Abstract
The ability of four-year-old children to remember syllables was investigated, both to determine the temporal properties of memory for speech in subjects who do not use sophisticated retention strategies, and to determine what speech memory is available in the late preschool period. In Experiments 1 and 2, children were to remember pairs of nonsense syllables for 5, 10, 15, or 20 sec filled with a silent, manual task. In both experiments there was an apparent decay of one type of speech memory across 10-15 sec. In Experiment 2, strong interference was obtained when there was a final speech suffix item. An additional phase of this experiment verified that children cannot rehearse during the postlist period. However, in Experiments 3 and 4, suffix effects were not obtained with adult subjects in similar tasks. The results suggest that memory for speech persists for at least 10 sec even in preschool children, but that adults, unlike preschool children, engage in an additional type of speech coding that increases the resistance of memory to speech interference.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Balota, D. A., & Duchek, J. M. (in press). Voice-specific information and the 20-second delayed suffix effect.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition.
Balota, D. A., &Engle, R. W. (1981). Structural and strategic factors in the stimulus suffix effect.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,20, 346–357.
Bradley, L., &Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorizing sounds and learning to read—A causal connection.Nature,301, 419–421.
Campbell, R., &Dodd, B. (1980). Hearing by eye.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,32, 85–99.
Cheng, C. (1974). Different roles of acoustic and articulatory information in short-term memory.Journal of Experimental Psychology,103, 614–618.
Conrad, R. (1971). The chronology of the development of covert speech in children.Developmental Psychology,5, 398–405.
Cowan, N. (1984). On short and long auditory stores.Psychological Bulletin,96, 341–370.
Crowder, R. G. (1971). Waiting for the stimulus suffix: Decay, delay, rhythm, and readout in immediate memory.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,23, 324–340.
Crowder, R. G. (1983). The purity of auditory memory.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London,B302, 251–265.
Crowder, R. G., &Morton, J. (1969). Precategorical acoustic storage.Perception & Psychophysics,5, 365–373.
Dempster, F. N., &Rohwer, W. D. (1983). Age differences and modality effects in immediate and final free recall.Child Development,54, 30–41.
Engle, R. M., Fidler, D. S., &Reynolds, L. H. (1981). Does echoic memory develop?Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,32, 459–473.
Flavell, J. M., Beach, D. R., &Chinsky, J. M. (1966). Spontaneous verbal rehearsal in a memory task as a function of age.Child Development,37, 283–299.
Frank, H. S., &Rabinovitch, M. S. (1974). Auditory short-term memory: Developmental changes in precategorical storage.Child Development,45, 522–526.
Greenberg, S. N., &Engle, R. W. (1983). Voice changes in the stimulus suffix effect: Are the effects structural or strategic?Memory & Cognition,11, 551–556.
Guttentag, R. E. (1984). The mental effort requirement of cumulative rehearsal: A developmental study.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,37, 92–106.
Hulme, C. (1984). Developmental differences in the effects of acoustic similarity on memory span.Developmental Psychology,20, 650–652.
Kail, R., &Hagen, J. W. (1982). Memory m childhood. In B. B. Wolman (Ed.),Handbook of developmental psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Kuczaj, S. A., II. (1979). Evidence of a language learning strategy: On the relative ease of acquisition of prefixes and suffixes.Child Development,50, 1–13.
Morton, J., Crowder, R. G., &Prussin, H. A. (1971). Experiments with the stimulus suffix effect.Journal of Experimental Psychology,91, 169–190.
Nairne, J. S., &Walters, V. L. (1983) Sdent mouthing produces modality- and suffix-like effects.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,22, 475–483.
Parkinson, S. R. (1978) An alternative interpretation of the stimulus suffix effect.Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Learning & Memory,4, 362–369.
Penney, C. G. (1985). Elimination of the suffix effect on preterminal list items with unpredictable list length Evidence for a dual model of suffix effects.Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, & Cognitton,11, 229–247
Tallal, P., Stark, R., Kallman, C., &Mellits, D. (1981) A reexamination of some nonverbal perceptual abilities of language-impaired and normal children as a function of age and sensory modality.Journal of Speech & Hearing Research,24, 351–357
Watkiys, M J, &Todres, A. K. (1980). Suffix effects manifest and concealed’ Further evidence for a 20-second echo.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,19, 46–53
Watkins, O. C., &Watkins, M. J. (1980) The modality effect and echoic persistence.Journal of Experimental Psychology. General,109, 251–278
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was supported by NIH Grant No. 1-R23-HD18698-01 awarded to the senior author.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cowan, N., Kielbasa, L. Temporal properties of memory for speech in preschool children. Memory & Cognition 14, 382–390 (1986). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197013
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197013