Coding strategies in picture memory span 6 argued that overt speech 'primed' the use of phonological representations in young children who would not otherwise use phonological coding with visual items.…”