Development Of The Memory Assessment Battery For Children

Objective: This study was to develop a new instrument for assessing children' s memory abilities, the Memory Assessment Battery for Children (MABC) .The present study had three purposes: the construction of scales, the examination of reliability and validity of the MABC, and the establishment of locally normal performance in children aged 7 to 15 years old.Methods: The MABC was developed within an information processing and multiple memory systems framework, and contains 4 verbal, 4 visual and 2 span subtests. The assessment procedures include multiple learning trials , delayed - retention tests, free recall vs recognition retrieval , and both visual and verbal materials. 285 subjects aged from 7 to 15 years old were sampled from 4 urban schools and 4 rural schools . The split - half reliability , Cronbach a , and the generalizability coefficients were used to estimate reliability coefficients of the subtests scores. The stability of scores was assessed based on the test - retest data of 30 children with an average interval of 2 weeks . The construct validity and criterion -related validity of the MABC were also examined in this study.Results: 1 .Item analysis showed that the average difficulty index for the subtests was 0.56 , and the discrimination indexes ranged from 0.25 to 0.53, with an average of 0.35. 2. The test - retest stability coefficients ranged from 0.65 to 0.97 for the subtest scores, and from 0.67 to 0.96 for the Index scores. The split - half coefficients, Cronbach a coefficients, and the generalizability coefficients for the subtest scores (except Picture Recall subtest ) ranged from 0.67 to 0. 89, 0.70 to 0.91, and 0.71 to 0.99, respectively. 3. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in a four - factor solution, and the four factors could be specified as Working Memory , Auditory Memory , Visual Recognition and Visual Free Recall. 4. Intercorrelation studies showed that the correlations among subtest scores ranged form 0.136 to 0.952 , the correlations between subtest and index scores ranged from 0.277 to 0.906, and the correlations among index scores ranged from 0. 464 to 0.924 . 5. The subtest and index scores of the MABC showed moderate to high correlations to the Comprehension Memory , Visual Reproduction , and Digit Span subtests , and moderate to low correlations to the Verbal Paired Learning , Picture Recall, and Figure Recognition subtests of the WMS - RC. 6. Most of the subtest and index scores showed signifcant correlation to the scholastic attainments, with the Chinese performance showed slightly higher conelations to auditory subtest and auditory index scores,and mathematical performance showed slightly higher correlations to visual subtest and visual index scores and woking memory index scores.Conclusion: The present findings indicate that the Memory Assessment Battery for Children has psychometrically acceptable reliabilities, and the construct and criterion- related validity of this battery are supported in the present study .