Purpose This longitudinal study examined differences in the development of working memory (WM) between children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. Further, it explored to what extent language at ages 7-8 years could be predicted by measures of language and/or WM at ages 4-5 years. Method Thirty children with SLI and 33 TD children who were previously examined on measures of WM and language at ages 4-5 years (T1) were reexamined at ages 7-8 years (T2). Results The developmental course of WM was mostly similar for the two groups; only the development of the verbal storage component differed. At T1, children with SLI performed significantly below their TD peers on all components of WM (verbal storage, verbal central executive [CE], visuospatial storage, and visuospatial CE), whereas at T2, the differences for the visuospatial components were no longer significant when age and intelligence were taken into account. Hierarchical regression showed language and verbal CE at T1 to be significant predictors of language at T2, with no differences in the developmental associations between language and WM for the two groups. Conclusions The results of this study suggest that particularly verbal CE is of importance for the acquisition of linguistic skills.

中文翻译：

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特定语言障碍儿童的工作记忆与语言之间的发展关联：一项纵向研究。

目的这项纵向研究调查了患有特定语言障碍（SLI）的儿童与通常发育（TD）的儿童之间的工作记忆（WM）发育差异。此外，它探索了在多大程度上可以通过衡量4-5岁年龄段的语言和/或WM来预测7-8岁年龄段的语言。方法先前在4-5岁（T1）接受过WM和语言测试的30例SLI儿童和33 TD儿童在7-8岁（T2）接受了重新检查。结果两组的WM发展历程基本相似。仅言语存储组件的开发有所不同。在T1，SLI患儿在WM的所有组成部分（语言存储，言语中央执行[CE]，视觉空间存储和视觉空间CE）上的表现均显着低于其TD同伴，而在T2，当考虑到年龄和智力时，视觉空间成分的差异不再显着。等级回归显示，T1的语言和言语CE是T2的语言的重要预测指标，两组的语言和WM之间的发展关联没有差异。结论这项研究的结果表明，特别是口头CE对于掌握语言技能非常重要。