TMP 3 E24

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 1992,45A (1) 21-50
Phonology, Working Memory,

and Foreign-language Learning
Elisabet Service
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Downloaded By: [Canadian Research Knowledge Network] At: 21:41 29 October 2008
Three tasks were used to predict English learning by Finnish children over
a three-year period. In the pseudoword repetition task the pupils had to repeat
aloud tape-recorded pseudowords sounding like Finnish or English. In the
pseudoword copying task the pupils saw strings of letters resembling Finnish
or English words and copied them when they had disappeared from view.
When comparing syntactic-semantic structures, the pupils had to find the
syntactically matching pairs from two sets of Finnish sentences. Repetition
and copying accuracy and the ability to compare syntactic-semantic
structures predicted English learning. Intercorrelations between test scores
and English and mathematics grades suggest that repetition and copying
accuracy were specifically related to language learning. It is concluded that
the ability to represent unfamiliar phonological material in working memory
underlies the acquisition of new vocabulary items in foreign-language
learning.
Some recent findings suggest that the ability to create accurate phonolo-
gical representations in working memory plays an important role in learning
new language material. Gathercole and Baddeley (1989) studied vocabu-
lary development in the native language of young children. They found
that a phonological memory score based on a pseudoword repetition test
correlated significantly with a vocabulary score at the age of four, as well
as with vocabulary learning between the ages of four and five. In another
Requests for reprints should be sent to E. Service, Department of Psychology, University

of Helsinki, Ritarikatu 5 , SF-00170 Helsinki, Finland.
This manuscript is based on part of my doctoral thesis examined at the University of
Helsinki in 1989. The research was supported by Koneen Saatio foundation and the Academy
of Finland. I want to thank Viljo Kohonen for making it possible for me to take part in the
educational research project that this study was part of. I am also grateful to Pentti Laurinen,
Matti Leiwo, and Alan Wing for helpful comments on the thesis manuscript. Fergus Craik
provided me with constructive remarks and encouragement with several versions of this
manuscript. I am also grateful to Graham Hitch and an anonymous reviewer for helpful
comments. My husband, Paul Service, helped me by checking my English. Finally, I want
to thank all the teachers and children who took part in the project.
0 1992 The Experimental Psychology Society

22 SERVICE
study Gathercole and Baddeley (1990) found that language-disordered chil-

dren that had among other things a significantly lower vocabulary score
than a control group matched for non-verbal intelligence were poorer than
both this control group and another younger control group matched for
reading age in two tests of phonological short-term memory, one involving
accurately repeating meaningless pseudowords, the other sequential
memory for words using a non-verbal recall procedure. A number of con-
trol experiments showed that the problems of these children were not
simply due to word perception or articulation difficulties but seemed to be
related to capacity for phonological representations in immediate memory.
Another result suggesting a connection between phonological representa-

tions and vocabulary learning comes from a study of a patient with a
selective impairment in her working memory system. Baddeley, Papagno,
and Vallar (1988) studied pseudoword learning in their subject PV, whose
impaired short-term memory span had previously been explained as
resulting from a defective phonological buffer (Vallar & Baddeley, 1984a,
1984b). In addition to having a reduced short-term memory span, PV was
also unable to repeat back pseudowords consisting of more than three
syllables. She performed normally in a paired-associate memory task but
was severely impaired in learning word-pseudoword pairs.
The authors explained these results in terms of the working memory
framework originally formulated by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) and sub-
sequently elaborated in a number of publications by Baddeley and various
collaborators (for a review, see Baddeley, 1986). The framework assumes
that working memory consists of an attention control system called the
central executive that integrates information from different working
memory subsystems and long-term memory, allocates resources, and
generally organizes working memory operations. In addition to the central
executive, there are at least two independent slave systems. The articu-
latory loop handles verbal, speech-based material, and the visuo-spatial
sketchpad deals with visual images. A finding that suggests the independ-
ence of the two slave systems is that visual secondary tasks and unattended
visual material do not seem to interfere with verbal memory tasks, and
articulatory suppression does not interfere with spatial reasoning tasks
(Baddeley & Lieberman, 1980; Farmer, Berman, & Fletcher, 1986; Logie,
1986). At present the articulatory loop is seen as a combination of two
components: a passive phonological store’ holding verbal material and an
‘The term “phonological” is used in the working memory framework also to cover
“phonetic”. None of the experiments reviewed here provides evidence on the distinction
between verbal material being coded phonologically, i.e. in a code based on the phonemes
and phonotactic rules in a specific language, and phonetically, i.e. preserving information
about the acoustically different realizations of the same phoneme in different contexts. This
article follows the usage in the working memory framework, as this is more common in the
psychological literature. The distinction between the two levels of coding is not, however,
trivial.
PHONOLOGY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 23
active articulatory rehearsal process. The model assumes that heard speech
is automatically registered in the phonological store, which is assumed to
be impaired in the patient PV. Because the contents of the store fade over
a limited period of time, the maintenance of material is achieved through
refreshing the phonological trace by cycling it through the articulatory
rehearsal loop, i.e. by silently pronouncing it. How much material can be
rehearsed before its phonological trace fades depends on speech rate. The
articulatory rehearsal process has approximately 1.5-2 sec available to read
out and recode the traces in the phonological store before they fade. This
produces the word-length effect: a smaller number of long than short words
can be articulated in this time period. Memory span is consequently a joint

function of the rate of decay in the phonological store and the rate of
articulatory rehearsal.
It is assumed that visually presented material does not have automatic
access to the phonological store but can enter it by being silently articu-
lated. If articulatory rehearsal is prevented by using articulatory suppres-
sion, all signs of phonological coding, such as the word-length and the
phonological similarity effects, virtually disappear for visually presented
material.
In a series of experiments exploring the learning of native-language
word-foreign word associations Papagno, Valentine, and Baddeley (1991)
showed that disrupting articulatory rehearsal by articulatory suppression
impaired learning in all situations when the material did not seem to elicit
semantic associations between the members of the stimulus pairs. These
results suggest that articulatory rehearsal plays a role in foreign vocabulary
acquisition, at least when the words to be learned cannot readily be semant-
ically associated with their native-language referents.
There is some consensus in the literature on the importance of an
adequately functioning phonological input store for different language
tasks. In addition to word learning, sentence comprehension (Baddeley &
Wilson, 1988; Friedrich, Martin, & Kemper, 1985; Martin, Jerger, &
Breedin, 1987) may depend on a phonological representation in working
memory, at least for sentences that must be back-tracked following an
original incorrect parse (see Caplan & Waters, 1990, for a review). Situ-
ations requiring this kind of second-pass parsing may be especially frequent
in foreign-language processing. It can thus be hypothesized that there are
at least two ways in which the efficiency of the phonological store to
represent incoming information may affect foreign-language learning.
Word learning may be slowed down by inaccurate phonological represen-
tations for the new material, and learning of larger language units may be
hindered by unsuccessful attempts to parse heard sentences. The present
study attempts to find out whether there is a relation between the ability
to create accurate phonological representations in working memory and
foreign-language learning in a class-room setting.
24 SERVICE
The empirical research for the study was carried out in the context of
a larger educational experiment. The project involving Finnish (as a native
language) and English (as a foreign language) in primary school was a
four-year teaching experiment. In four schools the same English teacher
taught both a class with a normal schedule in English teaching starting in
the third form (pupils aged 9-10 years) and another class, with the instruc-
tion beginning one year later than normal. The teaching was arranged so
that by the end of the experiment both groups had received an equal
amount of English teaching.
The experiments reported here were based on two simple tasks involving
working memory for the storage and processing of verbal material, and a
third task requiring metalinguistic analysis of sentence constituents. One
task, oral repetition of spoken pseudowords, can be assumed to reflect the
efficiency of creating phonological representations in working memory.
The second task, delayed copying of visually presented pseudowords, has
no auditory perception component, nor a spoken output component.
According to the assumptions in the current version of the working memory
framework of Baddeley , it might, however, involve an articulatory
recoding component resulting in a representation in the phonological store.
The third task involving metalinguistic analysis was included because it was
not directly related to working memory codes, yet involved processing
of verbal material. It was modelled on tasks that have successfully been
used to measure foreign-language learning aptitude. The three tasks were
explored as possible predictors of foreign-language learning. They were
also examined to ascertain their levels of interdependence and the degrees
to which they separately predicted language learning.
All three tasks were studied in a longitudinal design in order to deter-
mine how performance on the tasks themselves and their relation to
foreign-language learning performance develops with increasing age and
experience with the foreign language. The tasks were given to the same
subjects four times, at approximately one-year intervals. The subjects were
Finnish primary-school children beginning to learn English, different-size
sets of the same subject sample taking part in different experiments. The
pseudowords used were constructed to sound or look either familiar (like
Finnish) or foreign (obeying the phonology and orthography of the lan-
guage being learnt, English). Foreign-sounding and -looking pseudowords
were used in order to investigate the ability to create phonological repres-
entations in working memory for unfamiliar verbal material which might
cause perceptual as well as articulatory problems. Task performance was
correlated with school grade in English two and a half years from the first
measurements as well as with test scores in listening comprehension,
reading comprehension, and written production in English. Performance
was also correlated with the corresponding school grade in mathematics in
order to try to find out to what extent the tasks might reflect general
academic ability, as opposed to specific language learning ability.
The overall timetable for the experiments was somewhat complicated
owing to restrictions of the curriculum, the larger educational experiment
the study was embodied in, and the participating teachers’ preferences.
The first tests were given at the beginning of the Finnish school year, in
the autumn of Year 1 of the study. The second and third tests were given
exactly one and two years later, respectively. The fourth repetition test
was also given in the autumn, three years after the first test. However, to
avoid crowding of tests, the fourth copying and metalinguistic tests were
given in of the previous spring term, approximately 2 years 7 months after

