Phonological confusability in short‐term memory for sentences as a predictor of reading ability

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Abstract
Upon entry to kindergarten, a group of 477 children was given sentence memory tasks involving rhyming and non‐rhyming sentences. These tasks were readministered to the children at the end of Grade 1 when the children were also tested for reading ability. Short‐term memory for sentences was found to correlate with Grade 1 reading ability on both occasions when it was tested. Furthermore, at both ages the children found rhyming sentences harder to recall than non‐rhyming sentences. However, contrary to some previous research, the study failed to find that poor readers were less severely penalized when the short‐term memory sentence stimuli rhymed. The possible role of scaling artifacts in producing inconsistent results between studies is discussed.