Strategic verbal rehearsal in adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities: A multi-centre European study.
BACKGROUND
There is a long-held view that verbal short-term memory problems of individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) might be due to a deficit in verbal rehearsal. However, the evidence is inconclusive and word length effects as indicator of rehearsal have been criticised.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this multi-site European study was to investigate verbal rehearsal in adolescents with mild ID (n=90) and a comparison group of typically developing children matched individually for mental age (MA, n=90). The investigation involved: (1) a word length experiment with non-verbal recall using pointing and (2) 'self-paced' inspection times to infer whether verbal strategies were utilised when memorising a set of pictorial items.


RESULTS
The word length effect on recall did not interact with group, suggesting that adolescents with ID and MA comparisons used similar verbal strategies, possibly phonological recoding of picture names. The inspection time data suggested that high span individuals in both groups used verbal labelling or single item rehearsal on more demanding lists, as long named items had longer inspection times.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings suggest that verbal strategy use is not specifically impaired in adolescents with mild ID and is mental age appropriate, supporting a developmental perspective.
Department of Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt and Center for Research on Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), Frankfurt, Germany. Electronic address: poloczek@paed.psych.uni-frankfurt.de.
Sebastian
S
Poloczek
Language and Communication Science, City University London, London, UK. Electronic address: lucy.henry.1@city.ac.uk.
Lucy A
LA
Henry
Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden and The Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Sweden. Electronic address: henrik.danielsson@liu.se.
Henrik
H
Danielson
Department of Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt and Center for Research on Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), Frankfurt, Germany. Electronic address: buettner@paed.psych.uni-frankfurt.de.
Gerhard
G
Büttner
Department of Educational Psychology, Hildesheim University, Hildesheim, Germany. Electronic address: maehler@uni-hildesheim.de.
Claudia
C
Mähler
Faculty of Education and Language Studies, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. Electronic address: david.messer@open.ac.uk.
David J
DJ
Messer
Department of Educational Psychology, Hildesheim University, Hildesheim, Germany. Electronic address: schuchar@uni-hildesheim.de.
Kirsten
K
Schuchardt
Department of Clinical, Neuro- & Developmental Psychology, and EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: m.j.vander.molen@vu.nl.
Mariët J van der
MJ
Molen
D000293:Adolescent; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D005060:Europe; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D009426:Netherlands; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D006113:United Kingdom; D014706:Verbal Learning
Children/adolescents; Intellectual disability; Memory span; Memory strategies; Self-pacing; Word length effects