THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEMORY FOR SPEECH

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This is a revised continuation proposal for a project on the development of speech memory processes. The currently funded project is a New Investigator Research Award (6/1/84 - 5/31/87, with a requested no-cost extension to 12/31/87). So far, a number of experiments have demonstrated that preschool children have a form of memory for speech that lasts approximately 10 to 15 sec. This appears to be a "structural" form of memory for speech, meaning that it depends only upon neural structures and presumably does not depend upon the subject's allocation of attention or mnemonic strategies. There are two important goals addressed in the present proposal. 1) First, the characteristics of memory for speech in children are to be further clarified. If it is an auditory sensory memory, the amount of interference from a poststimulus suffix should depend upon the acoustic similarity between the list and suffix. Also, if the memory is independent of the subject's attention, then recall should be possible even if the speech sounds are unattended. 2) Additionally, the developmental course of the structural components of memory for speech is to be examined. Comparable tasks for subjects of different ages are devised to examine developmental change, and pilot data are reported. Recognition tasks have provided sensitive indexes of memory for speech in preschool children. However, adults were shown to engage in active speech coding that reduced their reliance on structural forms of memory in these tasks. The reviewers of the proposal submitted 7/1/86 approved the renewal and said that excellent progress has been made, but they felt that revisions were needed in the plans for further research in order to obtain procedures that can clarify the developmental course of structural components in memory for speech. Resubmission of the proposal was encouraged. In response, procedures that have proven successful in adults now have been adapted for developmental research. The research relies upon two basic procedures with children 4 to 12 years old and adults: 1) the stimulus suffix procedure, and 2) a new procedure to examine memory for unattended speech. The research has both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, knowledge of the structural components of memory is necessary eventually to determine the relation between the brain and behavior. Practically, it is of considerable importance to understand the temporal limitations of memory for speech, because children clearly need this form of memory for language learning and communication.