Sociocultural influences on the development of verbal mediation: Private speech and phonological recoding in Saudi Arabian and British samples.
Cross-national stability in private speech (PS) and short-term memory was investigated in Saudi Arabian (n = 63) and British (n = 58) 4- to 8-year-olds. Assumed differences in child-adult interaction between the 2 nationality groups led to predictions of Gender x Nationality interactions in the development of verbal mediation. British boys used more self-regulatory PS than British girls, whereas there was no such difference for the Saudi group. When age, verbal ability, and social speech were controlled, boys used slightly more self-regulatory PS than girls. Self-regulatory PS was related to children's use of phonological recoding of visually presented material in a short-term memory task, suggesting that PS and phonological recoding represent different facets of a domain-general transition toward verbal mediation in early childhood.
Al-Namlah
Abdulrahman S
AS
Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham, England.
Fernyhough
Charles
C
Meins
Elizabeth
E
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D017008:Negotiating; D010700:Phonetics; D017149:Private Sector; D012529:Saudi Arabia; D012574:Schools; D013060:Speech; D006113:United Kingdom; D014705:Verbal Behavior