DEVELOPMENT OF SHORT TERM MEMORY FOR SPEECH ATTRIBUTES

描述：这一竞争性的延续建议审查了如何短- 语言和相关声音的属性的术语记忆在 童年. 它区分了被动的、不费力的过程（例如， 感觉和语音记忆存储）和主动过程， 仅在分配了足够的注意力时才执行（例如，秘密 发音和记忆搜索）。 过去的研究主要集中在 主要在少数活跃过程中的发育变化（例如，秘密 口头排练），调查人员最近观察到大量的 在两个不同的年龄段， 程序：其中一个参与者比较了两个 由一段无声的可变音程分隔开的稍有不同的音调 在另一个实验中，参与者试图识别 在他们的演讲和随后的沉默中都被忽略了 interval. 调查人员还获得了一个新的视角， 在活动处理中可能发生的变化。 具体来说，在一系列 回忆任务，在口语中单词之间的沉默停顿的持续时间 随着发展，反应减少。 结果 表明停顿的变化源于发育的增加， 短期记忆搜索的效率。 有趣的是， 持续时间与跨度相关，但与其他因素无关 与跨度和语速相关。 拟议的研究旨在 更坚定地建立这些新观察到的变化，在被动和主动 处理，并确定它们对短期记忆的贡献 发展 这些方法涉及实验任务的组合 已经在研究者实验室中使用的，以及它们的变体 允许它们之间的杂交。 例如，双色调 比较将被检查与第一个音忽略在其 呈现和重复言语研究将检查多词记忆 列表. 目标是确定任务之间的关系，以便 确定潜在的理论机制，进入一个以上 其中 儿童的被动遗忘率将沿着 记忆搜索和说话的速度来预测记忆广度 比现在更准确。 结果应该会导致 一个改进的正常短期记忆的理论模型 发展，这将是相当大的使用在解释和 学习和语言习得困难的最终治疗， 孩子

DESCRIPTION: This competing continuation proposal examines how short- term memory for attributes of speech and related sounds changes during childhood. It distinguishes between passive, effortless processes (e.g., sensory and phonological memory storage) and active processes that are carried out only if sufficient attention is allocated (e.g., covert articulation and memory search). Whereas past research has focused on developmental changes primarily in a few active processes (e.g., covert verbal rehearsal), the investigator has recently observed substantial decreases in passive forgetting rates across ages, in two different procedures: one in which participants compared the pitches of two slightly different tones separated by a silent interval of variable duration, and another in which participants tried to identify words that were ignored during both their presentation and a subsequent silent interval. The investigator has also obtained a fresh perspective on changes that may occur in active processing. Specifically, in a serial recall task, the durations of silent pauses between words in the spoken responses were found to decrease with development. The results suggested that the pause changes stem from a developmental increase in the efficiency of short-term memory search. Interestingly, pause durations correlated with span but sill were independent of another correlate of span, the speaking rate. The proposed research aims to establish more firmly these newly observed changes in passive and active processing, and to determine their contribution to short-term memory development. The methods involve combinations of the experimental tasks already in use in the investigator's laboratory and variations of those that allow cross-fertilization among them. For example, two-tone comparisons will be examined with the first tone ignored during its presenation, and ignored-speech studies will examine memory for multiword lists. The goal is to determine the relations between tasks in order to identify underlying theoretical mechanisms that enter into more than one of them. Children's passive forgetting rates will be used along with both memory search and speaking rates to predict memory span much more accurately than has been possible until now. The results should lead to an improved theoretical model of normal short-term memory developmental that will be of considerable use in the interpretation and eventual treatment of learning and language acquisition difficulties in children.