there are a number of problems one was what's it for you know is this just there to entertain cognitive psychologists at that time I was fortunate in some Italian collaborators Pepe Villar and Costanza papania who had identified a patient in Italy with a very pure fern illogical short-term memory deficit and so we got a small grant and I went over to Italy and we would go and test her into your in she ran a shop that sold sort of tourist antiques and things of this sort and we would go along and she'd put the closed notice in the window and we then test her short-term memory and see what she could and couldn't do and the idea was that given that her intelligence was normal her long-term memory as normal language was normal if we found out what she couldn't do this has tell us what the phonological loop was for well we started off testing her comprehension we did find that if we had long enough sentences and sentences carefully designed so that you needed to remember the first word right up to the end in order to disambiguate it we couldn't make her fail but it seemed unlikely that evolution had actually prepared us just to cope with sort of badly written prose and so we tried another line we thought well maybe it's learning new phonological material so we decided we try and teach Russian with vocabulary so we presented her visually or auditorily with a sequence of eight Russian words she had to learn that the Italian equivalent or we gave her the task of learning to associate pairs of unrelated words in her native Italian and we reckoned that that should be based on semantic memory and should be unimpaired and we compared her with a group of eight people matched for agent intelligence what we found was that on the Italian words she was absolutely fine absolutely normal but the Russian vocabulary she was terrible at the end of ten trials she'd not mastered a single Russian word and so that had told us given us a hint that okay this seems to be a system for acquiring language but it's always important to replicate and we didn't have access at that time to another similar case so we fell back on our old strategy of turning a student subjects into patients by giving them things that would in this case block their fur no logical loop so we had them learning vocabulary while suppressing articulation blah blah blah blah blah or we varied the length and so forth and what we found was that as predicted this didn't interfere with paired associate learning in their native language but it did interfere with acquisition of new material and since then it's been shown I think fairly clearly that there is an association between this system and the ability to learn a second foreign language but what about native language maybe that's immune well we were able to test that I got a new person who'd been a postdoc with Donald Broadbent in Oxford who came to work with me and was looking around for a project when we had visit from a linguist who talked about this rather interesting group of children with specific language impairment so they had normal intelligence but their language was several years behind what it should be and we thought maybe just maybe they had a phonological loop deficit we were lucky enough to find that there was a group of such children in Cambridge and we studied them and found that sure enough they also had problems in learning new word forms we found that they had problems in learning first of all nonsense syllables we then developed a more specific test that targeted this by looking at non words of different lengths so they might be quite short words like or non words like bala p' or they could be quite long like blunt escaping or Wooga lamech and what we found was that normal children or indeed children who were the same language age as these which was two years earlier were pretty good with this they had some trouble with the long words but that our children with the specific language impairment were greatly impaired particularly as the words got longer and in fact this is now a standard test that's used as part of a diagnosis for dyslexia or specific learning impairment um that raised the question of is it only children who have a major problem in this area that have difficulty or is it true of the population as a whole so we were able to interest local schools and we took the whole of one year that was starting up aged between four and five and we tested their non-word repetition their intelligence and their vocabulary using a test in which you present four pictures and you speak the word of one of them and the child has to point to that object and they become cause less and less frequent until the child doesn't know the word what we were able to show was that yes we did get good correlation between normal repetition and vocabulary and further more that if we study them over the next year they're non-word repetition predicted how much they would improve their vocabulary and this has now been repeated lots of times interesting the person who did this with me Susan gather Kohl still works in this area and has hugely developed it showing that tests based on working memory can be used to identify quite young children who are likely to have scholastic problems and problems of different sorts and also there's no strong suggestion that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder particularly the attention deficit part is associated with working memory deficit though not the phonological loop part so we made I think a pretty good case for the role of the phonological loop in language acquisition although it's important to point out that having a reduced phonological loop in and of itself doesn't mean that you won't acquire a good vocabulary because as the child gets older other factors come in I mean one being executive processes because a lot of the cavalry we acquire we acquire because of understanding what that unfamiliar word must mean in that context and to do that you need to understand what's going on also of course the richness of the language environment is important but nevertheless it still is an important factor in remembering names remembering new words and sometimes things like making spoonerisms where you switch around initial letters like Park Park instead of car park
Cool to watch vid from the mad genius himself
Is it possible to get a transcript of this?
