LEARNING TO READ - THE ROLE OF SHORT-TERM-MEMORY AND PHONOLOGICAL SKILLS

This study investigates the relationships between reading, short-term memory and phonological skills, and the mechanisms responsible for the short-term memory differences found between groups of children differ ing in reading ability. Differences were found between groups of good, average, and poor readers in verbal, but not visual, short-term memor y and these differences were well explained in terms of differences in speech rate (an index of rehearsal rate) between the groups. Measures of phonological ability, rhyme awareness and phoneme deletion, also s howed strong differences between the different reading ability groups. Regression analyses showed that rhyme awareness, phoneme deletion, an d speech rate (but not verbal short-term memory) had independent predi ctive relationships to reading skill. These findings show that phonolo gical skills do not represent a unitary trait, and that different face ts of phonological ability are important in predicting the development of reading skills. (C) 1994 Academic Press. Inc.