Perceptual andMotor Skills, 1994, 79, 55-64.

O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1994

PROCEDURE FOR ASSESSING VERBAL WORKING MEMORY

I N NORMAL SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN: SOME
PRELIMINARY DATA I'

CYNTHIA A. GAULIN AND THOMAS F. CAMPBELL

Cbildreni Hospitnl of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Summary.-A procedure for assessing children's recall of lexical icems m the pres-
ence of a competing language task is described. The Competing Language Processing
Task was designed to reflect the dynamic processes carried out in workmg memory
during language comprehension and production by requiring that the subject hold
words in temporary storage while analyzing and responding as true or false to state-
ments. The development of the procedure is described and results of testing of 68
normal chddren ages 6, 8, 10, and 12 years are presented.

Short-term memory, which for decades was considered a system for the
temporary storage of information for immediate recall, has recently been con-
ceptualized more broadly as a dynamic system which integrates the storage,
retrieval, and processing of complex information. This comprehensive and
dynamic system is referred to as working memory and is central to language
comprehension and production (Baddeley, 1986). W M e clinicians and theo-
rists often agree on the importance of working memory to language pro-
cessing, they are far less unified on the specific processes underlying working
memory. I n addition, they disagree about the most valid and reliable meth-
ods of evaluation. The objective of this paper is to describe the Competing
Language Processing Task, a procedure for estimating children's verbal work-
- -

ing-memory capacity. We describe the development and use of the procedure

and provide data on the performance of 68 normal school-age children.
Clinicians and researchers studying children's language performance and
- -

language disorders have various reasons for assessing capacity of working

memory. First, according to current models (Baddeley, 1986; Just & Carpen-
ter, 1992), successful comprehension and production of spoken language de-
pend on the continuous integration of linguistic information in working mem-
ory. While listening to lectures, responding to questions, or reading, the stu-
dent must perceive, encode, analyze, compare, and store an ongoing stream
of verbal information. The demands on verbal working memory increase

'This research was supported, in part, by NIDCD Research Grant DC0138-02. We thank Con-
nie Tompkins, Chris DoUaghan, Steve Gaulin, and Gary Holdgrafer for consultation on theo-
retical and methodological aspects of the work and for commenting on previous drafts. Special
thanks are extended to the faculty, staff, and students of the Pittsburgh Public Schools and M e -
ghen Intermediate Unit who participated in the project.
2 ~ d L e s scorres ondence to Cynthia A. Gaulin, Department of Aud~olo~y and Communication
Disorders, chiIdlrenen's Hospital of Pittsburgh, 200 Meyran Avenue, Pitrsburgh, PA 115213.
56 C. A. GAULIN & T. F. CAMPBELL

throughout the period of language learning as children encounter longer and

more complex sentences and lecture and reading become the dominant
modes of learning in school. If some aspects of language processing are inef-
ficient and require additional resources to perform effectively, then total ca-
pacity of working memory may be exceeded and language comprehension or
production compromised.
Second, recent research suggests that verbal working memory is associ-
ated with performance on a variety of language tasks. For example, in a
series of studies of the relations among working-memory capacity, syntactic
processing, and reading abilities, King and Just (1991) found that individual
differences in syntactic processing by college students were related to the
amount of working memory available for language comprehension processes.
They reported that subjects with low capacity showed poorer comprehension
of syntactically complex sentences than those subjects with high capacity.
These results are consistent with the findings of earlier studies by Daneman
and Carpenter (1980, 1983) which showed that differences in working mem-
ory predict performance on specific reading comprehension tasks for college
students.
Finally, differences have been found in phonological memory of normal
and language-disordered children. Gathercole and Baddeley (1990) found
that language-disordered children exhibited poorer performance when repeat-
ing nonsense words and recahng word lists than two control groups who
were matched with them on verbal abilities and nonverbal intelligence, re-
spectively. Gathercole and Baddeley proposed that, for these language-dis-
ordered subjects, problems with phonological storage in working memory
may ". . . play a central role in their disordered language development" (p.
336).
Although the current research findings are far from conclusive, available
studies do suggest an association between ability to maintain verbal informa-
tion actively in working memory and performance on various language tasks.
Procedures that clarify the relationship between working memory and lan-
guage performance could have important clinical and research implications.
Previous efforts to measure verbal memory have involved verbatim repe-
tition of sentences or lists of digits, letters, or words. These tasks measure
static memory capacity and have been shown to be poor predictors of success
on tasks which require efficient allocation of limited resources to achieve
integrated linguistic processing (Perfetti & Goldman, 1976). King and Just
(1991) suggested that this is the case because simple word- or digit-span
tasks place limited demands on the resources associated with language com-
prehension and production. By contrast, the Competing Language Processing
Task was developed to estimate verbal memory capacity, taking into account
the dynamic nature of working memory in language performance.
 CHILDREN'S VERBAL MEMORY, LANGUAGE PROCESSING

