The phonological similarity effect (the effect on recall of phonological similarity vs dissimilarity) is gauged in the context of children's memory span. The findings here do not support a relationship between the phonological similarity effect and word-reading ability.
In support of work carried out by Johnston, Rugg & Scott (1987) it was found that the recall of letter stringd, set at lengths just within the maximum memory span for each child, was similarly, adversely, affected for all children in the study (aged 5- to 7-years) when strings consisted of phonologically similar items. The magnitude of the effect was also found to be comparable for a group of 7-year old partially-hearing children.
These effects are discussed in terms of the model of working memory as described and elaborated by Baddeley and colleagues and consideration is given to the effects of interference induced decay in the phonological loop component of this model.
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