The memory systems of children with (central) auditory disorder

Mayra Monteiro Pires, Mailce Borges Mota, Maria Madalena Canina Pinheiro

This study aims to investigate working, declarative, and procedural memory in children with (central) auditory processing disorder who showed poor phonological awareness. Thirty 9- and 10-year-old children participated in the study and were distributed into two groups: a control group consisting of 15 children with typical development, and an experimental group consisting of 15 children with (central) auditory processing disorder who were classified according to three behavioral tests and who showed poor phonological awareness in the CONFIAS test battery. The memory systems were assessed through the adapted tests in the program E-PRIME 2.0. The working memory was assessed by the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C), whereas the declarative memory was assessed by a picture-naming test and the procedural memory was assessed by means of a morphosyntactic processing test. The results showed that, when compared to the control group, children with poor phonological awareness scored lower in the working, declarative, and procedural memory tasks. The results of this study suggest that in children with (central) auditory processing disorder, phonological awareness is associated with the analyzed memory systems.