the first tests. The main academic measures of language and mathematical
performance were obtained that same spring, as there was no equivalent
measure available in the autumn term, after the long school holidays. The
common English tests used to validate the teacher ratings were adminis-
tered 1.5-2.5 years after the first experimental tests at points dictated by
the teaching programmes followed in the different participating teaching
groups.
In overview, the present study assessed aspects of working-memory
functioning and explored their relations to foreign-language learning in a
normal school setting. It was predicted that the accuracy of repeating
pseudowords would predict foreign-language learning, which was assumed
to depend critically on the efficient functioning of the phonological store.
Accuracy in the copying task was also thought to predict learning, either
because it contained a major phonological component or because it tapped
visual working memory processes relevant for foreign-language reading
and spelling. The metalinguistic task was also assumed to predict learning
as it resembled tasks in language ability tests. However, it was assumed
that this latter task would not be related to the two working memory tasks.
EXPERIMENT 1
PSEUDOWORD REPETITION
It is assumed that working memory is an information-processing stage that
contains representations necessary for the long-term learning of a lan-
guage, and hypothesized that the accuracy of these representations in terms
of phonological features will affect language learning. A repetition task was
used to assess the ability to create phonological representations. In order
to control lexical familiarity, phonologically plausible nonsense words
(pseudowords) were used in the study. The accuracy of the responses to
two kinds of model pseudowords-some that sounded like Finnish and
others that sounded like English-was rated by native speakers of the two
respective languages. To assess the relationship between phonological pro-
26 SERVICE
cessing in the repetition task and information processing in English, cor-

relations were computed between the accuracy of phonological processing
and proficiency in English 2.5 years after the first testing. If task perform-
ance predicted later success in language learning, the assumption that
working memory representations are important for long-term learning of
language would receive support.
Method
Subjects. The subjects were pupils in a Finnish primary school par-
ticipating in a larger research project concerned with the effects of post-
poning the start of foreign-language teaching from the third form (when
the pupils are 9-10 years old) to the fourth form. There were 44 subjects
available for all measurements, 22 in a class that started learning English
the first year of testing (normal-start group), the other 22 in a class that
started a year later (late-start group). However, by the end of the follow-up
study both groups had received similar amounts of English instruction and
reached a comparable level of knowledge in English as measured by
common tests. Both groups had the same English teacher, and two
different class-room teachers taught the other school subjects. The mean
age of the pupils at the time of the first testing was 9 years 4 months in
the normal-start group and 9 years 2 months in the late-start group. All
pupils were born in the same year. The distribution of sex was somewhat
uneven, with 9 girls and 13 boys in the class with the earlier start in English
and 6 girls and 16 boys in the other class.
Materials. Ten lists of 10 pseudowords each were constructed. Five

lists obeyed Finnish phonology and phonotactics, and five lists consisted
of English-sounding pseudowords. The Finnish lists were made from old
Finnish words no longer in use. The English lists consisted of pseudowords
created by interchanging the first and last syllables of a set of real English
words. In this way pseudowords in both languages contained real mor-
phemes. Half of the pseudowords in each list had two syllables, and the
other half had four syllables. Examples of Finnish-sounding pseudowords
are “laira” and “hainuksia” and of English-sounding nonsense words
“rendence” and “disajoinance”. The order of the pseudowords in each list
was random. The English lists were checked by a native speaker of English
to make sure that they conformed to English phonology. The Finnish lists
were read onto good-quality tape by a male Finnish speaker, and a male
native English speaker recorded the English lists.
Procedure. There were four test sessions. Each subject received one
Finnish and one English list in each session. Half of the subjects heard the
Finnish list first, the other half the English list first. The order of presenta-
tion of the different lists in each language was counterbalanced in a Latin

square. The subjects were tested individually in an empty room in their
school. The test sessions took place in the autumn term, at approximately
one-year intervals. The subjects were told that they were taking part in a
study comparing the progress of the two teaching groups in English. They
would hear made-up words that sounded like Finnish or English, and they
had to repeat aloud what they heard as quickly as possible. Before going
through the test list in each language, the subjects practised with an extra
list in the same language. The practice lists were the same for each subject
and during each of the four test sessions. After the practice list the subjects
heard a test list in the same language. The entire test, including the taped
model pseudowords and the subject’s responses to them, was tape-recorded
for later analysis.
Analysis of Records. The accuracy of the repetition responses to

