Sebastian and Hernandez Gill Contemporary study (pack 3)

Question 1

What was the title

Answer 1

developmental pattern of digit span in Spanish population

Question 2

what were the TWO aims of the study?

Answer 2

1. Investigate development of phonological loop in children between ages of 5-17 using digit span as a measure for phonological capacity
2. Compare findings to their prev. research of adult aged and dementia patients

Question 3

What else did the study compare it’s results to?

Answer 3

English speaking children and the elderly (some who had dementia)

Question 4

what was the sample?

Answer 4

570 students selected from public and private preschools, primary schools and secondary schools

none had hearing impairments, reading or writing difficulties or any other cognitive difficulties

Question 5

some of the procedure?

Answer 5

1. Three sequences of three digits were read out at rate of one per second
2. Asked to recall in same order presented
3. a digit was added after each round and an example was given so they knew what they were doing
4. Digit span was taken as the max length that PPT could recall at least 2 out of 3 with no errors

Question 6

Some results from first study?

Answer 6

preschool: 3.76
primary (6-8): 4.34
secondary (12-14): 5.13

Question 7

three conclusions from first study?

Answer 7

1. Digit span increases with age
2. a lower digit span for Spanish children than English children
3. Children learn to sub-vocalise at age 7

Question 8

Why may there be a lower digit span for Spanish kids than English?

Answer 8

word length effect

Question 9

Aim of study 2

Answer 9

compare results from part 1 to results from part 1 to results of a prev. study, done in 2010, which looked at older patients and some with dementia and carried out same digit span tasks

Question 10

some results from part 2 of the study?

Answer 10

1. Elderly group had higher digit span than five and six year olds
2. Patients with Alzheimer’s higher than five year olds but did not differ from other groups
3. patients with fronto temporal dementia had similar digit spans to 5 and 6yr olds

Question 11

conclusions for study 2?

Answer 11

phonological loop affected by age in general, but no so much dementia

Question 12

generalisability

Answer 12

large sample- 570 and used people from different socio-economic backgrounds (private+public)

Only carried out in Madrid so can’t generalise to the rest of Spain

Question 13

reliability

Answer 13

highly standardised as the sequence was given in the same 1 second gap and they were given time to understand hoe to do it

Question 14

validity

Answer 14

none had hearing impairments, reading and writing difficulties or problems with cognitive function…a control to reduce extraneous variables

eco- However, done in a school which is a familiar setting BUT artificial tasks