nope lol
there are a number of problems one was what's it for you know
is this just there to entertain
cognitive psychologists at that time I
was fortunate in some Italian
collaborators Pepe Villar and Costanza
papania who had identified a patient in
Italy with a very pure fern illogical
short-term memory deficit and so we got
a small grant and I went over to Italy
and we would go and test her into your
in she ran a shop that sold sort of
tourist antiques and things of this sort
and we would go along and she'd put the
closed notice in the window and we then
test her short-term memory and see what
she could and couldn't do and the idea
was that given that her intelligence was
normal her long-term memory as normal
language was normal if we found out what
she couldn't do this has tell us what
the phonological loop was for well we
started off testing her comprehension we
did find that if we had long enough
sentences and sentences carefully
designed so that you needed to remember
the first word right up to the end in
order to disambiguate it we couldn't
make her fail but it seemed unlikely
that evolution had actually prepared us
just to cope with sort of badly written
prose and so we tried another line we
thought well maybe it's learning new
phonological material so we decided we
try and teach Russian with vocabulary so
we presented her visually or auditorily
with a sequence of eight Russian words
she had to learn that the Italian
equivalent or we gave her the task of
learning to associate pairs of unrelated
words in her native
Italian and we reckoned that that should
be based on semantic memory and should
be unimpaired and we compared her with a
group of eight people matched for agent
intelligence what we found was that on
the Italian words she was absolutely
fine absolutely normal but the Russian
vocabulary she was terrible at the end
of ten trials she'd not mastered a
single Russian word and so that had told
us given us a hint that okay this seems
to be a system for acquiring language
but it's always important to replicate
and we didn't have access at that time
to another similar case so we fell back
on our old strategy of turning a student
subjects into patients by giving them
things that would in this case block
their fur no logical loop so we had them
learning vocabulary while suppressing
articulation blah blah blah blah blah or
we varied the length and so forth and
what we found was that as predicted this
didn't interfere with paired associate
learning in their native language but it
did interfere with acquisition of new
material and since then it's been shown
I think fairly clearly that there is an
association between this system and the
ability to learn a second foreign
language but what about native language
maybe that's immune well we were able to
test that I got a new person who'd been
a postdoc with Donald Broadbent in
Oxford who came to work with me and was
looking around for a project when we had
visit from a linguist who talked about
this rather interesting group of
children with specific language
impairment so they had normal
intelligence but their language was
several years behind what it should be
and we thought maybe just maybe they had
a phonological loop deficit
we were lucky enough to find that there
was a group of such children in
Cambridge and we studied them and found
that sure enough they also had problems
in learning new word forms we found that
they had problems in learning
first of all nonsense syllables we then
developed a more specific test that
targeted this by looking at non words of
different lengths so they might be quite
short words like or non words like bala
p' or they could be quite long like
blunt escaping or Wooga lamech and what
we found was that normal children or
indeed children who were the same
language age as these which was two
years earlier were pretty good with this
they had some trouble with the long
words but that our children with the
specific language impairment were
greatly impaired particularly as the
words got longer and in fact this is now
a standard test that's used as part of a
diagnosis for dyslexia or specific
learning impairment um that raised the
question of is it only children who have
a major problem in this area that have
difficulty or is it true of the
population as a whole so we were able to
interest local schools and we took the
whole of one year that was starting up
aged between four and five and we tested
their non-word repetition their
intelligence and their vocabulary using
a test in which you present four
pictures and you speak the word of one
of them and the child has to point to
that object and they become cause less
and less frequent until the child
doesn't know the word what we were able
to show was that yes we did get
good correlation between normal
repetition and vocabulary and further
more that if we study them over the next
year they're non-word repetition
predicted how much they would improve
their vocabulary and this has now been
repeated lots of times
interesting the person who did this with
me Susan gather Kohl still works in this
area and has hugely developed it showing
that tests based on working memory can
be used to identify quite young children
who are likely to have scholastic
problems and problems of different sorts
and also there's no strong suggestion
that attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder particularly the attention
deficit part is associated with working
memory deficit though not the
phonological loop part so we made I
think a pretty good case for the role of
the phonological loop in language
acquisition although it's important to
point out that having a reduced
phonological loop in and of itself
doesn't mean that you won't acquire a good vocabulary because as the child gets older other factors come in I mean one being executive processes because a lot of the cavalry we acquire we acquire because of understanding what that unfamiliar word must mean in that context and to do that you need to understand what's going on also of course the richness of the language environment is important but nevertheless it still is an important factor in remembering names remembering new words and sometimes things like making spoonerisms where you switch around initial letters like Park Park instead of car park