Taxonomic and frequency associations in memory in learning-disabled and non-disabled children.

Abstract

This study addressed the semantic memory processes of learning disabled (LD) and non-disabled children. The semantic memory deficits of LD students are familiar to most educators; however, the nature of these difficulties is not understood precisely. Some researchers propose that an early form of memory organization is association of items by frequency. These associative relations may be the precursors to taxonomic memory organization, thus may be weak in LD children. This study examined second and sixth grade children's free recall organization of two types of 3 word lists: one in which items were associated by frequency and one in which items were related taxonomically; within each word list, half of the items were primary category members or frequency associates and half were secondary category members or frequency associates. It was hypothesized that younger, non-disabled children would rely more on frequency associations and that older, unimpaired subjects would tend to organize the material categorically. Learning disabled subjects were predicted to show impairments in the ability to form both frequency associations and categories during recall, particularly for the secondary items. These results were not found. Younger, non-disabled subjects organized words categorically as proficiently as their older peers, and LD children's categorization abilities were comparable to non-disabled subjects'. The only item type for which LD subjects showed significantly less clustering than non-disabled subjects was secondary frequency associates, which were viewed as representing the periphery of the knowledge base. The principal difference between this study and previous, similar research was the use of individual, child-generated word lists. Because all words were highly familiar and meaningful to the children, relationships between most of the items were probably quite salient, more so than in other studies using adult-generated words as stimuli. Thus, this study indicates that LD children are not impaired in their ability to recognize and utilize semantic structure to facilitate learning if material is highly meaningful and familiar to them.