AVERAGE DIGIT SPAN FOR AGE 4 SERIAL

Murray and Jones ( 2002), who showed that the immediate memory span for Welsh is shorter than that for English, not because of the time it takes to pronounce individual items but because of greater differences in between-word coarticulation. The relevance of coarticulation was also demonstrated as a potentially important factor in comparing memory spans across languages by A. Coarticulation effects have been shown for long-term learning, whereby learning a nonsense pair like ZIL–TOV, which is easy to articulate, was easier than learning TOV–ZIL, which involves an atypical articulatory transition between items (Baddeley, 1964). Interpretation is further complicated by between-word coarticulation effects.

However, other studies using a different sample of words failed to replicate this effect (e.g., Lovatt, Avons, & Masterson, 2000 Service, 1998). Evidence for temporal decay came from a study in which disyllabic words with short pronunciation times (e.g., bishop, wicket) were better retained than disyllabic words with longer pronunciation times (e.g., Friday, harpoon). This contrasts with an interference hypothesis, which would argue that more syllables lead to greater interference and poorer recall. ( 1975) attributed the effect to trace decay, with longer words taking longer to rehearse, hence allowing more decay. While the syllabic word-length effect itself is robust (Tehan, Hendry, & Kocinski, 2001), its interpretation remains controversial. Further evidence for a subvocal rehearsal interpretation of this effect comes from the fact that the word-length effect is lost under articulatory suppression, the requirement to repeatedly utter an unrelated word, such as the during presentation and test (Baddeley et al., 1975 D. They explained the word-length effect by assuming that long words take more time to articulate, and that this in turn leads to greater decay of the underlying memory trace. In a study by Baddeley, Thomson, and Buchanan ( 1975), sequences of five monosyllables showed more than 90% correct recall compared to around 50% for five-syllable items matched for semantic category.

AVERAGE DIGIT SPAN FOR AGE 4 SERIAL

Evidence for the rehearsal system comes from the word-length effect, whereby immediate serial recall of words is a function of the number of syllables of the words in the list. This assumes a subcomponent of working memory, the phonological loop, comprising a temporary store in which phonological/acoustic traces fade over a matter of seconds, together with an articulatory rehearsal system capable of maintaining a limited amount of spoken material. One such approach is based on the Baddeley and Hitch ( 1974) multicomponent working memory model. Other studies attempt to analyse the underlying mechanisms for short-term encoding and maintenance, typically minimising general language effects by using sequences of unrelated digits or letters for which the influence of long-term memory is reduced. These tend to focus on the influence of existing language knowledge on memory performance. Some studies are interested in linking immediate memory to long-term memory. Theoretically oriented studies have tended to fall into two separate but related approaches. Possible alternative explanations are discussed. Further analysis suggested that speed of rehearsal did not provide an adequate account of differences between Mandarin and English spans or for the advantage of digits over words. However, this correlation was more pronounced for English speakers than for any of the Chinese measures. Speed of rehearsal correlated with span performance across materials. This suggests that the Mandarin advantage is not limited to digits. When compared to the performance of native English speakers, the Mandarin group proved to be superior on both digit and word spans while predictably having lower spans in English. We explored this hypothesis by testing a group of English-speaking native Mandarin speakers on digit span and word span in both Mandarin and English, together with a measure of speed of articulation for each. This is commonly attributed to a capacity for more rapid subvocal rehearsal for that group. It is well established that digit span in native Chinese speakers is atypically high.

Average digit span for age 4