Phonological and lexical coding in verbal short-term memory and learning.

A patient with selective auditory phonological coding defect is described. He also showed a defective auditory verbal short-term memory but could learn lists of words flawlessly, thus closely resembling patients with pure short-term memory defects. We argue that the patient's functional defect could be conceived as a capacity limitation of the phonological short-term store. An experimental evaluation of his verbal short- and long-term memory performances allows a discussion of the interaction of phonological and lexical coding processes in verbal short-term memory and learning.