Abstract
We developed a modified version of Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test for Japanese children of pre-school ages in order to clarify developmental changes in auditory verbal memory. The subjects were 99 children aged 4 to 6 years old. There was a significant age difference with respect to the total number of words recalled in 5 trials (p <. 05) and the effect of word position (p <.05) , while no significant difference was found among the different ages in terms of the number of recalled words (p =.842) or effect of serial position (p =.115 ~.417) in immediate recall. For the delayed recall task and post-interference recall task, significant differences in the number of words recalled were found between 4 and 6 year-old children (p <.01) . The number of words recognized from the original list increased with age, and a significant difference was found between 4 and 5 year olds (p <.01) We found that the modified AVLT for Japanese pre-school children can be used to analyze various aspects of their auditory verbal memory.
