Dissociable components of phonological and lexical-semantic short-term memory and their relation to impaired word production in aphasia

peer reviewedThis study assesses the dissociability of phonological and lexical-semantic short-term memory (STM) in two aphasic patients, B.N. and T.M., and explores the relationship between their STM deficits and their word production impairment. Picture naming performance suggests phonological language production impairment in B.N. and lexical-semantic language production impairment in T.M. On STM tasks, B.N. presented phonological STM impairment with preserved lexical-semantic STM, while T.M. presented the reverse profile. These results reveal a double dissociation between phonological and lexical-semantic STM capacities and suggest that our patients' STM impairment may be selectively related to their language production deficit

Impaired verbal short-term memory for serial order information in dyslexic adults

This study used the distinction of item and order information in verbal short-term memory (STM) to further our understanding of verbal STM impairments in dyslexia. Item STM has been shown to depend on the quality of underlying phonological representations and hence should be impaired in dyslexic participants given their poor phonological processing abilities. On the other hand, order STM represents a specific STM capacity predicting learning capacity for new phonological and orthographic sequences (Majerus et al., 2006; Nithart et al, 2010). If STM impairments contribute to dyslexia, then especially order STM should be impaired, in addition to item STM

Working memory, long-term memory and language processing : issues and future directions

We examined different views of the relationships between working memory, long-term memory and language processing : working memory considered as a gateway between sensory input and long-term memory or rather as a workspace; working memory considered as not strictly tied to any particular cognitive system (and consequently viewed as separated from the language system) or rather as drawing on the operation and storage capacities of a subset of components involved in language processing. It is argued that functional imagery studies (along with neuropsychological researches) could contribute to decide between these conceptions

Impact de l’immersion bilingue scolaire sur le développement linguistique, cognitif et scolaire de l’enfant

editorial reviewe

Effect of a reading aloud program on reading rate and reading prosody in a group of sixth-grade low achievement language minority readers with low SES

Language minority (LM) students’ reading comprehension remains less proficient than that of their native peers in the upper elementary grades, even if they develop proficient word decoding skills in the primary grades. Given the link between reading comprehension and reading fluency, a way of addressing LM student’s reading difficulties is to attempt to improve their reading fluency. The purpose of this study was to investigate if a group of sixth-grade low achievement LM students’ reading skills could be improved by an intervention designed to train reading fluency, a critical component of reading development, defined as integrating speed and accuracy (reading rate) as well as prosody. The study included 54 sixth-grade LM students attending a school with a low socio-economic index. Two groups matched on different reading and control (vocabulary, arithmetic, non-verbal intelligence, socio-demographic characteristics) measures were randomly assigned to an intervention condition, which consisted of a tutored reading aloud intervention combining repeated reading, assisted wide reading and modeling prosody or to a control condition, where students achieved their usual classroom activities. Reading rate (number of words correctly read per minute), prosody and comprehension were assessed. Students who received the intervention scored better on measures of reading prosody but not on reading rate and comprehension measures than students from the control group. The present study provides empirical support that LM struggling students can benefit from a reading fluency intervention to develop important reading prosody skills, not only on practiced texts but also on new texts

Investigating the Effects of Language-Switching Frequency on Attentional and Executive Functioning in Proficient Bilinguals

peer reviewe

The contribution of serial order short-term memory and long-term learning to reading acquisition : a longitudinal study

There is increasing evidence for an association between both serial order short-term memory (STM) and the long-term learning (LTL) of serial order information and reading abilities. In this developmental study, we examined the hypothesis that STM for serial order supports online grapheme-to-phoneme conversion processes during the initial stages of reading acquisition, whereas the LTL of serial order serves reading abilities at later stages, when reading starts to rely on more stable, long-term orthographic representations. We followed a sample of 116 French-speaking children from first (Time 1 [T1]) grade of primary school through second (Time 2 [T2]) and third (Time 3 [T3]) grade. Their serial order STM and LTL abilities as well as their reading abilities were assessed. Overall, we observed that early reading abilities were only predicted by serial order STM performance, while more advanced reading abilities were predicted by both serial order STM and LTL performance. These results point toward a predictive role of serial order memory performance in reading acquisition and suggest that serial order STM and LTL support reading at different stages of acquisition. We further discuss our findings in the light of advancing knowledge about the relationship between memory and reading