title: Children and adolescents' performance on a medium-length/nonsemantic word-list test.
abstract: Word-list learning tasks are among the most important and frequently used tests for declarative memory evaluation. For example, the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C) and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test provide important information about different cognitive-neuropsychological processes. However, the impact of test length (i.e., number of words) and semantic organization (i.e., type of words) on children's and adolescents' memory performance remains to be clarified, especially during this developmental stage. To explore whether a medium-length non-semantically organized test can produce the typical curvilinear performance that semantically organized tests produce, reflecting executive control, we studied and compared the cognitive performance of normal children and adolescents by utilizing mathematical modeling. The model is based on the first-order system transfer function and has been successfully applied to learning curves for the CVLT-C (15 words, semantically organized paradigm). Results indicate that learning nine semantically unrelated words produces typical curvilinear (executive function) performance in children and younger adolescents and that performance could be effectively analyzed with the mathematical model. This indicates that the exponential increase (curvilinear performance) of correctly learned words does not solely depend on semantic and/or length features. This type of test controls semantic and length effects and may represent complementary tools for executive function evaluation in clinical populations in which semantic and/or length processing are affected.
authors.affiliation: a Child Psychiatry Hospital, DJNN-National Institutes of Health-México, and Psychology Faculty , National Autonomous University of México , Mexico City , Mexico.
authors.forename: Julio César
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Flores-Lázaro
authors.affiliation: b Private Practice, Neuropsychology Unit , México City , México.
authors.forename: María Alejandra
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Salgado Soruco
authors.affiliation: c Department of Neuropharmacology , Institute for Experimental Medicine , St. Petersburg , Russia.
authors.forename: Igor I
authors.initials: II
authors.lastname: Stepanov
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D059032:Learning Curve; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Children; learning curve; mathematical model; memory; neuropsychology