Phonological short-term memory contributions to sentence processing in young children

Two experiments investigated the contribution of phonological short-term me mory to the processing of spoken sentences by 4- and 5-year-old children. I n Experiment 1, sentences contained either short or longer words, and varie d in syntactic structure. Overall, repetition but not comprehension of the sentences was significantly influenced by word length. In Experiment 2, chi ldren selected on the basis of their high phonological short-term memory ab ility were founded to be superior at repeating sentences to children of low er phonological short-term memory ability, although the two groups did not differ in their comprehension accuracy for the same sentences. In both expe riments, comprehension and repetition performance were differently influenc ed by particular sentence structures. It is proposed that sentence repetiti on in children is constrained by phonological memory capacity, and is there fore directly influenced by memory-related factors that include the length and number of words in sentences, and individual differences in memory skil ls.