Description and Development of the Procedure

The Competing Language Processing Task is based on the experimental
listening span test developed by Daneman and Carpenter (1980) to measure
verbal memory span of adults. Their test required subjects to listen to groups
of 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 sentences, respond "true" or "false" to each sentence,
and then, after each group
- . of sentences, recall the last word of each sentence

in that group. Sentences were 9 to 16 words in length and were reported to

be of moderate difficulty. Performance on the listening span test was strong-
ly correlated with reading comprehension and Verbal SAT scores.
Because it has been designed for use with children, the Competing Lan-
guage Processing Task uses shorter and less difficult sentences than those
used in Daneman and Carpenter's listening span test. I t requires children
semantically analyze and verify the truth of sentences while holding the last
word of each sentence in working memory for recall at the end of each
group. As in the listening span test, the requirement of a response ensures
that sentence comprehension takes place and prevents subjects from concen-
trating solely on the word-recall task.
As illustrated in Table 1, the 42 true and false statements of the task are
arranged in two groups at each of six levels of difficulty. The two groups at
Level 1 each require comprehension of one statement and recall of only one
word. The number of statements in each group increases by one at each
level, reaching a total of six statements to be analyzed and six words to be
recalled in each of the two groups at Level 6 . Half of the statements pre-
sented at each level are true and half are false. However, because at some
levels the groups contain an odd number of statements, the number of true
and false statements in each group differs.
The true and false statements for the task were constructed to control
for length and difficulty. Each statement contains three words (subject-
verb-object, subject-verb-modifier, or subject-auxiliary-main verb). Simple vo-
cabulary and unambiguous content were used to ensure that the statements
could be understood by children as young as 6 years of age. I n addition, an
attempt was made to balance processing demands across groups of test state-
ments. To d o this, 25 true statements and 25 false statements were presented
individually to six children between the ages of 5 and 12 years (2 boys ages
6-8 and 7-10 yr.; 4 girls ages 5-6, 6-7, 7-5, and 12-6 yr.). The subjects
were asked to respond "yes" or "no" to each statement as quickly as they
could without making mistakes. Each stimulus sentence was presented by the
examiner at a speaking rate of approximately 1.5 words per sec. using live
voice. Both the presentation and the subjects' responses were tape recorded
using a Sony TCM 5000EV tape recorder. Response latency, which is as-
sumed to be an indicator of increased processing demands (Sternberg,
58 C. A. GAULIN & T. F. CAMPBELL

