Contemporary Study Sebastian and Hernandez-Gil (2012) Flashcards
Aim
To investigate the development of the phonological loop through digit span.
To compare the school children with anglo-saxon elderly adults and people with dementia.
What experiment was this?
Field experiment in a school setting.
What was the IV and DV?
IV - Year of schooling and year group.
DV - Mean verbal digit span.
How many participants?
575 school children from pre, primary and secondary schools in Madrid. All born in Spain.
How were the participants selected?
Selected from all 13 years of the Spanish education system public and private (aged 5-17).
No child repeated a year or had any hearing, reading, writing or cognitive difficulties.
Procedure
Tested individually during break times.
They used sequences of random digits that increased by 1 in length each time.
read aloud, started with 3 sequences of 3 digits , then 4 of 4 etc.
They listened to each sequence and had to repeat in order, each had 1 practice sequence.
How did they define digit span
Longest sequence child could recall 2/3 times in order without error.
Findings
Clear increase in digit span with age.
Age 5 had significantly lower avg digit span (mean 3.76) than other age groups.
DS increased significantly up to 11 yrs (5.28) and slowed and stabilised up to 17 (5.91).
Comparison
Compared to anglo-saxon elderly the DS in a healthy elderly was significantly higher than 5 or 6 yr old children, but no different than older children.
For dementia the pattern of findings was similar to healthy older people.
Conclusions AS
Current and previous research with anglo-saxon elderly show that DS increases with age up to 17, and in english it levels at about 15.
Avg DS was lower for spanish compared to english children.
Researchers explain these in word length effect, it takes more time to rehearse longer words (spanish digit words are longer than english).
Conclusions Spanish
Avg DS was lower for spanish compared to english children.
Researchers explain these in word length effect, it takes more time to rehearse longer words (spanish digit words are longer than english).
WLE occurs because we rehearse words subvocally, but not until 7 yrs old. Means under 7s should have same digit span.
Full Conclusion
Comparison of these groups suggest that the capacity of the phonological loop in WM is more affected by age than dementia.
Strength Control of Variables
Used several standardised procedures such as reading the digits one per second for everyone.
Ensures the experience was mostly the same and outcomes cannot be attributed to differences in how procedure was carried out.
Helped control potentially confounding variables, increasing internal validity.
Competing
Lacked control in some areas such as not directly testing the children for impairments and relied on the parents or children to tell them. Undermining the validity of this study.
Application
DS has been applied to understanding specific cognitive abilities.
People with longer DS are better readers and have higher general intelligence (Gignac and Weiss 2015). Short DS associated with learning disorders like dyslexia.
DS can be used to help explain RL cognitive skills.
