PHONOLOGICAL WORKING-MEMORY IN VERY YOUNG-CHILDREN

This study was designed to establish whether phonological working memo ry skills could be assessed in children below 4 years of age. A group of 2- and 3-year-old children were tested on 3 phonological memory mea sures (digit span, nonword repetition. and word repetition) and were a lso given tasks that tapped other cognitive skills. Scores on the 3 ph onological memory tasks were closely related. In addition, repetition performance was linked with both vocabulary knowledge and articulation rate. Results indicate that phonological memory skills can be reliabl y assessed in very young children by using conventional serial span an d repetition procedures.