Examining the relationship between word learning, nonword repetition, and immediate serial recall in adults.
Two experiments examined whether the association between word-learning, nonword repetition, and immediate serial recall observed in children also exists in normal adults. The experiments also introduce a novel paradigm for studying word-learning. Experiment 1 studied the performance of 52 adults in nonword repetition, immediate serial recall, and word-learning tasks, examining the correlation between these measures. The results indicate that the developmental relationships between all three abilities also exist in adults. Experiment 2 investigated the robustness of these results using different stimuli and a variant of the word-learning task, and it also examined performance in a visuospatial span task, to test an alternative account of the results of Experiment 1; the results from 58 adults provide further evidence that the developmental association between word-learning, nonword repetition, and immediate serial recall extends into adulthood. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in terms of alternative models of the relationship between these abilities.
Gupta
Prahlad
P
Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. prahlad-gupta@uiowa.edu
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall; D013028:Space Perception; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014796:Visual Perception