Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 27, 2026

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm
Published on: April 28, 2016
Verbal short-term memory deficits in Down syndrome: phonological, semantic, or both?
Nancy Raitano Lee1, Bruce F Pennington, Janice M Keenan
1Department of Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA, lnancy@mail.nih.gov.
Abstract:
The current study examined the phonological and semantic contributions to the verbal short-term memory (VSTM) deficit in Down syndrome (DS) by experimentally manipulating the phonological and semantic demands of VSTM tasks. The performance of 18 individuals with DS (ages 11-25) and 18 typically developing children (ages 3-10) matched pairwise on receptive vocabulary and gender was compared on four VSTM tasks, two tapping phonological VSTM (phonological similarity, nonword discrimination) and two tapping semantic VSTM (semantic category, semantic proactive interference). Group by condition interactions were found on the two phonological VSTM tasks (suggesting less sensitivity to the phonological qualities of words in DS), but not on the two semantic VSTM tasks. These findings suggest that a phonological weakness contributes to the VSTM deficit in DS. These results are discussed in relation to the DS neuropsychological and neuroanatomical phenotype.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Language and Cognition
Learning Disabilities
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a...
Higher Mental Functions of the Brain: Language
Language formation and comprehension take place in the dominant hemisphere. The dominant hemisphere is responsible for understanding the meaning of spoken, written, or sign language, as well as the ability to communicate. For most people, the left hemisphere is the dominant one. The right hemisphere, then, gives tone and emotional context to the...
Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon
Intellectual Disability
Interference and Decay
Interference occurs when competing memories hinder the retrieval of particular information. It can be classified into two types: proactive and retroactive interference. Proactive...

