Do children with phonological delay have phonological short-term and phonological working memory deficits?

While little is known about why children make speech errors, it has been hypothesized that cognitive-linguistic factors may underlie phonological speech sound disorders. This study compared the phonological short-term and phonological working memory abilities (using immediate memory tasks) and receptive vocabulary size of 14 monolingual preschool children with phonological delay with individually matched peers with typical speech development. The immediate memory tasks examined forward recall of familiar words (pointing response), reverse recall of familiar words (pointing response), and reverse recall of digits (spoken response). The results indicated that children with typical speech development had larger receptive vocabularies and performed significantly better than children with phonological delay on all immediate memory tasks. Qualitative error analyses revealed that while the two groups made similar errors on the forward memory task, children with phonological delayed performed differently on reverse recall of spoken digits. These findings suggest a link between immediate memory and delayed phonological development.