TABLE 1
PRACTICE
AND TEST ITEMSFOR COMPETING
LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
TASK

Group Correct Child's Response Word Recall

Response
Practice Items
Children can plav. Y Y
Apples are black. N Y
Ice is hot. N Y
Mice eat cheese. Y Y
Test Items
Level 1
Trees have &. Y Y
Trains can b. N Y
Level 2
Pumpkins are purple. N Y
Buses have a. Y Y
Boys can eat. Y Y
Bananas are &. N Y
Level 3
Carrots can dance. N Y
Water is &. N Y
Sugar is sweet. . Y Y
Buckets tell h. N Y
Horses have &. Y Y
Milk isa. Y Y
Level 4
Feathers can &. Y Y
Babies drive &. N Y
Birds can b. Y Y
Cars builde. N Y
Snails have &. Y Y
Chairs eat &
c N Y
Giants arc 4 N Y
Balloons can h. Y Y
Level 5
Shoes have ears. N Y
Fire burns paper. Y Y
Robins eat worms. Y Y
Cars can race. Y Y
Hotdogs can &. N Y
Horses have feet. Y Y
Dishes can &. N Y
Fish pull -. N Y
Roses have thorns. Y Y
Cats can &. N Y
Level 6
Apples are w. N Y
Rabbits read &. N Y
Houses can iump. N Y
(continued on next page)
 CHILDREN'S VERBAL MEMORY, LANGUAGE PROCESSING

TABLE 1 (CONT'D)
PRAcTlCE AND LANGUAGE
TESTITEMS FORCOMPETING TASK
PROCESSING

Group Correct Child's Response Word Recall

Res~onse
Pencils eat c h .
Airplanes can fl~.
Balls are &.
2 Fish can s.lm
Clouds wear slll,pers
Sheep eat lions
People have w.
Dogs can run.
Lemons are &.
Percentage Correct - TrueIFalse
Percentage Correct - Word Recall Score

1969; Meyer, 1970), was measured for each sentence. Using a visual display
of the recorded speech segment, C-Speech (Milenkovic, 1988), the interval
between the end of the examiner's statement and the onset of phonation of
each child's response was measured. The mean response time across the six
children for each item and the over-all mean and standard deviation of re-
sponse times were calculated (over-all M = 822 msec., SD = 428 msec.). I n
deciding which sentences would be used in the final version of the proce-
dure, any item with an average response time across subjects of more than 1
standard deviation from the mean was eliminated on the grounds that it was
more or less demanding of processing resources than the average for the 50
statements. This eliminated six items (four appeared too demanding and two
not demanding enough). Response accuracy across the six subjects was 98%
or better for all items included. Two additional statements were eliminated at
random to arrive at the 42 statements required to make up two groups of
statements at each of six levels. These 42 statements had a mean response
time of 741 msec, with a standard deviation of 169 msec. Statements were
compiled so that the mean processing time of the statements within any one
group did not differ significantly from that of any other group.
The test protocol, consisting of these 42 statements, sample items, and
instructions, was tape recorded by a female examiner. The instructions were
read at 160 wpm. Each test statement required approximately two seconds to
present. Each statement was followed by a 3- or 4-second pause during
which time the subject was expected to respond "yes" or "no" to the true
or false statement. At the end of each group of statements, after another 3-
or 4-second (M= 3.8) pause, the examiner asked "What was the last word of
each sentence?"
Subjects
The 68 subjects were drawn from public and private schools in an east-
60 C. A . GAULIN & T. F. CAMPBELL

ern urban center and nearby suburbs. Teachers were asked to identify 6-, 8-,
lo-, and 12-yr.-old children from English-speaking homes who were perform-
ing within age expectations academically and had no history of neurological
deficits, speech or language therapy, psychological treatment, or special ser-
vices for reading or learning disabilities. Each subject selected (a) was in a
regular classroom at an elementary or middle school, (b) scored at or above
the 16th percentile on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-
R) (Dunn & Dunn, 1981), (c) showed a complete phonemic inventory based
on imitation of multisyllabic words (adapted from Catts, 1986), and (d) had
normal hearing when screened at 25 dB for frequencies 1000, 2000, and
4000 Hz. An attempt was made to test equal numbers of children of each
age and gender. Table 2 displays the breakdown of subjects by age, gender,
and race and shows the mean PPVT-R score for each group.