English-sounding pseudowords was rated by a native speaker of British
English who was not otherwise acquainted with the study. The responses
were rated for the number of syllables that had been correctly repeated.
The Finnish-sounding responses were scored by a Finnish speaker. A cor-
rectly pronounced syllable was defined as one containing no obvious
phoneme replacements, omissions, or additions. Variation was allowed as
long as phonemic borders were not crossed.
To check the reliability of the scoring system, another British-English
scorer rated one quarter of the responses to English-sounding
pseudowords. The two scorers agreed on the score for 69% of the
pseudoword responses. Dividing the sum of all the absolute differences
between the ratings by the two scorers with the total number of rated
syllables gives an estimate of the proportion of syllables that were rated
differently. This was 11% , leaving an estimated 89% of the syllables in the
pseudowords similarly rated. The correlation between the two raters for
the subjects’ total list scores was 0.83. To compare the system with a more
conventional overall rating, the first scorer went through the material once
more and rated every response on a three-point scale, giving 1 for poor,
2 for intermediate and 3 for good pronunciation. The correlation between
the total individual scores for each subject derived using this scale and the
syllables-correct scores was 0.96 (n = 44).
The main measure of English proficiency used in the correlational ana-
lysis was an overall rating by the teacher on a six-point scale as used in
Finnish school reports. The overall rating was chosen as the main language
learning measure because it was available for all the pupils taking part in
the experiment. Only one such rating (later referred to as English grade)
was used. This was the one made for the spring school reports 2.5 years
after the first experimental measurements were made. This measure was
28 SERVICE
chosen so that differences in learning performance would have time to

come to light and to allow forward prediction from the time of the first
data collection. The equivalent measure for mathematics (mathematics
grade) obtained at the same time was used to assess the relation between
repetition performance and more general academic achievement.
A Pearson product-moment correlation of 0.90 (n = 84, including also
subjects taking part in Experiment 2 and 3) was found between the English
grade and the total score of two English tests administered the same spring
in all the classes that took part in the teaching experiment with a later start
in English. Correlations between the rating and subtest scores were also
quite high: 0.84 with listening comprehension, 0.81 with reading compre-
hension, and 0.89 with written production (n in all cases was 84). Appar-
ently the four teachers all based their ratings more or less strictly on the
scores in the common tests.
Results
The accuracy of the repetition responses to Finnish-sounding stimuli was
nearly perfect, so they were not included in the statistical analysis. The
original accuracy ratings in terms of number of syllables correct for the
English-sounding responses were converted to proportions by dividing each
score with the number of syllables in the corresponding stimulus
pseudoword.
Accuracy scores for individual subjects' performance on the English-
sounding lists were obtained by adding the scores for all the responses to
stimuli on each particular list to form a total for'that list. List scores for
different years were also combined to an overall score over the years for
each subject. The mean scores in different years were 0.65,0.78,0.76,and
0.84, respectively, the mean over the years being 0.76. Table 1 shows the
correlations between the accuracy scores and English grade 2.5 years after
the first testing for the two groups separately and combined. Combining
the groups seems fair for all years other than the first.
Table 1 shows that repetition accuracy for English pseudowords is a
good predictor of English learning in a Finnish primary school during the
first 2-3 years. One possible explanation for the high correlation between
repetition accuracy and English learning might be that the repetition task
measured some kind of academic motivation or general ability. The finding
of a positive correlation ( r = 0.40) between the total pronunciation score
and grade in mathematics was in line with this interpretation. To explore
the hypothesis further, the pattern of partial correlations between the total
pronunciation score, English grade, and mathematics grade was studied in
the combined group of 44 subjects. The correlation between total repetition
accuracy score and English grade partialling out mathematics grade
remained high at 0.58, whereas the correlation between the total pronun-
TABLE 1
Correlations between Repetition Accuracy Scores in Different Years'
and the Total over the Yearsb, and English Grade
2.5 Years after the First Testing
English Grade
Group
Late-start Normal-start Groups Combined

Test (n = 22) (n = 22) (n = 44)
Pronl 0.56*** 0.66*** 0.44**

Pron2 0.58*** 0.72*** 0.61 ** *
Pron3 0.58*** 0.57.'. 0.56***
Pron4 0.26* 0.71* ** 0.47"
Prontot 0.67*** 0.81*** 0.66***
"Pronl, Pron2, Pron3, Pron4.

hProntot.
* p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; one-tailed test.
ciation score and mathematics grade partialling out English grade was 0.01,
showing no specific relationship between these measures.
It may be argued that the English and mathematics grades are not
equivalent measures because the English measure is based on the ratings
of one person, whereas two different teachers rated their pupils for the
mathematics grade. Although this may have given rise to slightly greater
variability for the mathematics grade, this effect does not seem to be large.
There were no statistically significant differences between the two teaching
groups (p > 0.48) for either measure, and the variances in both groups
were similar in magnitude.
To investigate further the nature of the relation between repetition
accuracy and foreign-language learning, correlations between the total pro-
nunciation score and different subskills in English were computed. Table
2 shows these correlations. The language skill measures were calculated
by adding together the scores in two tests administered in the two classes
at equivalent points in the teaching programme, i.e. after equal amounts
of teaching. The first test was given to the normal-start group 6 months
after the repetition task of Year 2, and to the late-start group 3 months
after the repetition task of Year 3. Both groups received the second test
approximately 7 months after the repetition task of Year 3, i.e. at the end
of that school year. The reading and listening comprehension tasks in both
tests required answers in Finnish only. The (written) production tasks were
30 SERVICE
TABLE 2
Correlations between Total Repetition Accuracy Scores" and Subskills in English
Prontot
Group

Test (n = 22) (n = 19) (n = 41)
Listening comprehension 0.63*** 0.90*** 0.62***

Reading comprehension 0.68*** 0.86**' 0.74***
Production 0.55"' 0.82*** 0.58***
Total test score 0.62*'* 0.90*** 0.65* *
"Prontot.
* p < 0.05; * * p < 0.01; * * * p < 0.001; one-tailed test.
partly guided (translation, answers to questions), partly free (composition).

The total score also includes a subtest for knowledge of prepositions.
There were three listening comprehension tasks in Test 1. In one the
pupils listened to English sentences read out by their teacher and decided
to which of the 10 pictures in front of them the sentences referred. In the
second they heard sentences about the ages of the members of a family
and had to write down the correct numbers next to the pictures of the
family members mentioned. In the third the teacher read 10 interrogative
sentences in English, and they had to pick the correct Finnish equivalents
from a written list of Finnish sentences. In Test 2 the two listening compre-
hension tasks involved listening to a story in English and a videotaped
interview with an Englishman and answering questions in Finnish about
the contents of the presented material. The reading comprehension task
in the first test involved reading a short text and a dialogue, in the second
test a story in English, and answering questions about the material in
Finnish. Written production was tested in Test 1 by a guided sentence-
formation task requiring the pupil to write down, for instance, how he/she
would ask the way to the public swimming pool in English. The test also
included a task in which the pupils had to complete sentences or write
complete new sentences describing pictures on their test sheet. In Test 2
pupils had to fill in the speech bubbles in a comic strip with Finnish ex-
planations below the pictures giving them the story. They also had to write
a story describing what happened in a series of pictures.
It seems from the table that repetition accuracy is not specifically related
to one particular subskill in English but to both comprehension and produc-
tion alike. But as the correlations between the scores in the subtests were
high (all r's > 0.79), differences between the receptive and productive
skills measured here did not seem to exist at this stage in foreign-language
learning.
Discussion
Repetition accuracy showed a strong correlation with performance in
learning English as a foreign language. This correlation appeared to be
unrelated to exposure to teaching, as the correlation coefficientswithin the
teaching groups remained largely the same from year to year. One excep-
tion to this was the low correlation in the late-start group between the
accuracy scores in the fourth test and the English grade from the previous
spring. The explanation seems to be a ceiling effect, as many of the pupils

