| Summary: | A substantial body of research points to the possibility that deficits in verbal memory
processes may contribute to the atypical language development of children with specific
language impairment (SLI). The current study used a short-term memory task to explore
children's use of visual and verbal coding strategies to remember pictures of objects.
Participants were 39 children, 13 children with SLI and two normal language control groups of
13 children each, one matched by age (AM) and one by language level (LM) with the SLI
children. Subjects performed a memory task in which they were briefly presented with a target
picture and then selected its match from an array of three pictures in which the target was either
an identical match (identity condition), a basic level category match (category condition), or a
visual match (shape condition). Children with SLI showed a pattern of a larger reaction time
difference between the category and identity conditions than their AM peers. If it is true that the
category condition rewards verbal coding, then relatively slower performance on this condition
suggests that the SLI children may not be relying on verbal codes to the same degree as the AM
children. A deficit in using verbal codes could explain the learning difficulties experienced by
children with language impairment, both in the domain of language and more generally. === Medicine, Faculty of === Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of === Graduate
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