Déficits de mémoire à court terme verbale chez les enfants avec troubles spécifiques du langage : impact de la complexité linguistique et du contrôle attentionnel

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) constantly show poor performance in verbal short term memory (STM) tasks. However, the precise mechanism at the root of this problem is still unclear. Verbal STM tasks, such as nonword repetition, are complex tasks recruiting linguistic and non linguistic abilities. Recent studies emphasize the role played by attentional capacities in verbal STM performances (e.g., Majerus, Bastin, et al., 2007; Majerus, Heiligenstein, et al., 2009; Majerus, Poncelet, et al., 2006). Moreover, a number of studies have demonstrated an impact of linguistic knowledge on verbal STM (e.g., Majerus & van der Linden, 2003). In the light of these developments, two studies re-explored the nature of verbal STM deficits in children with SLI by assessing the impact of attentional capacity and linguistic complexity. The first study assessed the impact of attentional capacities on STM via a nonverbal dual-tasking paradigm in children with SLI, in children matched on age, and in children matched on STM span. The second study assessed the impact of lexical, perceptual and phonological variables on STM performance in children with SLI, in children matched on age, and in children matched on vocabulary knowledge. We will show that neither the attentional nor the linguistic complexity accounts can satisfactorily explain the verbal STM deficits observed in children with SLI