ABSTRACT

1
Working Memory and Expressive Language in
Toddlers Hillary A. Langley, Debra Childress,
Barbara D. Goldman, J. Steven
Reznick Department of Psychology, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill ____________________
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• METHOD
• Participants 29 toddlers (14 male, 15 female)
  between the ages of 26.3 29.7 months old (M
  27.9 months old)
• Procedure Testing occurred in two one-hour
  sessions on two different days (Visit 2 typically
  occurred within 2-10 days of Visit 1, M 6.3 day
  delay). Toddlers performed the same set of tasks
  at each visit.
• Working Memory Tasks
• Cotton Ball Box Game Child asked to find object
  hidden in 1 of 3 or 5 hiding locations (wells in
  a cotton-filled container), after a 7, 14, or 20
  second delay

• RESULTS
• Correlations between WM Tasks Expressive
  Language Measures
• Pearson Product Moment Correlation Values
  (with degrees of freedom)

• ABSTRACT
• We measured working memory and expressive
  language in twenty-nine toddlers aged 26 to 28
  months old, in two visits that occurred one week
  apart. Each toddler was assessed using four
  working memory tasks and two expressive language
  measures at each visit. Three of the four working
  memory tasks were variations of delayed-response
  tasks, in which an object was hidden in one of
  several possible locations. A delay of several
  seconds was introduced, a distraction was
  provided (i.e., to direct attention away from
  where the object was hidden), and then the
  toddler attempted to find the desired object. The
  fourth working memory task was a nonsense word
  repetition task, in which each toddler was asked
  to repeat strings of nonsense words in increasing
  lengths. As with the other three working memory
  tasks, the toddler needed to store, use, and then
  discard information on each trial, but instead of
  remembering a location, the child had to remember
  the correct sequence of non-words in the word
  string.
• The two expressive language measures were
  the Expressive Language Subscale of the Mullen
  Scales of Early Learning and the parental report
  MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development
  Inventory.
• None of the three delayed-response hiding
  tasks that tap spatial memory had strong
  associations with expressive language ability. In
  contrast, the nonsense word repetition task was
  highly correlated with each of the expressive
  language measures (see table).
• INTRODUCTION
• --Working memory (WM) is a limited capacity
  system that keeps information stored temporarily
  while simultaneously allowing us to use this
  information to develop a plan, perform a task, or
  solve a problem.
• --Because WM is a temporary storage system that
  strengthens our capacity for thinking, it may
  have implications for language processing, and
  disorders in WM may affect language processes.
• HYPOTHESIS
• I hypothesize that we will find an association
  between working memory capabilities and
  expressive language in 27-month-old toddlers
  (i.e., increased working memory performance will
  be related to higher expressive language
  abilities as measured directly and by parental
  report).

27-month-old watching the examiner hide an
object during the cotton ball box game
Child locating the egg during the egg hunt game
p lt .05 p lt .01