| This study examined the relationships between verbal attention, rote auditory verbal learning, age, and education. Research has suggested that intact attention is needed for functioning memory, and that memory is employed when one's attention span is exceeded by informational load (Butters, 1979; Scoville & Milner, 1957; Zangwill, 1943). Additionally, age and education have been found to mediate level of performance on attentional and memory measures (c.f., Gomez-Perez & Ostrosky-Solis, 2006).;Studies on Serial Digit Learning (SDL), which involves rote learning of eight- (SDL8) or nine-digit (SDL9) sequences, have suggested differing, yet complementary, factor structures for SDL8 and SDL9 (Benton, Sivan, Hamsher, Varney, & Spreen, 1994; Moses, Kumbhani, Park, & Romero, 2004; Romero, 2008). The influence of attention, age, and education on SDL performance was detailed by Romero (2008), which suggested associations between attention and performance on early, but not late, SDL8 and SDL9 trials, age, and education with phases of learning of SDL8 and SLD9.;This dissertation conducted exploratory analyses to clarify Moses and colleagues' (2004) and Romero's (2008) findings by selecting a more comprehensive measure of attention (i.e., Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised [WAIS-R] Freedom From Distractibility index; Wechsler, 1981) to factor analyze with SDL8 and SDL9 trials, separately, and age and education in a series of analyses. Using serial factor analyses on the measures of interest and demographic variables in a mixed neuropsychiatric veteran population, we sought to determine: What type of WAIS-R factor structure would be rendered, explaining the greatest total shared variance; what type of SDL factorial model would emerge; and how these measures would relate dimensionally both with each other and with age and education.;Our factor scales resembled the three WAIS-R (Wechsler, 1981) indices and explained the greatest total shared variance. Two-factor models of both SDL8 and SDL9 were found. Attention was associated with SDL8 initial learning and task-mastery was associated with verbal reasoning and education; age and nonverbal reasoning were independent of SDL8 performance. Finally, SDL9 initial learning was associated with verbal abilities and education; SDL9 task-mastery was positively associated with nonverbal abilities and negatively associated with age; attention was independent of SDL9 performance. |
