scholarly journals The Relationship of Executive Functions and Speech Production in Senior Preschool Children: Working Memory and Storytelling

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 56-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.N. Veraksa ◽  
E. Ochepkova ◽  
D.A. Bukhalenkova ◽  
N. Kartushina

The article presents the data of the study of working memory and features of oral monologue speech in preschool children. 269 children (133 boys and 136 girls) aged 5-6 years (M=5.6 years; Sd=0.48) attending the senior group of kindergarten in Moscow were examined. Features of oral monologue speech development were studied using methods developed in the Russian neuropsychology: tasks for retelling the text and compiling the story of a series of pictures. General neuropsychological parameters, separate lexical and grammatical (morphology and syntax) indicators, macrostructure of the narrative were analyzed in the evaluation of children's responses. As a result of the correlation and cluster analysis, similar links were obtained: the level of working memory development in preschoolers is correlated with such indicators of the child's speech development as semantic completeness of the text, its adequacy, programming of speech message, the number of words and sentences in the text, the development of macrostructure and the type of narrative. Based on the results, it is concluded that the most general and global indicators of the macrostructure of the text are significantly associated with the development of working memory. At the same time, the development of verbal working memory is more associated with the development of speech in preschool children compared to visual working memory. The authors come to the conclusion that with a well-developed auditory working memory, the child's speech will be more correct lexically and grammatically.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Aleksander Veraksa ◽  
Daria Bukhalenkova ◽  
Natalia Kartushina ◽  
Ekaterina Oshchepkova

This study examined the relationship between working memory capacity and narrative abilities in 5–6-year-old children. 269 children were assessed on their visual and verbal working memory and performed in a story retelling and a story creation (based on a single picture and on a series of pictures) tasks. The stories were evaluated on their macrostructure and microstructure. The results revealed a significant relationship between both components (verbal and visual) of working memory and the global indicators of a story’s macrostructure—such as semantic completeness, semantic adequacy, programming and narrative structure—and with the indicators of a story’s microstructure, such as grammatical accuracy and number of syntagmas. Yet, this relationship was systematically stronger for verbal working memory, as compared to visual working memory, suggesting that a well-developed verbal working memory leads to lexically and grammatically more accurate language production in preschool children.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jefferson Ortega ◽  
Chelsea Reichert Plaska ◽  
Bernard A Gomes ◽  
Timothy M Ellmore

Spontaneous eye blink rate (sEBR) has been found to be a non-invasive indirect measure of striatal dopamine activity. Dopamine (DA) neurons project to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) through the mesocortical dopamine pathway and their activity is implicated in a range of cognitive functions, including attention and working memory (WM). The goal of the present study was to understand how fluctuations in sEBR during different phases of a working memory task relate to task performance. Across two experiments, with recordings of sEBR inside and outside of a magnetic resonance imaging bore, we observed sEBR to be positively correlated with WM performance during the WM delay period. Additionally we investigated the non-linear relationship between sEBR and WM performance, and modeled a proposed Inverted-U-shape relationship between DA and WM performance. We also investigated blink duration, which is proposed to be related to sustained attention, and found blink duration to be significantly shorter during the encoding and probe periods of the task. Taken together, these results provide support towards sEBR as an important correlate of working memory task performance. The relationship of sEBR to DA activity and the influence of DA on the PFC during WM maintenance is discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Stanford ◽  
Hélène Delage

Working memory (WM) limitations are frequently reported for children with specific learning disorder (SLD). However, WM capacity influences more than literacy and numeracy, as research highlights the contribution of WM to language development, in particular syntax. In this article, the authors study the effect of syntactic intervention, i.e. syntactic elements intervening between filler and gap, on comprehension in children with SLD and evaluate the relationship of this effect to WM capacity. Specifically, they assess how these children comprehend wh-questions and relative clauses. Additionally, they examine how comprehension relates to WM, measured by backward digit recall. The authors report that a subgroup of children with SLD struggle to comprehend structures containing intervention, and that WM capacity influences performance in SLD. Their conclusion is that computing a syntactic relation in which a moved object and an intervening subject share a featural specification taxes the processing system of children with SLD who have WM limitations. Thus, syntactic difficulties, although not typically associated with SLD, may form part of the SLD profile, especially when WM capacity is reduced.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina M. Lukasik ◽  
Otto Waris ◽  
Anna Soveri ◽  
Minna Lehtonen ◽  
Matti Laine

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