Phonological Memory and Vocabulary Learning in Children with Focal Lesions

Eleven children with early focal lesions were compared with 70 age-matched controls to assess their performance in repeating nonwords, in learning new words, and in immediate serial recall, a triad of abilities that are believed to share some aspects of underlying processing (e.g., Baddeley, Gathercole, & Papagno, 1998). Results for the experimental group were also compared with other assessments previously reported for the same children by MacWhinney, Feldman, Sacco, and Vald´es-P´erez (2000). The children with brain injury showed substantial impairment relative to controls in the experimental tasks, in contrast with relatively unimpaired performance on measures of vocabulary and nonverbal intelligence. The relationships between word learning, nonword repetition, and immediate serial recall were similar to those observed in several other populations. These results confirm previous reports that there are persistent processing impairments following early brain injury, despite developmental plasticity. They also suggest that word learning, nonword repetition, and immediate serial recall may be relatively demanding tasks, and that their relationship is a fundamental aspect of the cognitive system.