Memory for serial order in bilingual children

Abstract

Recent studies have suggested that phonological short-term memory (STM) capacity is important for language acquisition. In both, children and grownups, reliable correlations have been obtained between digit span, nonword repetition ability, and vocabulary achievement while factoring out other possible factors like age and nonverbal intelligence (Gathercole, Service, Hitch, Adams, & Martin, 1999; Gathercole, Willis, Emslie, & Baddeley, 1992; Gupta, 2003). Majerus et al. (Majerus, Poncelet, Van der Linden, & Weekes, 2008) found that serial order memory was the most important predictor for new word learning. No evidence was found for item short-term memory as a predictor. Majerus et al. therefore suggested that order short-term memory and phonological awareness are independent predictors of new word learning. Our aim was to investigate the memory for serial order in mono- and bilingual language processing to elicit ERP correlates of item and order STM, during encoding, maintenance and retrieval stages. 25 monolingual native English speakers …