Seung H-K, Chapman R
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
J Intellect Disabil Res. 2004 Feb;48(Pt 2):160-71. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2788.2004.00526.x.
Individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) have an auditory short-term memory span disproportionately shorter than the non-verbal mental age (MA). This study evaluated the Baddeley model's claim that verbal short-term memory deficits might arise from slower speaking rates (and thus less material rehearsed in a 2 s passive store) by using the sentence memory subtest of the Stanford-Binet. Previous work had shown digit span recall speaking rate to be comparable to the examiner's slow rate (one syllable per second) for both DS and language-matched participants.
Thirty individuals with DS were compared to two control groups [non-verbal MA-matched and mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched] on the sentence span and speaking rate for the longest verbatim recalled sentence. Sentence stimuli were presented at a normal speaking rate.
The DS group had shorter sentence memory span than the MA-matched group and a faster, rather than slower, speaking rate (syllables per second) than the MLU-matched controls.
Language production level accounted for a substantial portion of the variance in the sentence memory span in the DS group. Thus, language production skill, rather than speaking rate, predicts variability in verbal memory span.
唐氏综合征（DS）患者的听觉短期记忆跨度比其非语言心理年龄（MA）短得多。本研究使用斯坦福-比奈智力量表的句子记忆子测验，评估了巴德利模型的观点，即言语短期记忆缺陷可能源于说话速度较慢（因此在2秒的被动存储中复述的材料较少）。先前的研究表明，对于DS患者和语言匹配的参与者，数字广度回忆的说话速度与考官的慢速（每秒一个音节）相当。
将30名DS患者与两个对照组[非语言MA匹配组和平均语句长度（MLU）匹配组]在句子跨度和最长逐字回忆句子的说话速度方面进行比较。句子刺激以正常语速呈现。
DS组的句子记忆跨度比MA匹配组短，且说话速度（每秒音节数）比MLU匹配的对照组快，而非慢。
语言产生水平在DS组句子记忆跨度的方差中占很大一部分。因此，语言产生技能而非说话速度可预测言语记忆跨度的变异性。
