CHILDRENS PHONOLOGICAL WORKING-MEMORY - CONTRIBUTIONS OF LONG-TERM KNOWLEDGE AND REHEARSAL

The relationships between phonological working memory and other cognitive skills in childhood were investigated in a longitudinal study of 70 children at 4 and 5 years of age. Two principal phonological skills were examined: nonword repetition and auditory digit span. At both ages, the children's abilities to repeat nonwords were linked with their vocabulary knowledge. There was, however, no correspondingly specific relationship between digit span and the children's number skills. It is suggested that these findings reflect the common contribution of phonological working memory and phonologically based lexical knowledge to phonological memory tests. Other findings based on relations between articulation rates and memory span at 5 years suggest that rehearsal operates on a highly material-specific basis at this age: although the children appear to articulate digits subvocally, there is no evidence for the use of a rehearsal strategy for familiar concrete nouns. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.