title: Verbal Short-Term Memory Deficits in Chinese Children with Dyslexia may not be a Problem with the Activation of Phonological Representations.
abstract: This study explored the underlying mechanism of the verbal short-term memory deficit in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia. Twenty-four children with dyslexia and 28 age-matched normal readers participated in the study. They were required to memorize a visually presented series of six Chinese characters and identify them from a list also including code-specific distracters and non-code-specific distracters. Error rates were recorded and were higher for code-specific distracters in all three conditions, revealing phonological, visual, and semantic similarity effects respectively. Group comparisons showed a stronger phonological similarity effect in dyslexic group, suggesting intact activation of phonological representations of target characters. Children with dyslexia also exhibited a greater semantic similarity effect, revealing stronger activation of semantic representations, while visual similarity effects were equivalent to controls. These results suggest that the verbal short-term memory deficit in Chinese dyslexics might not stem from insufficient activation of phonological information. Based the semantic activation of target characters in dyslexics is greater than in controls, it is possible that the memory deficit of dyslexia is related with deficient inhibition of target semantic representations in short-term memory.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.|State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: College of Education, Hebei University, Baoding, Hebei, 071002, China.
authors.forename: Yao-Wu
authors.initials: YW
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
authors.forename: Hong-Yan
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Bi
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning
keywords: Chinese characters; developmental dyslexia; inhibition; phonological/visual/semantic similarity effect; verbal short-term memory