with low scores from previous years had caught up with their classmates.
In studies with native speakers, pseudoword repetition accuracy appears
to be one of the differentiating measures between developmental dyslexics,
or poor readers, and age- or reading-age-matched normal readers (Brady ,
Poggie, & Merlott, 1986; Snowling, 1981). It has also been shown to predict
reading and spelling ability within a group of developmental dyslexics
(Taylor, Lean, & Schwartz, 1989). As poor readers are also characterized
by poor verbal short-term memory performance (Brady, 1986) and diffi-
culties in non-lexical verbal short-term memory tasks (Brady, Mann, &
Schmidt, 1987), as well as less effective speech perception (Brady,
Shankweiler, & Mann, 1983), it is possible to speculate that they have a
deficit in the phonological storing component of working memory. Such a
deficit thus seems related to both success in learning to read and learning
a foreign language.
The fact that normal variation in pseudoword repetition accuracy is
closely related to performance in foreign language learning during the first
years suggests that this task might, indeed, be a good measure of phono-
logical processing capacity in working memory. It might, in fact, be better
than the traditional repetition span, which is affected by articulation speed
(Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975) as long as the material to be
repeated is difficult enough to produce variation in the repetition perform-
ance. Such variation was not present in this study when the stimuli were
Finnish-sounding pseudowords.
EXPERIMENT 2
DELAYED COPYING OF PSEUDOWORDS FROM
VISUAL PRESENTATION
Despite its apparent simplicity, the repetition task is a complex task
demanding various kinds of storage and processing resources. In the case
of pseudowords, the acoustic structure of the stimulus has to be perceived
and subjected to a more or less successful phonemic analysis. This is pre-
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sumably performed on stored representations of sounds and sound com-

binations, such as syllables. The product of this analysis may then be kept
in a passive phonological store like that assumed in the articulatory-loop
model. Preparation of a response would seem to require translation from
an auditory or more abstract phonological representation to an articulatory
one. Buffer storage of this articulatory code and possibly of a lower-level
articulatory programme (e.g. Klapp, Anderson, & Berrian, 1973; Klapp,
Greim, & Marshburn, 1981) would then be required before its successful
execution.
Any of the possibly overlapping stages on the way from perception of
a pseudoword to its oral imitation might cause inaccuracy in the articulatea

response. It is thus interesting to compare performance in the repetition
task in Experiment 1 with performance in a task such as copying that does
not involve auditory perception or overt articulation. Using a written task
is also interesting, because it might be assumed to involve some kind of
visual working-memory component, possibly the visuo-spatial sketchpad,
operating on verbal material. A delayed copying task was therefore
designed to explore the connection between performance in a visuo-manual
verbal task and the repetition task. The delayed copying task closely paral-
leled the repetition task. The subjects were required to look at written
pseudowords one at a time. After a short time each nonsense word was
concealed from view, and the subjects had to write it down as accurately
as possible on paper. Again the stimuli could look like either Finnish or
English and consist of either two or four syllables.
Results from experiments with pseudoword reading speed (e.g. De Soto
& De Soto, 1983; Hogaboam & Perfetti, 1978) and accuracy (Snowling,
1981) show that pseudoword reading discriminates between good and poor
developing readers of English. The corresponding writing task,
pseudoword spelling from auditory presentation, differentiates between
cases with different types of acquired (Shallice, 1981) or developmental
(Temple, 1986) dysgraphia. A purely visuo-manual copying task, much like
that described above, using real English words (Bradley & Bryant, 19Sl),
did not, however, discriminate between backward readers and their
reading-age-matched controls. This suggests that the disadvantage the poor
readers showed in the same study in a phonological task involving rhyme
and alliteration detection could somehow be compensated for in the visuo-
manual task with words. That normal spelling involves a nonphonological
graphemic buffer is suggested by the case descriptions of certain dysgraphic
patients (Hillis & Caramazza, 1989; Posteraro, Zinelli, & Mazzucchi,
1988).
One might hypothesize that copying pseudowords requires creating a
phonological working memory representation as an intermediate stage
between the perception of the visually presented stimulus and the produc-
tion of the written response. The suggestion is supported by Conrad and

Hull’s (1964) experiments in which remembering visually presented lists
of letters was made more difficult when acoustically confusable letter
names were used, although the responses were written. If this hypothesis
is valid, the pseudoword copying task introduced above should resemble
pseudoword reading and spelling and cause difficulties for subjects who
have problems with phonological coding. On the other hand, it is also
possible that pseudoword copying is more like word copying and can
perhaps somehow be handled without resorting to phonological represen-
tations. In this case it would not be expected to correlate with performance
in the repetition task.

The development of performance in the copying task was explored in
parallel with that in the repetition task. Evidence of phonological involve-
ment was sought indirectly using correlational analysis and error analysis.
One of the main questions was whether copying performance predicted
success in English learning. Another question was whether it was related
to performance in the repetition task.
Method
Subjects. The subjects available for all measurements were 140 pupils
from four Finnish primary schools. There were again two teaching groups:
a normal-start group and a late-start group. Of these, 136 pupils were
included in the analyses, 68 in each group. The sex distribution in the two
groups was uneven, with 40 boys and 28 girls in the late-start group and
27 boys and 41 girls in the normal-start group. On the first test the average
age of the whole group was 9 years 4 months, and on the final test 11 years
11 months. All the pupils were born within the same calendar year. The
44 pupils who took part in Experiment 1 formed a subgroup of this larger
group.
Materials. Eight lists of 10 pseudowords each were constructed, using
the same procedure as in Experiment 1. Four lists again obeyed Finnish
phonology and orthography, and four lists contained nonsense words pro-
nounceable in English. Half of the pseudowords consisted of two syllables,
the other half of four syllables. The order of the items on each list was
random.
Procedure. Each subject received a Finnish and an English list each
year. The Finnish lists were always presented first. The order of presenta-
tion of lists within each language was counterbalanced in the different class
groups.
Each list of 10 pseudowords was written in block capitals on transpar-
encies by the pupils’ own teachers. The pupils were tested in their class-
34 SERVICE
rooms by the teachers. They were first told that they would be shown
strings of letters that looked like words in Finnish or English, one at a time.
They should look at them carefully, and when the teacher covered them,
but not before, they were to write them down as accurately as possible.
The teacher then proceeded to show them two practice pseudowords that
looked like Finnish. After that, the first pseudoword on the Finnish list
was shown for approximately 7 sec before it was covered and the pupils
wrote it down. When the pupils had stopped writing, the teacher went on
to the next item. The first three test sessions took place in subsequent years
in the autumn term, and the fourth was 2.5 years after the first one.
Scoring. As number of letters varied between lists, a scoring procedure

using relative error rates was used. Copying accuracy was scored separately
for the long and short pseudowords by calculating the number of errors
(i.e. omitted, inserted, or substituted letters) relative to the total number
of letters included in all the two- or four-syllable pseudowords in each list
for each subject. Combined individual scores for each subject were derived
by calculating the total number of errors relative to the total number of
presented letters for each whole list. These individual scores, combining
strings of both lengths in each test session, as well as the total scores for
each subject calculated over the years, were used in the correlational
analyses.
Results
Correlational Analysis. Very few errors were made in copying the Fin-
nish-looking pseudowords. Analyses were therefore carried out only on
the English-looking nonsense words. The average numbers of errors
(number of letters wrong) made in different test sessions were 11.4, 6.2,
4.5, and 6.6 in the various years. The mean total error score over the year
was 28.6. Correlations were computed between the individual error scores
obtained for each testing session by dividing the number of errors made
in copying a list by the number of letters in that list as well as between the
overall score combining errors over the four tests, and the English-lan-
guage proficiency measures mentioned above (i.e. English grade and test
scores for various subskills in English). The correlations between copying
error rates and English grade are shown in Table 3. It should again be
pointed out that the English grade is the school-report grade of the third
year of the study, i.e. obtained in the same spring as the last test scores.
Table 3 shows that the copying task was related to success in learning
English. Moreover, it is clear that performance in this task, as in
pseudoword repetition, allowed reliable forward prediction of language
proficiency. As in the case of the pseudoword repetition task, one possible
explanation of the correlations is general ability or motivation. Again there
TABLE 3
Correlations between Copying Error Scores Each Year", and
the Total over the Yearsb and English Grade
at the End of the Second" or Thirdd Year of English Studies
English Grade
Group

