Are children with Down syndrome able to maintain skills learned from a short-term memory training program?
Irene Broadley, John MacDonald and Sue Buckley The ability of children with Down syndrome to maintain a set of trained short-term memory skills was assessed by follow up of a group who had previously undergone training in using rehearsal and organisation based memory strategies. That first study (Broadley and MacDonald, 1993) found that training in rehearsal and organisation skills led to an improvement in short-term memory ability in children with Down syndrome. That study also found that the effects applied across a wide age range; that the training could be conducted effectively by different people and that the type of training (rehearsal or organisation) acts independently, affecting only the targeted memory measures. The study reported here assesses the trained children’s short-term memory abilities, 2 months and 8 months after the training had ended. Comparison with their own baseline performance and with a group of untrained children allowed assessment of the long and short term
Irene Broadley, John MacDonald and Sue Buckley The ability of children with Down syndrome to maintain a set of trained short-term memory skills was assessed by follow up of a group who had previously undergone training in using rehearsal and organisation based memory strategies. That first study (Broadley and MacDonald, 1993) found that training in rehearsal and organisation skills led to an improvement in short-term memory ability in children with Down syndrome. That study also found that the effects applied across a wide age range; that the training could be conducted effectively by different people and that the type of training (rehearsal or organisation) acts independently, affecting only the targeted memory measures. The study reported here assesses the trained children’s short-term memory abilities, 2 months and 8 months after the training had ended. Comparison with their own baseline performance and with a group of untrained children allowed assessment of the long and short term