TABLE 2

Group: Sex/Race Age Groups, yr. All

6 8 10 12
n 17 19 17
Gender Boys 8 10 8
Girls 9 9 9
Race White 15 16 12
Black 2 2 5
0 ther 1
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, Standard Score
M 115.53 115.79 120.65
Ranae 85-145 96-143 102-144

Procedure
The Competing Language Processing Task was presented to each subject
on tape via a Sony tape recorder (TCM 5000EV) through frequency-matched
earphones (Sennheiser HD 450). Volume was adjusted to each subject's com-
fort level before beginning the procedure. The following instructions were
given to each subject:
I am going to read you some true and false sentences. After each one I want you to say "yes"
or "no." After we have done a group of sentences I will ask you to tell me the last word of each
sentence in that group. Don't worry about getting them in the right order. As we go on, the
groups wd have more sentences. I t will get hard and you won't be able to ask any questions,
but I want you to keep on trying to do the best you can. Remember to say "yes" or "no" after
each sentence. Then, when I ask you, please say the last word of each sentence you just heard.
Do you understand? Let's try some for practice.

The practice items were repeated until the subject understood the task.
When necessary, the examiner stopped the tape during the practice items to
 CHILDREN'S VERBAL MEMORY, LANGUAGE PROCESSING 61

clarify instructions. Nearly all subjects, including the 6-yr.-olds, were able to
perform the task competently after it was demonstrated to them twice.
Other Measures of Verbal Memory
To compare performance on the task with performance on other verbal
memory tests, measures of digit span and memory for unrelated words were
administered. The Auditory Sequences subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycho-
linguistic Abilities (ITPA) (Kirk, McCarthy, & Kirk, 1968) was chosen as
the digit-span task. It was administered and scored as described in the manu-
al, but for a more direct comparison to the present task, the percentage of
total items correct rather than t h e scaled score was used in analysis.
The Word Sequences subtest of the Detroit Tests of Learning Apti-
tude-2 (DTLA-2) (Hammill, 1985) was used as the measure of memory
for unrelated words. It was administered and scored according to standard
procedures described in the manual. Once again, for comparison purposes,
the percentage of total items correct was used in the analysis.
Test Sequence
The 40-min. battery was administered in the order, Hearing screening,
PPVT-R, Competing Language Processing Task, multisyllabic-word irnita-
tion, ITPA Auditory Sequences subtest, and DTLA-2 Word Sequences
subtest. Testing took place in a quiet room separated from other school activ-
ities and was conducted by one of the authors or by a trained research as-
sistant. Responses were recorded by hand and, for all tests except the
PPVT-R, were tape recorded using a second Sony TCM 5000EV tape re-
corder with a Sony E C M 150T microphone.

Performance on the Competing Language Processing Task

Table 3 presents each age group's mean, standard deviation, and range
of scores for both the true and false and word-recall components of the task.
There were three a priori contrasts of interest in each dataset, including com-
parisons of 6- and 8-yr.-olds, 8- and 10-yr.-olds, and 10- and 12-yt-olds.
Therefore, a Bonferroni-corrected t statistic (Kirk, 1968, p. 79) was used to
test for differences in percent of performance across these age levels. For
both the true-false and word-recall tasks, a family-wise alpha level of .05
(two-tailed) was selected, yielding a statistical criterion of p < .O2 (two-tailed)
for each of the three a priori contrasts.
True-False performance.-One component of the Competing Language
Processing Task is a semantic-analysis task that requires subjects to respond
to true and false statements. As shown in Table 3, the means and standard
deviations are similar across the four age levels. All subjects performed with
high accuracy. No statistically significant differences obtained between the
 C. A. GAULIN & T. F. CAMPBELL

TABLE 3
DEVIATIONS,
~ ~ A N STANDARD
S , A N D RANGES OF PERCENTCORRECT
FORTRUE-FALSE
A N D WORD-RECALL TASKS BY AGE

Measure Aee G r o u ~ vr.

.

