Literacy improves short-term serial recall of spoken verbal but not visuospatial items – Evidence from illiterate and literate adults

It is widely accepted that speci c memory processes, such as serial-order memory, are involved in written language development and predictive of reading and spelling abilities. The reverse question, namely whether orthographic abilities also a ect serial-order memory, has hardly been investigated. In the current study, we compared 20 illiterate people with a group of 20 literate matched controls on a verbal and a visuospatial version of the Hebb paradigm, measuring both short- and long-term serial-order memory abilities. We observed better short-term serial-recall performance for the literate compared with the illiterate people. This e ect was stronger in the verbal than in the visuospatial modality, suggesting that the improved capacity of the literate group is a consequence of learning orthographic skills. The long-term consolidation of ordered information was compar- able across groups, for both stimulus modalities. The implications of these ndings for current views regarding the bi-directional interactions between memory and written language development are discussed