Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Memory; Speech disorders in children;
Abstract
Current research on language deviant children has included studies of two facets of short term memory-span and accuracy. Investigators have found the language deviant have shorter spans, and that they reproduce material with errors. Menyuk (1969) hypothesized that the difficulty lay either "in their short term memory capacity or the perceptual devices used" (p. 155). Weiner (1972) listed a number of possible sources of difficulty in repeating material including the manipulation of verbal symbols. Such manipulation may fit the encoding process of Aaronson's (1967) model of short term memory which includes an "encoding" stage where items are readied for retention based on a meaning or name. This model could explain why some materials, such as digits, are recalled more easily than nonsense syllables. This investigation was undertaken to determine if the language deviant do, in fact, perceive the meaning of material differently from normal children. This study compared the performances of language deviant children to normal children in a STM task utilizing nonsense syllables, digits, and nouns. Seven children with deviancies in the morphological and syntactic areas of their expressive language functioning, and who were rated as language deviant by three speech clinicians, were matched by age, sex, and IQ to seven children rated as normal in expressive language by three speech clinicians. The results were the following:
1. There was a difference between the span lengths of the nonsense syllables, nouns, and digits for the two groups.
2. There was no difference in the intervals between the span lengths of the nonsense syllables, nouns, and digits for the two groups.
3. There was a difference between the two groups on the number of intrusion substitution errors for the nouns, and foreign substitution errors for nonsense syllables.
4. There was a difference between the span lengths the two groups obtained for nonsense and noun materials.
5. There was a difference between the span lengths of the different subjects within the language deviant group. Because both groups performed best on digits, then nouns, then nonsense syllables, and because the intervals between the span for the materials did not differentiate the two groups, the assertion that language deviant children cannot encode material in the same manner as normal children was not supported. An analysis of the substitution errors further negates the idea that the language deviant differ from normal children in the encoding process of short term memory.
Year of Submission
1974
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology
First Advisor
Roy Eblen
Second Advisor
Harley E. Erickson
Third Advisor
Dale Robinson
Date Original
1974
Object Description
1 PDF file (49 leaves)
Copyright
©1974 Donna L. De Shaw
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
De Shaw, Donna L., "The Immediate Recall Performance of Language Deviant Children for Three Kinds of Verbal Materials" (1974). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2446.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2446
Comments
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