Multisyllabic Word Repetition as a Measure of Short-Term Phonological Memory in Children

Background: The measurement of serial short-term phonological memory performance has been examined by different materials, e. g. real monosyllabic nouns (word span). The aim of this pilot study was to test the word span for unrelated multisyllabic nouns in comparing groups. Methods: The research instrument consisted word lists of 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-syllables for immediate serial recall. Each word list comprised four tasks with a series increasing from 2 to 5 nouns. Thus, the maximum memory score for each item condition was 4. Study group: 38 three through ten year-old children: (3 years 10 months - 10 years 4 months): Eighteen children with developmental language and/or articulation disorders (mean age: 65.6; SD 17.9 months) and 20 healthy, normally developing children (mean age: 68.2; SD 14.2 months). Results: A word length effect could be observed in all children: the number of retained word lists decreased with an increase in the length of syllables. The memory span of 2-, 3- and 4- syllabic words in language disordered children was not significantly different from that of the controls; however, the word span of 5-syllabic nouns differed significantly between both groups (mean difference: 0.5; 95%-CI: 0.1-0.9; p = 0.038). A significant age effect in 2- and 4- syllabic words was observed in both groups in favor of the older children, but not in 3- syllabic nouns (.30 vs. .37; n.s.). Phonological memory span for 5-syllabic words correlated with age only in normal children (.48; p = 0.033; language disordered group: .11, n.s.). Conclusions: Not only changes in the rate of speech with increasing age ("phonological" respectively "articulatory loop" sensu Baddeleys model of phonological working memory) seem to explain the increase in phonological shortterm memory performance recalling a series of real words, but also the ability to articulate seems to be an important factor.