Stimulus Labels Support Declarative but Not Procedural Memory in Children With and Without Hearing Loss

Children with hearing loss show deficits in sequential learning, a form of procedural memory, and often perform poorly on verbal serial recall, a form of declarative memory. The current study examines sequential learning and serial recall in pediatric cochlear implant (CI) users with young ages of implantation. Additionally, it investigates the role of rehearsal on procedural and declarative memory as well as whether rehearsal interferes with the ability to generalize procedurally learned sequences to declarative serial recall.

Sixty children (21 with CIs who primarily use spoken English; 39 typically hearing), ages 7-15 years, completed two serial reaction time (SRT) tasks: one used stimuli that could be easily verbalized (i.e., "Color" SRT); the other used spatial stimuli (i.e., "Monster" SRT). After each SRT task, children completed a serial recall task in which half of the trials incorporated the procedurally learned sequence.

Bayesian statistical analyses reveal that, in contrast to previous findings, hearing status did not predict performance on either sequential learning or serial recall. On the declarative serial recall task, all children benefited from easily accessible labels; they also benefited from prior procedural learning, but only when labels were not easily accessible.

Serial recall is supported by numerous strategies-including rehearsal and prior sequence learning. Notably, children with CIs also use these strategies. We also demonstrate a common asymmetry observed in adulthood: Serial recall of easy to label items was best predicted by language abilities, whereas serial recall of difficult to label items was best predicted by nonverbal IQ.