True-False 97.76 2.14 99.25 1.39 98.74 1.49 99.21 1.47

Range 92.86-100 95.24-100 95.24-100 95.24-100
Word Recall 50.28 11.35 60.40 8.70 71.29 12.10 73.33 12.08
Range 30.95-73.81 45.24-80.95 38.09-85.71 57.14-95.24

performance of the 6- and 8-yr.-olds (t,, = - 2.44, p = .02), 8- and 10-yr.-olds

(t,4= 1.05, p = .31), or 10- and 12-yr.-olds (t,, = - .89, p = .39).
Word-recall performance. -The word-recall component of the task re-
quired subjects to recall the last word of each true-false statement presented
in a given group. This portion of the task provides an estimate of working-
memory capacity for lexical information as well as an indication of the effi-
ciency with which limited processing resources are allocated. Fig. 1 illustrates
each age group's performance on the word-recall task. A significant differ-
ence was found between 6- and 8-yr.-olds (t,, = - 2.98, p = .006) and be-
tween 8- and 10-yr.-olds (t,, = - 3.07, p = ,004). The difference in word recall
between 10- and 12-yr.-olds was not significant (t,, = - .47, p = .64). So, abil-
ity seems to be age-related to some extent.

RGE GROUP

FIG.1. Means and standard deviations for word-recall task for four Jge groups, 6, 8, 10,
and 12 yr. old

Correlation With Other Measures

Previous studies have shown a relationship between capacity of working
memory and language performance (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980, 1983;
 CHILDREN'S VERBAL MEMORY, LANGUAGE PROCESSING 63

Gathercole & Baddeley, 1970; King & Just, 1991) but that verbatim repeti-
tion tasks do not adequately simulate the demands of language comprehen-
sion and production (Perfetti & Goldman, 1776; King & Just, 1971). For
this reason, the relationships between performance on the Competing Lan-
guage Processing Task, PPVT-R, and digit- and word-repetition tests were
examined across all age groups using simple bivariate Pearson correlations
(Table 4). The correlation between each pair of variables was significant
( p < .01). As anticipated, the strength of the correlation between the recep-
tive vocabulary measure (PPVT-R) and each of the measures of verbatim
memory was weak (r = .35 in both cases). The correlations between the two
measures of verbatim repetition and the Competing Language Processing
Task were moderate ( r = .46 for Digit Span and r = .49 for Word Sequences),
but the stronger correlation between the Competing Language Processing
Task and the PPVT-R ( r = .63) may hint at a more linguistic basis for the
Competing Language Processing Task than for the other two verbal memory
tasks. However, these differences were nonsignificant using Hotelling's for-
mula ( p > .05).

TABLE 4
BNARUTECORRELATIONCOEFFICIENTS*
FORCOMPETINGLANGUAGE
PROCESSING
TASK
(WORDRECALL),DIGITSPAN,WORDSEQLJENCES,
AND PPVT-R PERFORMANCE
Measure 1 2 3 4
1. Competing Language Processing Task
2. Digit Span
3. Word Sequences
4. Peabody PVT-Revised

DISCUSSION
We found that, while true-false judgments remained stable across the
ages tested, there was a developmental trend for increased word recall at
least through age 10. This suggests that the abihty to carry out such simulta-
neous processing improves with age at least to a certain point. This im-
provement may be the result of increased capacity of working memory, more
efficient allocation of resources to competing tasks, or both.
The question remains whether the competing and difficult processing
demands of the Competing Language Processing Task make it a more sen-
sitive predictor of impaired or inconsistent language performance than mea-
sures of verbatim repetition. Our results suggest that, for children with nor-
mal language skills, a stronger relationship may exist between performance
on the Competing Language Processing Task and receptive vocabulary
knowledge than between the Competing Language Processing Task and two
measures of verbatim repetition. To document this result further, cross-sec-
64 C. A. GAULIN & T. F. CAMPBELL

tional and longitudinal studies should be carried out with normal and lan-
guage-disordered children to investigate the procedure's relations with known
measures of language performance and to verify its sensitivity and specificity
in identifying children with or at risk for language-processing difficulties. I n
addition, researchers should address whether children with varying capacity
of working memory display specific patterns of language performance and to
what extent communicative context affects the language processing of such
children.
At the present time the Competing Language Processing Task, in con-
junction with other measures of language and memory, may be a useful tool
for identifying and quantifying deficits in verbal working memory that may
be associated with inefficient language performance. To this end, the means
and standard deviations presented for each of the four age groups provide
preliminary guidelines for age-appropriate performance.
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Accepted May I G, 1994.