A developmental phonological short-term memory deficit: A case study

A developmental case of phonological short-term memory deficit was studied in a highly educated subject. The subject, BS, who had obtained a Ph.D. in molecular biology, demonstrated striking deficits on some short-term memory tasks, particularly for auditorily presented nonword lists. With visual pr esentation and with meaningful words. he often scored at a normal level. Th e results indicate a deficit in retaining phonological information but an a bility to use visual, lexical, and semantic information to boost recall. De spite this phonological short-term memory deficit. BS scored at a normal le vel on a syntactic comprehension test and on reading of nonwords. He was im paired, however, on repeated list learning, learning of foreign vocabulary, and transcribing dictated materials. The implications of these results for models of short term memory and the uses of phonological retention in cogn itive processing are discussed. (C) 2001 Academic Press.