States that speech rate is a strong index of short-term memory
span. Recent discovery that the two are linked in kids; Link established
in adults for some time; Adrian Raine's report in 'Child Development';
Short-term memory is the power behind recall; Importance of short-term
memory in childhood.
By
PT Staff, published on September 01, 1992
MEMORY
If friends criticize you for talking too fast, at least they can't
also accuse you of having a bad memory. Speech rate is a strong index of
short-term memory span. The recent discovery that the two are linked in
kids may be a special boon to those with speech disorders.
"Imagine that your short-term memory is a circular tape loop with
1.6 seconds of memory. Whatever you manage to repeat in that space is
what you immediately rx-call. Therefore, the faster you can talk, the
greater your short-term memory," says Adrian Raine, Ph.D., a University
of Southern California psychologist. The link has been established in
adults for some time, Raine reports in Child Development. Now, he and his
colleagues find the correlation holds for kids as well, a finding that
promises short-term payoff in the classroom and long-term payoff in
life.
Short-term memory is the power behind recall of phone numbers,
directions, and other everyday tasks. It is also the foundation of
arithmetic and reading skills
Raine and his colleagues first looked at 37 children with normal
speech and 37 who, because of a speech disorder, spoke about half as
fast. Then they tested their short-term memory spans.
"The speech-disordered children all had severe impairment of
short-term memory that was not attributable to any general intellectual
deficit," Raine reports. Yet short-term memory is extremely important in
childhood, more so than in adulthood, because that's when you're doing
the most memorizing.
That raises the possibility that speech-training may be a short cut
to achievement. Says Raine: "If you can teach kids with speech disorders
to speak faster, that should have wide-ranging benefits for other aspects
of cognitive development and for their mastery of academic skills." Who
says talk is cheap.
Illustration: (PAUL CORIO)
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