Test (n = 73) (n = 69) (n = 142)
COPY' -0.46*** -0.62"' -0.55***

COPY2 -0.52*** -0.59"; -0.52;;;
COPY3 -0.57';; -0.62; * * -0.58***
COPY4 -0.58';; -0.69' * * -0.64* *
Copytot -0.56*** -0.73*** -0.63; * *
"Copyl, copy2, copy3, copy4.

hCopytot.
'Late-start Group.
dNormal-startGroup.
* p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; * * * p< 0.001; one-tailed test.
proved to be a significant correlation between the overall copying error

score and the mathematics grade ( r = -0.47). Partialling mathematics
grade out from the correlation between the total copying error score and
English grade still leaves a significant correlation ( r = -0.48) between the
error score and English grade. However, when English grade is partialled
out of the correlation between the total copying error score and mathem-
atics grade, hardly any common variation is left ( r = -0.08).
In order to compare the pseudoword copying task with the repetition
task, correlations were also computed between the total error score and
the English test scores in comprehension and written production. These
correlations are shown in Table 4. As all the classes did not take all the
tests, the number of pupils varies for the different scores.
Like repetition performance, copying ability also seems to be equally
related to receptive skills and written production of English. The correla-
tions also seem to be of the same order of magnitude as between repetition
scores and test scores in English language subskills.
Analysis of Error Structure. Finnish spelling lends itself easily to error

analysis. Finnish orthography is characterized by a one-to-one correspond-
ence between phonemes and graphemes both ways. This makes it possible
to treat the copied pseudowords as if they were written in phonetic script.
36 SERVICE
TABLE 4
Correlations between Total Copying Error Rate’ and Different Subskills in English
~ ~~~
copytol
Group
Test Late-start (n) Normal-start (n) Groups Combined (n)
Listening comprehension -0.51*** (71) -0.74*** (46) -0.60***(117)

Reading comprehension -0.54*** (71) -0.67** (17) -0.55*** (88)
Production -0.60***(71) -0.67*** (46) -0.62*** (117)
Total test score -0.60*** (71) -0.74*** (17) -0.60*** (88)
“Copytot.
* p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; one-tailed test.
Letter substitutions can then be classified according to whether they con-

form to the sound of the substituted letter in place or manner of articula-
tion. Such an analysis was performed and is reported elsewhere (Service,
submitted). It suggested that a considerable portion of the errors made in
the delayed copying task were of the phonological type. There was a clear
tendency to substitute a consonant with another consonant similar to it in
place of articulation and especially in manner of articulation. This tendency
was particularly great for the letters whose corresponding sounds are diffi-
cult to pronounce for Finns (i.e. “b”, “d”, and “g”).
Discussion
Inspection of correlations between the error rate in the delayed copying
task and different English proficiency measures reveals a very similar pic-
ture to the one for correlations between pseudoword repetition perform-
ance and the same language learning measures. Also pseudoword copying
seems to be a task with a component specifically related to language learn-
ing, as opposed to, for instance, success in mathematics. One reason for
this could be that it is a task that requires manipulation of phonological
representations.
The letter substitution errors also suggested that a phonological code is
used to remember at least some of the letters. The letter “c” is, for
instance, replaced in 67.7% of the cases by either ‘3’’ or “k”, Is/ or Ikl
being the taught pronunciations for it. The letter “g” is replaced, in 49.7%
of the cases, by “k” and, in 29.3% of the substitutions, by “c”. These
letters both stand for the colloquial pronunciation of /g/as /kl. It is of some
interest that “k” occurs twice as often, although “c”, apart from a similar
pronunciation, shares visual features and the marking “foreign” with “g”.
The transposition errors resembled those reported by Brady et al. (1987)

in a short-term memory task in which children had to remember four-item
lists of consonant-vowel syllables. Both good and poor readers tended to
transpose initial consonants with shared articulatory features, especially in
adjacent syllables. Although both subject groups made the same kinds of
errors, the poor readers’ performance was quantitatively much worse.
Menn (1983) lists three articulatory sources of difficulty for the young
native speaker: certain phonemes, sequencing of dissimilar consonant
targets, and departures from consonant-vowel alternations. These seem
to be exactly the problems for the Finnish children on the level of whole
strings rather than inside individual syllables.

It can thus be concluded that performance in the delayed pseudoword
copying task depended on the familiarity of the strings, with Finnish-based
strings being practically immune to errors. The individual scores in this
task, as those in the repetition task, showed reliable forward prediction of
English learning results. The correlation between the repetition scores and
the copying error scores was quite high ( r = -0.64). Both this correlation
and the phonological character of errors suggested that the copying task
requires phonological coding in working memory. Whether visual or other
types of non-phonological coding are also used cannot be decided on the
basis of the data.
EXPERIMENT 3
COMPARING SYNTACTIC-SEMANTIC
STRUCTURES
The third task included in this study was chosen to reflect processes that
differ from those required in Experiments 1 and 2. The intention was to
find a task that would measure higher-level language skills than repetition
and delayed copying. It was thought that a task tapping metalinguistic
performance should be compared with the two other tasks in terms of its
predictive power and development with increasing knowledge of a second
language. It was important to ask whether performance on language tasks
assumed to tap different cognitive processes all showed similar patterns of
correlation with language learning success throughout the period of study.
If the ability to analyse syntactic structures gave rise to exactly the same
pattern of correlations with English and mathematics grades as did
performance in the repetition and delayed copying tasks, a possible
explanation would be that all three tasks tapped some general language
ability rather than phonological processing. The third task used in this
study was chosen to explore this possibility.
Metalinguistic tasks have been defined by Bialystok and Ryan (1985) as
language tasks that require both analysed knowledge and cognitive control
for the use of that knowledge. Examples of analysed knowledge are
38 SERVICE
phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules or syntactic rules describing

well-formed sentences. Cognitive control is necessary for employing this
knowledge, for instance, in blending letter-sounds to words and correcting
unacceptable sentences. A typical feature of metalinguistic tasks is that
they require focus on language form rather than message content, which
is otherwise automatically attended to.
The importance of metalinguistic knowledge has mostly been explored
in the context of learning to read. In this case awareness of the phonological
units of language has been found to be a prerequisite for normal reading
progress. Other kinds of metalinguistic awareness have to do with the
acceptability, synonymity, and ambiguity of words or sentences. Tradi-

tional foreign-language pedagogy has assumed that sophisticated skills to
analyse word and sentence structure formally are important for successful
learning. It was thought that the best way to teach language was through
rules. This approach has been heavily criticized during the last 20 years.
Still, Carroll (1964) has suggested that grammatical sensitivity is a funda-
mental dimension determining individual differences in language ability
and, specifically, foreign-language learning aptitude. He defines this
dimension as the ability to recognize the functions of form-classes and
constructions and to perform tasks requiring this ability. A task designed
to tap grammatical sensitivity was chosen to be the third, verbal but non-
phonological, task to be compared with the repetition and delayed copying
tasks.
The widely used language ability test, MLAT (Modern Language
Aptitude Test), by Carroll and Sapon (1959), contains a syntactic pattern
recognition task designed so as not to require previously learnt formal
knowledge of sentence structures. In this task sentences are given in pairs.
In one of the sentences one word or phrase is underlined and the subject
has to find the word with the same syntactic function in the other sentence.
The instructions are given using examples. A syntactic structure compar-
ison task similar to that of Carroll and Sapon was created to be used as
the task in Experiment 3. However, rather than comparing the function
of specific words or phrases in different sentences, whole sentence struc-
tures had to be zxamined in the present task. The subjects were given two
lists of sentences and told to find the pairs that had the same structure.
Structure was explained using examples and without referring to grammat-
ical terms. It was thought that this would also allow the comparisons to be
based on holistic “intuition” in addition to conscious analysis.
It was hypothesized that performance in this task would tap grammatical
sensitivity and therefore be positively correlated with English learning. No
prediction was made about its relation to success in mathematics. If it
measured a more general ability to see structural relationships, it should
predict mathematics learning as well as foreign-language learning. If it
tapped a specific language aptitude, it should not predict mathematics

