Cain Kate
Lancaster University, UK.
Memory. 2006 Jul;14(5):553-69. doi: 10.1080/09658210600624481.
Three experiments compared the verbal memory skills of children with poor reading comprehension with that of same-age good comprehenders. The aims were to determine if semantic and/or inhibitory deficits explained comprehenders' problems on measures of verbal short-term memory and verbal working memory. In Experiment 1 there were no group differences on word- and number-based measures of short-term storage and no evidence that semantic knowledge mediated word recall. In Experiment 2 poor comprehenders were impaired on word- and number-based assessments of working memory, the greatest deficit found on the word-based task. Error analysis of both word-based tasks revealed that poor comprehenders were more likely to recall items that should have been inhibited than were good comprehenders. Experiment 3 extended this finding: Poor comprehenders were less able to inhibit information that was no longer relevant. Together, these findings suggest that individual differences in inhibitory processing influence the ability to regulate the contents of working memory, which may contribute to the differential memory performance of good and poor comprehenders.
三项实验比较了阅读理解能力较差的儿童与同龄阅读理解能力良好的儿童的言语记忆技能。目的是确定语义和/或抑制缺陷是否能解释阅读理解能力良好者在言语短期记忆和言语工作记忆测试中的问题。在实验1中，基于单词和数字的短期存储测试中没有发现组间差异，也没有证据表明语义知识能介导单词回忆。在实验2中，阅读理解能力较差者在基于单词和数字的工作记忆评估中表现受损，在基于单词的任务中发现的缺陷最大。对两项基于单词的任务进行错误分析发现，阅读理解能力较差者比阅读理解能力良好者更有可能回忆起本应被抑制的项目。实验3扩展了这一发现：阅读理解能力较差者更难以抑制不再相关的信息。综合这些发现表明，抑制加工方面的个体差异会影响调节工作记忆内容的能力，这可能导致阅读理解能力良好者和较差者在记忆表现上的差异。
