In sentence recall tests, the childlistens to one sentence and tries to repeat it as precisely as he can. Usually, the sentence's length and complexitygrow as the test progresses.
This test is usually thought of asmeasuring memory span. Memory span, inCHC theory, is a narrow ability within short term memory. Memory span is "the ability to encodeinformation, keep it in immediate awareness and produce it immediately in theorder in which it was presented." Or,put another way: "the ability to attend to and immediately recalltemporally ordered elements in the correct order after a singlepresentation." (Flanagan etal.,2007, Schneider and McGrew, 2012 ).
Sentence recall is also an efficientmarker of SLI – Specific Language Impairment and of dyslexia. Performance in sentence recall tests is alsorelated to reading comprehension.
A few researchers, includingBaddeley, suggest that the sentence recall task involves short term memory as well as longterm memory. Sentence recallrequires using general information, semantic knowledge (that help us understandwhat the sentence is about - the 'gist' of the sentence), and grammatical andsyntactic knowledge. Utilizing theseknowledge types requires the involvement of long term memory. The sentence recall task also requireskeeping track of the structural aspects of the sentence ("keeping"the word order in the phonological loop, for example). This involves short term memory.
Gathercole found in 2005, that peoplewith high phonological memory are able to retain the word order in sentencesmuch better than people with low phonological memory. People with low phonological memory have moreerrors of omissions and insertions (they add and/or delete words from thesentence). Sentence recall tests arecorrelated with nonword repetition tests, which are influenced by memory span.
Marshall and Nation found in 2003,that children with normal levels of reading accuracy and speed but low readingcomprehension, also have low sentence recall.These children have no difficulties in memory span tests. The researchers suggest that the lowperformance in sentence recall tests is related to long term memory'sinvolvement in sentence recall tasks.
In this study:
Therole of sentence recall in reading and language skills of children withlearning difficulties. Alloway, T.P. andGathercole, S.E. learning and Individualdifferences, 15 (2005) 271-282
http://www.academia.edu/2651151/The_role_of_sentence_recall_in_reading_and_language_skills_of_children_with_learning_difficulties
participated children in elementaryschool with learning difficulties. They weretested with reading, language, working memory, expressive vocabulary andsentence recall tests and the Wechsler test.The hardest items in the sentence recall test were not longer sentencesbut were more complex sentences. The goalwas to see whether the sentence recall test is related to reading or tolanguage skills.
A correlation of 0.6 was foundbetween sentence recall and memory span.But, when the unique contribution of each factor to the prediction of readingand language skills was examined, it was found that sentence recall explained asignificant amount of the variance in reading and language skills above thecontribution of age, IQ, expressive vocabulary, memory span and working memory.
So, sentence recall test measuresmuch more than memory span. Gathercoleand Alloway suggest that sentence recall predicted performance in reading and language tests because sentence recall tests requires the use of bothshort term memory and linguistic and conceptual knowledge found in long termmemory.
