load and children's language processing

[Jean Berko Gleason]

See also a recent Boston University doctoral dissertation (2004) by
Elena Zaretsky, now at U Mass, Amherst:   Auditory Comprehension in
Children with Specific Language  Impairment: The Role of Verbal Working
Memory.  She used a competing language processing task, and results
pointed to working memory capacity as an important variable..  From the
abstract:

> .  Phonological working memory was assessed through the Nonsense Word
> Repetition Task (NWRT), and verbal working memory capacity through the
> Competing Language Processing Task (CLTP).  As hypothesized, children
> with SLI showed decreased capacity compared with typical language
> developing controls, and showed different patterns of association
> between the capacity measure and short story comprehension. A major
> finding of the study was that for children with SLI, but not for
> typically developing children, there was a direct correlation between
> capacity measures and comprehension measures.  Moreover, phonological
> memory scores predicted comprehension for only the youngest children
> in either group.


The dissertation is available through the UMichigan service, and
articles are forthcoming.

Jean Berko Gleason