The developmental role of vocalizing in short-term memory

When young children perform a short-term memory (STM) task with familiar objects, they may be instructed to identify items aloud, or they may be observed to do so spontaneously. When recall is compared with that from a “silent” condition, conflicting data have been reported. A STM experiment was carried out using 5-year-old children who were sometimes instructed to vocalize and sometimes instructed not to. For both conditions there was an independent assessment of whether naming (verbal mediation) occurred. It was found that changing the vocalizing instruction changed naming behavior for many children. However, with vocalizing held constant, naming always aided recall. The role of vocalizing itself is considered to be confounded with attention. A developmental model is discussed which relates vocalizing, attention and naming in STM.

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