الفهرس 
Working MemoryOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Phonological short term memory is a part of working memory. Working memory consists of four components: the central executive, the phonological loop, the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer.
It is a system that is involved in several cognitive abilities, including reasoning, learning, and comprehension.
Different synonyms for the phonological short term memory are present some researchers call it “verbal short term memory”, “phonological short term memory” and the “phonological loop”. PSTM is a limited capacity storage system for the auditory or phonological information without manipulation, it has two distinct subcomponents:
A short-term store and an articulatory rehearsal component. The phonological short-term store is associated with the left supramarginal gyrus Broadman’s (area 40) also right inferior cerebellar activity was found also to be involved. It begins to develop at the age of two years, and it is expected to reach maturity by the age of 12 years, at which time children are able to hold an adult-like 4±1 chunks of information. The articulatory rehearsal component has two functions: first one is recoding the visual information. Second one is facilitating the (sub-vocal) rehearsal of information to be maintained in the short-term store for an extended time and is associated with functioning in the Broca’s area (area 44), the supplementary motor area (SMA), and the bilateral superior cerebellum.
Factors affecting the phonological short term memory are:
1-Phonological similarity in which it is easier to store a list of words that are phonetically dissimilar, as storage is a phonological process, which is a sound, based dependent code.
2-The word length effect in which lists of short words are easier to remember because they take less time to articulate, which allows for more time to rehearse and therefore prevents decay.
3-Lexicality effect: a better performance on tasks measuring PSTM if the words chosen are familiar as numbers and alphabets because the performance can be supported by our stored knowledge in long term memory.
Vocabulary acquisition is a major aspect of language development in children. PSTM seems to be essential for the correct retention of sound order in words.
Strongest links between PSTM and the native vocabulary knowledge have been found at younger ages and in particular between 4 and 6 years of age.
Research suggests that PSTM may play a major role in the development of pre-reading skills, such as the acquisition of letter knowledge. An indirect relation, between reading and PSTM comes from phonemic awareness skill, which is the function of phonological working memory (PSTM and the central executive parts). PWM plays a major role in phonemic sequencing and blending skills, both are the main important phonological awareness skills needed for decoding unfamiliar words or pseudo words. Beginning readers use decoding method in order to read. Reading comprehension is the product of a complex integration of knowledge and skills such as decoding, vocabulary, syntactic and semantic processing. In addition, reading comprehension depends on higher-level control functions. PSTM is posited to play a role in reading comprehension because individual words of sentences must be sequentially and temporarily retained for higher-level language processing to occur by the central executive part of WM.
PSTM can be assessed using tasks such as digit span, word span (word set recall) and non-word repetition.
Specifically, measures such as digit span and non-word repetition correlate significantly with PSTM.
The aim of this study was to develop a test for measuring PSTM, for Arabic speaking children between the ages of 4 to 8 years of age, in order to be used in related communicative disorders that show deficit in the PSTM as SLI disorder.
The previous tests done to measure the PSTM used mainly the NWRT.
Also those tests were done for non-Arabic speaking children except for the one that measures PSTM as a part from a battery that measures the whole working memory.
The test items were 17 in number. Including the following items: digit span, syllable repetition (for 1,2,3,4 syllables), NSWR (of 1,2,3 and 4 syllables), dissimilar word set recall (short word set recall of 1 and 2 syllables, long word set recall of 3 and 4 syllables) and lastly similar word set recall (of 1,2,3 and 4 syllables).
A pilot study was done on 10 children with ages 4 to 8 years of age and changes were done to the preliminary test to be developed.
The subjects of the study were 2 groups:
The first group consisted of 102 normal children between the age of 4 years to 8 years, with averadge 25 children were included for each 1 year age range, The second group included 31 specific language impaired children, they were selected to match the control group as regard age and IQ level. Test reliability was measured by Test re-test method, alpha cronbach’s and Split half method. Test validity was measured by Internal consistency, Contrasted group validity and Factorial validity. All proved high reliability and validity of the PSTM test.