We confirmed the proposal made by GathercoleandBaddeley (1989, 1993), in experiments using the Japanese language, in which little contribution from phoneme-level phonological sensitivity is involved in vocabulary acquisition. They claimed that the capacity for of phonological short-term memory is the foundation of vocabulary acquisition, and that phonological short-term memory can be measured by nonword repetition tasks. Bowey (1996), moreover has argued that both phonological short-term memory and phoneme-level phonological sensitivity contribute to vocabulary acquisition. Thus, we have conducted two studies using the Japanese language, which has little contribution of phoneme-level phonological sensitivity. In study 1, we experimented 92 five-year-old to examine the relationship between vocabulary acquisition and phonological short-term memory using Japanese nonword. The correlation coefficient between vocabulary acquisition and Japanese nonword was r = .31. By applying the results to structural equation modeling, we confirmed Baddeley’s working memory model. In study 2, we experimented 90 five-year-old to test both Japanese nonword and English nonword as well as phonological sensitivity tasks in both Japanese and English in order to examine their correlation with vocabulary acquisition. We have found that there are significant correlations between vocabulary acquisition and Japanese nonword, as well as between vocabulary acquisition and Japanese phonological sensitivity ( r = .27 with Japanese nonword, r = .30 with Japanese phonological sensitivity, whereas r = .17 with English nonword and r = .17 with English phonological sensitivity), which indicates that phoneme-level phonological sensitivity (i.e. English phonological sensitivity) has low involvement in vocabulary acquisition for Japanese children. In addition, we further discuss the relationship between vocabulary acquisition and phonological sensitivity that is unique to each specific language.
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