Short term memory and Down syndrome

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What is Down syndrome?
Prevalence of 5 in 10,000, caused by extra chromosome 21
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Baddeley (1986)
Put forward the working memory model of short term memory
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What does this model suggest?
Memory is comprised on short term storage (visa-spatial sketchpad and phonological loop) and central executive processing
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What does verbal short term memory refer to?
The ability to hold verbal information such as a list of words and is linked to the phonological loop of WMM
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What does research suggest?
People with downs syndrome show deficits in verbal short term memory, suggesting that they have deficits within the phonological loop
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What causes the deficit?
A number of factors have been suggested to cause the deficit in VSTM, such as hearing, speech, language, and capacity
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What is VTSM?
Ability to hold sequences of verbal information, for example, a list of words or numbers
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Wang and Bellungi (1994)
Double dissociation task, measured visuo-spatial ability using the Corsi task. In this task, pops watch an experimenter tap on different blocks and then must repeat the sequence
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What was measured?
verbal short term memory using digit span task, where participants must remember a sequence of numbers
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What evidence was provided by this study?
DS performed worse on the VSTM task compared to Williams participants. Whereas, Down syndrome performed better on the Visuospatial task.
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What does this suggest?
This provides a double dissociation which provides sound evidence of not just a deficit in VSTM in DS participants, but neurogenetic evidence of a distinction between VSTM and Visuo-spaital memory
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Vicari et al (1995)
Conducted VSTM task on DS, intellectually disabled pps, TD pps.
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What did they find?
people with downs syndrome performed significantly worse than matched controls and participants with ID
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What does this suggesT?
This suggests that there does appear to be a deficit in VSTM
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What is a problem in Down's syndromes?
Mild to moderate hearing difficulties
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What was one explanation?
Suggests that this could affect how they encode verbal information and in turn lead to poorer VSTM
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Marcel and Armstrong (1992)
Presented digit span task in a visual form rather than auditory.
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If hearing did cause poor VSTM, then what would happen?
Presenting the data visually would result in an increase in performance.
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However what was found?
There was no significant difference in performance when the information was presented visually or auditory
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Concluding what?
Poor VSTM was not due to mishearing the information or failure to encode due to hearing difficulties
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Jarrold and Baddelely (1997)
Investigated the link between hearing and VSTM. In this task children and adolescents with DS had their hearing abilities measured using the McCormick toy discrimination test.
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What happened in this experiment?
Participants must listen to the name of a toy and pick the correct toy from an array.The volume of the instruction is lowered until participants no longer able to make the correct choice.
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What was the second part of the experiment?
Participants were given a digit span task. Then a correlation was conducted between hearing ability and digit span task.
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What was found?
Results found no reliable relationships suggesting that hearing ability had no effect on the performance on the digit task and in turn on VSTM
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Gibson (1978)
People with Down syndrome have poorer articulation, with it being slower and more error prone
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What could this lead to?
Evidence of poorer VSTM as apps are required to repeat the presented list out loud.
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Cowan et al (1992)
Support this speech hypothesis as they argue that in typically developing individuals, the time taken to produce their response in VSTM tasks has a direct effect on memory performance
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Marcell and Weeks (1988)
Adapted the digit and word span tasks to remove the need for full spoken recall. In one adaptation, individuals used numbered blocks to recreate the list sequence.
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What happened in another adaptation?
Individuals pointed at pictures that represented the words on the list
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What was found in both cases?
Despite having the need for full spoken recall to be removed, the manipulations did not improve the number of items recalled successfully
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What could be argued was wrong with this study?
Manipulations may be too confusing? could compare with other disabilities to see if there is still a significant decrease in VSTM. Recognition not recall.
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What does additional evidence support?
The argument that speech is not the primary reason for poor VSTM
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Jarrold et al (2000)
Recorded articulation rates from individuals with DS and matched aged controls and then conducted VSTM span tasks.
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What did they find?
They found that articulation rates didn’t differ between DS and control group, however DS group still had significantly lower VSTM.
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What was the correlation found?
A correlation of articulation rates and STM span found that, for both groups, there was no significant relationship
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Therefore?
it appears that poor speech is not the primary reason for poorer VSTM. It may have some secondary effects, however, is not the main cause of poor VSTM
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What does phonemic discrimination require?
Phonemic awareness. This is the knowledge of the structure or the sound of a word
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For example?
The words bat and ban have similar phonetic structure but are different
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Brock and Jarrold (2004)
Phonemic discrimination did predict VSTM in people with DS
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What were the tasks?
An order memory task, measuredVSTM. This required participants to remember the order that words were presented.
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What was the second task?
The second task was an item memory task which measured language ability. In this task, participants were presented with two similar sounding words or two words that were the same
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What did they find?
They found that performance in the discrimination task (measure of phonemic discrimination) predicted performance of the VSTM task.
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What is one issue with the discrimination task?
It requires VSTM as it is required of the participant to remember the words and compare them, then choose if they are similar or different
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Purser and Jarrold (2013)
participants are presented with two pictures of similar sounding words (e.g. pig and pin) and then hear one of the words. They have to press the image of the word they hear.
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What does this suggest?
Results found in this new task, that DS were better at discriminating between words, however still performed worse compared to TD in the VSTM test
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What would this suggest
Phonemic discrimination was not the primary cause of poorer VSTM
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What is capacity?
The amount of information can be stored in STM
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Miller (1956)
Suggests that the capacity of STM is around 7+-2
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What was argued?
People with DS have a reduced capacity that might lea to the poorer VSTM
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Puser and Jarrold (2005)
Gave pops 4 item lists then rapidly represented 3 out of 4 items and apps had to state which was missing.
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What did they find?
If the missing word was presented earlier in the list performance was worse compared to TD participants, thus suggesting that they have a limited capacity
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

Baddeley (1986)

Back

Put forward the working memory model of short term memory

Card 3

Front

What does this model suggest?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What does verbal short term memory refer to?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What does research suggest?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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