learning. If the correlational pattern were the same as for the repetition
and the delayed copying tasks, the interpretation of these tasks as
measuring processing of phonological material would become less con-
vincing.
Method
Subjects. The subjects were again a subgroup of all the pupils par-
ticipating in the experiment that postponed the start of foreign-language
instruction in primary school. As all teaching groups did not complete the
sentence structure test every year, there were 79 subjects, 46 boys and 33
girls, in the late-start group, and 39 subjects, 16 boys and 23 girls, in the
normal-start group, amounting to a total of 118pupils. On Test 1the mean
age of the pupils was 9 years 3 months, and on Test 4 it was 11 years 10
months.
Materials. The test materials consisted of 12 sets of five Finnish sen-

tence pairs (see Appendix C). Each set of 10 sentences was written into
two columns of 5 sentences each, so that every sentence in one column
had a structurally similar pair in the other column. Structural similarity
was defined in terms of the sentences consisting of the same parts of speech
(e.g. subject-verb-object vs. subject-verbadverb) as well as additional
similarity in terms of, for instance, the same case or number for the nouns,
or both sentences being negative. The sentences in each column appeared
in random order.
Procedure. As with the copying lists, the presentation order of the

sentence sets was counterbalanced in the different school classes. The
pupils were tested in their class-rooms by their teachers. They were told
that each sentence in the left-hand column had a pair in the right-hand
column that had a similar structure, but not necessarily similar meaning,
to it. This was explained more fully by three examples. The teacher wrote
two columns of three sentences each on the blackboard and joined the
correct pairs. The pupils were then asked for reasons why they should go
together. With their active involvement it was then explained that the first
pair consisted of sentences that both described what happened to a non-
living object, the second pair of sentences both described what kind of a
thing had something happening to it, and the third what kind of a vehicle
was used for travelling. The pupils were then told that it was now their
turn to join the sentence pairs they thought went together. The three sets
of sentence pairs were all given separately so that direct comparison of
sets was not possible. The test was scored by simply counting the number
40 SERVICE
of correctly joined sentences (maximum 15). The first three tests were
given in the autumn term in the first three years of the study and the fourth
one in the spring of the third year, 2.5 years after the first one.
Results
The average performance scores in the syntactic comparison task were 5.0,
6.5, 8.2, and 10.6 in the different years. The mean total over the years was
30.3. Correlations were again computed between the test score for the
different testing times as well as the total score over the years and the
grade in English at the end of the spring, when the last testing was made.
These correlations are shown in Table 5.
Table 5 shows a statistically significant correlation between the syntactic
task total score and success in English learning. There was also reliable
forward prediction, seen especially in the correlation between the test
scores for Year 2 and Year 3 and English grade. The correlation between
the individual total score over the years and the mathematics grade
( r = 0.47) was very close to that between the total score and English grade.
Also, partial correlations were symmetrical in this case. When English
grade was partialled out from the correlation between the total syntactic
test score and mathematics grade, the remaining correlation was 0.24,
TABLE 5
Correlations between Yearly' and Total Scoresb in the Syntactic-
Structure Comparison Test and English Grade
English Grade
Group

Test (n = 79) (n = 39) (n = 118)
Syntl 0.27* 0.21 0.24***

Synt2 0.33** 0.42** 0.36***
Synt3 0.40*** 0.42** 0.41***'
Synt4 0.53*** 0.39** 0.45**"
Synttot OSO* * * 0.45** 0.47***

~
"Syntl, Synt2, Synt3, Synt4.

bSynttot.
'n = 162 including 44 pupils in the normal-start group that did not take
the test the first two times.
* p < 0.05; * p < 0.01; ***p< 0.001.
while partialling out mathematics grade from the correlation between the
total syntactic test score and English grade left an identical correlation of
0.24. It seems, then, that the total score in the syntactic comparison task
predicts success in English and mathematics to the same extent over the
amount depending on common variation in the grades in the two school
subjects.
Discussion
The correlations between syntactic structure comparison scores and success
in English were consistently significant, although not as high as those
between repetition and delayed copying scores and English grade. The low
correlation of the first year probably reflects a floor effect (scores are not
zero as the task allows guessing). The pattern of partial correlations
suggests, however, that this metalinguistic task is more like a general ability
task than the two others, in the sense that it predicts success in mathematics
just as well as in foreign-language learning. One explanation for the pattern
of results could naturally be that the syntactic-semantic task used Finnish-
language material, whereas the materials for the two other tasks were based
on English. However, this explanation is too simple. Performance in the
repetition task with English pseudowords accounted also for a greater
portion of the variance in the school grade in Finnish than did the syntactic-
semantic score. Correlations between reading speed in English and Finnish
(from the same spring as the English grade) and English grade were almost
identical (0.60 and 0.62, respectively).
INTERCORRELATIONS BETWEEN TASKS

All the three tasks studied were correlated with success in learning English
at the elementary stage. The individual total scores in the three tasks were
also intercorrelated. The correlation of the pronunciation accuracy with
the copying error score was -0.64 (p < 0.001), and with the syntactic-
semantic score 0.12 (N.S.), whereas the copying error score and the syn-
tactic-semantic score had a correlation of -0.36 (p < 0.01) for the 40
pupils who participated in all the three tasks. To explore the separate
predictive power of performance in the different tasks for the grade in
English, the scores were entered in a multiple regression analysis. The
correlations between the repetition and delayed copying tasks and English
learning might both reflect the importance of phonological processing in
working memory for language learning. In this case, if the task with a
higher correlation with English grade were entered first in the model, the
other task should not add much explanatory power to the model. If, on
the other hand, the two tasks were related to different aspects of English
learning, there could be a sizeable increase in the amount of variance in
42 SERVICE
English grade explained when the second task was added to the model,
irrespective of the order in which the tasks were considered. The same
logic naturally also applies when the results of the syntactic comparison
task are considered in the model.
The repetition score alone accounted for 44% of the variation in English
grade. Adding the delayed copying score to the model resulted in an addi-
tional 3% being explained, the model now accounting for 47% of the
variation. When the syntactic comparison score was added, the proportion
accounted for by the model was increased to 53%. Entering the syntactic
score first in the model covered 16%of the variation. Adding the repetition
score raised this to 50% and the delayed copying score again to 53%.
The delayed copying score alone accounted for 35% of the variation, so
that adding the repetition score to it resulted in another 12% being
accounted for. This pattern suggests that the predictive value of the delayed
copying task depends mainly on the large extent to which it taps the same
cognitive resources as the repetition task. The metalinguistic task with
syntactic comparisons seems to involve at least partly different processes.
Together with the delayed copying task, it accounted for 41% of the vari-
ance.
Of the three measures, repetition accuracy seems to be a slightly better
predictor of learning English in Finnish primary schools than delayed
copying accuracy, which is, however, clearly better than the task with
syntactic comparisons. The superiority of the repetition score as a predictor
may be partly due to the individual testing procedure, which is probably
less sensitive to attentional problems than group tests in schools. The
predictive power of the metalinguistic task was, on the other hand, possibly
restricted by a floor effect in the earlier test sessions.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Accuracy of Creating Phonological Working

