Relations Between Vocabulary Development And Verbal Short-term Memory In 4-6 Years Old Children

Language is a kind of system symbols which is used to transform information and communicate. The development of language in the period of childhood was based on the interaction development of biological and social factors. Language was constructed of speech or font style on the basis of grammar rules, in which vocabulary was instructed certain things and the grammar rules reflect the logic rules of human thinking.Vocabulary development means the growth of vocabulary knowledge which includes the word and fixed phrase used in language communication after born. Verbal short-term memory was used to definite the short-term memory under the encoding of verbal code. Item information and serial information were the reflection factors in verbal short-term memory. In this study, we tried to identify the item information and serial information separately in the verbal short-term memory to further implore the relation between vocabulary development and verbal short-term memory in 4-6 years old. We used the experimental research with the total subjects of 60 children of 4, 5 and 6 years old, and had the following conclusions about the vocabulary development and verbal short-term memory:(1) The memory tasks both maximizing serial information and item information can predict children's vocabulary development. After controlling the common procedure with the short-term memory, the long-term memory tasks could not predict vocabulary development. Furthermore, the age effect was not same in the different serial and item memory tasks.(2) On the reverse relations between vocabulary development and verbal short-term memory, there was significant lexical effect in word and non-word delayed memory tasks in 4, 5 and 6 years old groups. (3) Short and long serial reconstruction tasks had significant relation between vocabulary development, while the short-term serial reconstruction tasks were more significant.(4) The development of serial short-term memory was the key factor of vocabulary development of 4-6 years old children.