Background: Understanding memory retention in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) compared with their typically developing (TD) peers enhances our knowledge of memory processes. Aims: To examine long-term memory consolidation of a declarative object-location task and a procedural symbol-writing task, along with grammatical and…

Are children better than adults in acquiring new skills ("how-to" knowledge) because of a difference in skill memory consolidation? Here we tested the proposal that, as opposed to adults, children's memories for newly acquired skills are immune to interference by subsequent experience. The establishment of long-term memory for a…

This is a review of two bodies of research conducted by myself and my colleagues that is relevant to child witness issues, namely childhood amnesia and children's eyewitness memory for stressful events. Although considerable research over the years has investigated the phenomenon of childhood amnesia in adults, only recently has it begun to be…

Examined learning problems in South African sample of 7- to 14-year-olds whose mothers reported excessively high infant bilirubin shortly after the child's birth. Found that this sample had lowered verbal ability with the majority also showing impaired short-term and long-term memory. Findings suggested that impaired formation of astrocytes…

Examined 3- to 13-year olds' memories for an experienced and a never-experienced medical procedure. Found that children 4 years or older at time of the procedure described it more accurately than did younger children. Longer delays between procedure and recall were related to providing fewer correct information units but not more inaccuracies.…

Two studies examined 6- and 9-year-old children's recall about events in which they had participated one to two years earlier. Found that amount of information reported in free recall decreased over the one- or two-year delays. For 6-year olds, there was a small decrease in accuracy of free recall. Reinstating specific cues maintained recall, but…

Studied relationships among short-term memory, processing speed, sequencing ability, and long-term memory information retrieval in 7-year-olds. Found that when reading ability was controlled, arithmetic ability was best predicted by processing speed, with short-term memory accounting for no further unique variance. Children with arithmetic…

Eight-, eleven-, and nineteen-year-olds' memory for spatial locations over an extended time period was assessed. Study suggested that adults remember spatial location information better than children over time because adults code location information in more organized representations and use better retrieval cues. (RWB)

This study explored relationship between working memory (WM) and mathematical problem solving, comparing children with learning disabilities (LD) to chronologically age-matched and younger achievement-matched children on measures of WM, phonological processing, problem-solving, and word problem-solving accuracy. Found support for notion that…

This study investigated children's memory of stressful, personally meaningful events--in this case, injury experiences. Children (2 to 13 years old) who were brought to the emergency room of a hospital were recruited as subjects if they had sustained trauma injuries such as broken bones or lacerations requiring suturing. A total of 42 were…

Summarizes findings on the relationship of working memory and long-term memory to language impairments. Language interventions are discussed, including promoting attention, speaking clearly and slowly, promoting phonological coding, planning activities around topics familiar to the learners, helping learners organize new knowledge, and providing…

This research examined the effects of differences in the emotions associated with an event on participants' reports of the experience. Forty-eight 10-year-old participants in a soccer tournament reported their final competition shortly after the game and 5 weeks later. Although all children reported the same event, members of winning vs. losing…

Three experiments examined kindergartners' and second graders' retention in the context of two distinctiveness manipulations, the von Restorff and bizarre imagery paradigms. Results showed that: older children retained more information from lists of pictures or interactive images over 3 weeks than younger; younger children failed to benefit from…

Overt rehearsal and free recall performance was analyzed longitudinally in two experimental testing sessions at 7 and later at 9 years of age. Measures of short- and long-term memory recall, and two measures of input processing were obtained. Significant increases between age levels were exhibited by all variables except short-term memory.…

This book contains articles from two issues of "Topics in Language Disorders" that focus on recent developments in the understanding of short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory systems and their relationship to language comprehension, lexical development, early academic development, later academic development, and communication…