Memory Representations and Foreign-Language
Learning
To recapitulate the major results briefly: Experiment 1 showed a cor-
relation between repetition accuracy and foreign-language learning.
Experiment 2 showed a similar correlation between accuracy in a delayed
copying task and success in foreign-language learning. Both experiments
showed ceiling performance for pseudoword stimuli based on native-
language vocabulary. Also the metalinguistic task concerned with syntactic
structural comparisons employed in Experiment 3 was related to foreign-
language learning. Repetition and copying accuracy were strongly related
to foreign-language learning in an analysis that attempted to exclude
general academic ability by partialling out common variation in English

and mathematics grades. The structural comparison task, however, seemed
to have a more pronounced general ability component and to be equally
related to learning mathematics and foreign language. Intercorrelations
between the tasks in the three experiments suggest that repetition and
copying accuracy accounted for largely overlapping portions of variation
in foreign-language learning.
In the present research, repetition accuracy, as well as delayed copying
accuracy, proved to be good predictors of foreign-language learning but
did not predict success in mathematics when the correlation between
success in the two subjects was partialled out. The repetition task has an
openly articulatory component, whereas the phonological code used in the
delayed copying task could well be generated through internal speech.
The Connection between Working Memory and

Long-Term Memory in Vocabulary Learning
In formulating the research problem, it was thought that the accuracy of
phonological representations of new language material might be important
in learning vocabulary. Looking closer at the contents of initial language
learning in school, it appears that the most important aspect is vocabulary
acquisition. It also appears that the role of listening comprehension as a
source of language input is still limited at this stage. The schools in which
the study was carried out stressed the communicative aspects of language
and rewarded comprehension as well as comprehensible production. How-
ever, without knowledge of vocabulary there can be neither comprehension
nor production. Building up a basic vocabulary is, therefore, one of the
fundamental aspects of elementary foreign-language teaching and was also
a major part of the experimental teaching programme studied here. Also,
either passive or active vocabulary were at least indirectly measured in all
the language proficiency tests. Thus, hypothesizing that vocabulary
learning is the main locus of the effects of individual variation in input
and/or articulatory phonological processing accuracy seems reasonable.
This hypothesis is supported by some later work I have carried out looking
specifically at word learning in foreign language. In this study, performance
in a repetition test in September, after one month of instruction in English,
correlated significantly with the ability to produce both English translation
equivalents to Finnish words and Finnish translation equivalents to English
words in May, 8 months later.
The hypothesis is in line with the results of Baddeley et al. (1988), whose
patient PV with reduced phonological store capacity was unable to repeat
back pseudowords consisting of more than three syllables and totally
unable to learn auditorily presented pseudoword associates to real words.
It is also compatible with the finding by Gathercole and Baddeley (1989)
44 SERVICE
that the ability to repeat pseudowords correctly predicts vocabulary scores

and native-language word learning between the ages of four and five.
The results reviewed above, suggesting that accurate initial representa-
tion in working memory might be necessary for the learning of new vocabu-
lary, raise some fundamental theoretical questions. For example, what is
the mechanism for a dependency between long-term storage of new phono-
logical forms and their representation in short-term working memory?
Although the results in this study could conceivably be incorporated in
many different kinds of models dealing with the processing and storage of
phonological information, including connectionist networks, an interpreta-
tion in terms of the working memory framework (Baddeley, 1986;

Baddeley & Hitch, 1974) originally used to guide the design of the research
is the only one attempted here. In current versions of this model, a very
quickly fading store for input phonology should give rise to errors in trans-
lation to an articulatory code, or prevent rehearsal altogether, as in the
case of some short-term memory patients like PV (Vallar & Baddeley,
1984b). Weak performance in the pseudoword repetition and delayed
copying tasks might result from one or more of the following factors: a
quickly fading phonological trace, slow translation from input to output
phonology, or inaccuracies in encoding material either into the phono-
logical input store or in the operation of the articulatory rehearsal process.
If the learning of new words depends on maintaining one or many repres-
entations of a word form and its meaning for some critical time in working
memory to establish representations that can later be found associatively
from long-term memory, all the factors listed above could influence the
long-term learning of words.
In explaining failure to repeat a foreign-sounding pseudoword accur-
ately, another component of the working memory system, the central
executive, should be kept in mind. Although current working memory
theory says very little about how it works, it is supposed to contribute to
verbal short-term memory span and to be especially important when articu-
latory rehearsal is prevented. One suggestion for the role of the central
executive could be in selective activation of information in long-term mem-
ory, leading to some kind of priming or top-down processing effects in
working memory. This idea is related to the idea of chunking material but
need not be so narrowly defined. The reason Finnish-sounding pseudo-
words can be repeated practically perfectly by the 9-year-old subjects in
this study, whereas only approximately 65% of the English-sounding syl-
lables are correctly reproduced, cannot be explained by articulatory diffi-
culties in the foreign language alone. In fact, the children were surprisingly
good mimics of speech sounds that are not part of their native-language
phonology. It is possible that the familiar-sounding pseudowords created
better-quality or longer-lasting traces in the phonological input store and
were therefore easier to repeat. The explanation can be rephrased as a

hypothesis for future research stating that the central executive can affect
trace quality in a working memory store by activating a supportive portion
of long-term memory. This could explain developmental differences in
short-term memory span under suppression (Hitch, Halliday, & Littler,
1989) as well as better span for content words than function words under
suppression (Tehan & Humphreys, 1988). These phenomena may reflect
different degrees of long-term memory support.
To return to the present study, the main result was that the quality of
pronunciation in an auditory pseudoword repetition task, as well as the
accuracy of spelling in a visual delayed copying task with pseudowords,

was correlated with elementary foreign-language learning. One explana-
tion for these results is that the critical factor in pseudoword repetition is
trace quality in the phonological input store. This quality is probably
related to durability and affected by long-term memory support, i.e. the
familiarity of the material. Naturally it is also affected by some neurally
based properties of the store-for instance, those determining the rate of
trace decay. Accuracy in the delayed copying task could also depend on
the quality of traces in the phonological store. The reason for copying
errors that bring the phonological representation of a foreign pseudoword
closer to a familiar phonological shape might not be that the sound-equival-
ents to the foreign letters cannot be pronounced, but the fact that the less
familiar-sounding non-word is more difficult to keep in the phonological
store, which also supports copying of visually presented verbal material.
As all new foreign words are initially foreign-sounding non-words, the
inability to create sufficiently distinctive or durable traces of them in the
phonological store could prevent their long-term memory learning for sev-
eral reasons. A number of rehearsal cycles might be necessary to establish
an association between form and meaning, or just to strengthen the
distinctiveness of the form. Ill-defined or quickly fading traces might fade
before they could be rehearsed, or the accuracy of articulatory rehearsal
might suffer. Whether articulatory accuracy in rehearsal plays a role inde-
pendent of the phonological store representations is another interesting
question for future research.
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Revised manuscript received 16 September 1991

