Is the phonological loop responsible for intelligence-related differences in forward digit span?

F A Conners; M D Carr; S Willis

doi:10.1352/0895-8017(1998)103<0001:itplrf>2.0.co;2

Home/Archive/PubMed

PubMed · 9678225

Is the phonological loop responsible for intelligence-related differences in forward digit span?

F A Conners·M D Carr·S Willis

View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Children with mild mental retardation were compared with CA-matched and verbal-age-matched children without mental retardation on a forward digit span task. Forward digit span is typically used as a measure of the phonological loop (Baddeley, 1986). We hypothesized that intelligence-related differences in forward digit span are largely due to central executive functioning rather than phonological loop functioning. Results showed that the highly significant group difference in forward digit span was reduced to nonsignificance when a measure of central executive functioning was covaried out.

Explore related subjects

Attention Child Female Humans Intellectual Disability Intelligence Male Mental Recall Phonetics Reference Values Serial Learning Speech Perception Journal Article Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

F A Conners, M D Carr, S Willis. 1998. Is the phonological loop responsible for intelligence-related differences in forward digit span?. https://doi.org/10.1352/0895-8017(1998)103%3C0001%3Aitplrf%3E2.0.co%3B2

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed2007

A low glycaemic index breakfast cereal preferentially prevents children's cognitive performance from declining throughout the morning.

This study investigated whether the glycaemic index (GI) of breakfast cereal differentially affects children's attention and memory. Using a balanced cross-over design, on two consecutive mornings 64 children aged 6-11 years were given a high GI cereal and a low GI cereal in a counterbalanced order. They performed a series of computerised tests of attention and memory, once prior to breakfast and three times following breakfast at hourly intervals. The results indicate that children's performance declines throughout the morning and that this decline can be significantly reduced following the intake of a low GI cereal as compared with a high GI cereal on measures of accuracy of attention (M=-6.742 and -13.510, respectively, p<0.05) and secondary memory (M=-30.675 and -47.183, respectively, p<0.05).

Attention↗

PubMed2007

Distraction in the urology operating theatre.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Attention↗

PubMed2007

Inhibitory control test is a simple method to diagnose minimal hepatic encephalopathy and predict development of overt hepatic encephalopathy.

OBJECTIVES: To compare inhibitory control test (ICT), a simple/rapid test of attention, to a standard psychometric battery (SPT) to diagnose minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE) and predict development of overt hepatic encephalopathy (OHE) in cirrhotic patients. METHODS: Fifty nonalcoholic cirrhotics and 50 age/educational-status-matched controls were given ICT and SPT in the same sitting. Performance impaired beyond two standard deviations of controls was considered MHE in cirrhotics. ICT results (lure/target response and lures/person) were compared between controls and cirrhotics and within cirrhotics with/without MHE. Receiver-operating characteristic analysis was used to study ICT for MHE diagnosis. Twenty subjects were administered SPT and ICT twice to assess test-retest reliability. All cirrhotics were followed routinely for the development of OHE. RESULTS: Cirrhotics performed worse than controls on SPT and ICT. Using SPT, 39 cirrhotics had MHE. ICT was administered faster than SPT (15 vs 37 min). Cirrhotics with MHE had significantly higher lure (28%vs 3%) and lower target response (91%vs 96%) compared with those without MHE. Lure/person >5 had 90% sensitivity/specificity for MHE diagnosis. AUC for receiver-operating characteristic for lures alone was 95.8%. Lure and target responses were highly correlated (r= 0.9) between sessions showing high test-retest reliability. Five (10%) patients developed OHE on f/u of 26 +/- 10 months; all five had been diagnosed with MHE using ICT and SPT. None of the five patients with discordant results on SPT and ICT developed OHE. CONCLUSIONS: ICT has good sensitivity/specificity for MHE diagnosis, is reliable and is equivalent to SPT for predicting OHE development.

Attention↗