APPENDIX A
PSEUDOWORDS USED IN EXPERIMENT 1
English-sounding Pseudowords
Practice List List A List B List C List D
Pikey redencable disrire ditrabetic ratfond

menty mindon hentidience hinrendery plander
gropulacture fentron landipation rendence merdod
refinikism malegetron dreplet subdegerent phontacently
peekrology geplore renditraction disajoinance crention
demont punger dupran molflabilous drankey
pungilighter crentorious fondet intew hendritiate
scretot nedrain boxflab flamrage madiforty
lendate mergimatate gontipastude duspel reitative
dantritional notifocal bendestery crending netrectifist
Finnish-sounding Pseudowords
Practice List List A List B List c List D
osma haiska hinto auristua aikis

sahtyroida arso tekka intaella one
YYPi Y"YS raatelias meski haarus
hahu jamauminen aivinaisuus raasi hainuksia
kammertya kaiha sintsi synki laira
leikos vetjustella huuvi sokerruttaa kaidehtia
eisto kerahinen vierto akaltaja vinsu
paasukainen inu rosakasti torko laipiottaa
vieroaja jongerrella yotelija portti navenkki
ankeellinen hehkoloinen haamatikas mujamainen morintteri
48
APPENDIX B
LElTER STRINGS USED IN EXPERIMENT 2
English-looking Letter Strings
List A List B List C List D
bicessary tendel thermestration tarment

rendolize marometer togile plarish
luvdict subregistate moodatory dreaser
deragonate promend zorrow bargantuan
religerent railolectic un veasa 1ize sniphen
pastualty sufficacious inrent toombedasher
menghast crungeon crylant goalmogamy
galdon illapse colty PrurY
monder hunergency hipporamus srnoororganal
travern sphereed rendicative spardenescence
Finnish-looking Letter Strings
List A List B List C List D
aaduttaja ame heidys keini

o11otok ki kepsi vesoin onhi
ill0 kitaavainen suopaamaton ahmeroinen
vaatto jorri sahtyrhida takahyttaa
asto rehto turnu akkiloima
jorkottaja paasu ahva elos
aljin rujauttaja hallu jolma
hakolikko vieroaja irjentya lenkoutua
soimo huuslaakari naveria aha
pel putella imarruinen raarillainen tehkaantya
49
APPENDIX C
EXAMPLES OF SENTENCES USED IN THE
SYNTACTIC-SEMANTIC COMPARISON TASK
In each group of sentence pairs every sentence on the left has one pair among the sentences
on the right. The translations in square brackets attempt to preserve the original structure
when at all possible.
1. Riitta meni kotiin. 1 . Vauva joi maitoa.

[Riitta went home.] [The baby drank some milk.]
2. Lapsia oli paljon. 2. Mustilla oli panta.

[There were lots of children.] [Musti had a collar. - A collar was with
Musti.]
3. Liisa istahti itkemaan. 3. Aiti tuli kaupasta.
[Liisa sat down to cry.] [Mummy came from the shop.]
4. Koira jyrsi luun. 4. Sorsa lahti uimaan.
[The dog gnawed the bone.] [The duck set out to swim.]
5. Pirkolla oli pullaa. 5 . Karkkeja oli kaksi pussia.
[Pirkko had some sweet bread. - Some [There were two bags of sweets.]
sweet bread was with Pirkko.]
I . Illalla kuu paistaa. I. Kisat olivat Los Angelesissa.

[At night the moon shines.] [The games were in Los Angeles.]
2. Essista tulee opettaja. 2. lita hamartyy hitaasti.
[Essi will become a teacher.] [The night darkens slowly.]
3. Joulupukki asuu Korvatunturilla. 3. Talvella lapset hiihtavat.
[Santa Claus lives on Korvatunturi fell.] [In winter the children ski.]
4. Kaarme sihisee vihaisesti. 4. Palikoista syntyy laiva.
[The snake hisses angrily.] [The blocks will make a ship.]
5. Hevoset ovat uljaita. 5. Kaktukset ovat piikikkaita.
[Horses are magnificent.] [Cactuses are prickly.]
1 . Kaijan aiti on pitka. 1 . Pallo ei pompi.

[Kaija’s Mummy is tall.] [The ball doesn’t bounce.]
2. Pekka tykkaa Leenasta. 2. Hevosen selka on kipea.
[Pekka likes (-about) Leena.] [The horse’s back is sore.]
3. Kansi ei aukea. 3. Sini pussaa aitia.
[The top doesn’t come off.] [Sini kisses Mummy.]
4. Passi puskee naapuria. 4. Kirja on paksu.
[The ram butts the neighbour.] [The book is thick.]
5. Auto on hieno. 5. Opettaja puhuu sinusta.
[The car is great.] [The teacher talks about you.]
50

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THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 1992,45A (1) 21-50

Phonology, Working Memory,

Requests for reprints should be sent to E. Service, Department of Psychology, University

0 1992 The Experimental Psychology Society

study Gathercole and Baddeley (1990) found that language-disordered chil-

Another result suggesting a connection between phonological representa-

can be articulated in this time period. Memory span is consequently a joint

given in of the previous spring term, approximately 2 years 7 months after

cessing in the repetition task and information processing in English, cor-

Materials. Ten lists of 10 pseudowords each were constructed. Five

tion of the different lists in each language was counterbalanced in a Latin

Analysis of Records. The accuracy of the repetition responses to

chosen so that differences in learning performance would have time to

Late-start Normal-start Groups Combined

Pronl 0.56*** 0.66*** 0.44**

Prontot 0.67*** 0.81*** 0.66***

"Pronl, Pron2, Pron3, Pron4.

Late-start Normal-start Groups Combined

Listening comprehension 0.63*** 0.90*** 0.62***

Production 0.55"' 0.82*** 0.58***

Total test score 0.62*'* 0.90*** 0.65* *

partly guided (translation, answers to questions), partly free (composition).

spring. The explanation seems to be a ceiling effect, as many of the pupils

sumably performed on stored representations of sounds and sound com-

a pseudoword to its oral imitation might cause inaccuracy in the articulatea

tion of the written response. The suggestion is supported by Conrad and

in the repetition task.

Scoring. As number of letters varied between lists, a scoring procedure

Late-start Normal-start Groups Combined

COPY' -0.46*** -0.62"' -0.55***

Copytot -0.56*** -0.73*** -0.63; * *

"Copyl, copy2, copy3, copy4.

proved to be a significant correlation between the overall copying error

Analysis of Error Structure. Finnish spelling lends itself easily to error

Test Late-start (n) Normal-start (n) Groups Combined (n)

Listening comprehension -0.51*** (71) -0.74*** (46) -0.60***(117)

Total test score -0.60*** (71) -0.74*** (17) -0.60*** (88)

Letter substitutions can then be classified according to whether they con-

The transposition errors resembled those reported by Brady et al. (1987)

strings rather than inside individual syllables.

phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules or syntactic rules describing

acceptability, synonymity, and ambiguity of words or sentences. Tradi-

tapped a specific language aptitude, it should not predict mathematics

Materials. The test materials consisted of 12 sets of five Finnish sen-

Procedure. As with the copying lists, the presentation order of the

Late-start Normal-start Groups Combined

Syntl 0.27* 0.21 0.24***

Synttot OSO* * * 0.45** 0.47***

"Syntl, Synt2, Synt3, Synt4.

INTERCORRELATIONS BETWEEN TASKS

Accuracy of Creating Phonological Working

general academic ability by partialling out common variation in English

The Connection between Working Memory and

that the ability to repeat pseudowords correctly predicts vocabulary scores

tion in terms of the working memory framework (Baddeley, 1986;

were therefore easier to repeat. The explanation can be rephrased as a

accuracy of spelling in a visual delayed copying task with pseudowords,

components of short-term memory? In J. Long 19 A. Baddeley (Eds.), Attention and

Revised manuscript received 16 September 1991

Practice List List A List B List C List D

Pikey redencable disrire ditrabetic ratfond

Practice List List A List B List c List D

Pronl 0.56* 0.66* 0.44**

Prontot 0.67* 0.81* 0.66***

Listening comprehension 0.63* 0.90* 0.62***

Production 0.55"' 0.82* 0.58*

Total test score 0.62' 0.90*** 0.65* *

COPY' -0.46* -0.62"' -0.55*

Copytot -0.56* -0.73* -0.63; * *

Listening comprehension -0.51* (71) -0.74* (46) -0.60***(117)

Total test score -0.60* (71) -0.74* (17) -0.60*** (88)

Synttot OSO* * * 0.45 0.47*