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The Tactual Performance Test (TPT) and a version of the TPT with unfamiliar geometric designs were presented to American, Lao, and Senegalese children. The nonstandard TPT was designed to evaluate the importance of familiarity of forms in improved performance between successive TPT learning trials. The nonstandard board was more difficult for all the groups, with poorer time-per-block performance across learning trials and poorer TPT memory measures. Irrespective, the transfer-of-learning (ToL) effect for the standard and nonstandard boards was consistent for all the cultural groups. ToL effect is not dependent on familiarity of the TPT forms and is consistent across cultures.

Although research examining Auditory-Verbal and Visual Memory Span in adults has failed to provide compelling evidence for the modality specificity of such tasks, Fastenau, Conant, and Lauer (1998) suggested that these processes may be dissociable in children until around the age of 8 years when visuospatial memory span appears to become more verbally mediated perhaps as a function of formal reading training. A subsequent cross-cultural study in Zaïre (now Democratic Republic of Congo) by Conant and colleagues (1999) supported that hypothesis. However, other differences in the sociocultural environments of American and rural Zaïrian children such as nutritional and health care factors could potentially account for the findings. The present study examines the relationships among Auditory-Verbal, Visual, and Cross-Modal Memory Span tasks with 46 Lao and 56 American children. Both samples were divided into younger and older groups, and separate partial correlational analyses were performed on Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) data from each group. In younger Lao and American children, Auditory-Verbal Memory Span was not significantly correlated with Visual Memory Span or Cross-Modal Memory Span, whereas significant correlations were found between Auditory-Verbal Memory Span and these other tasks in older children from both countries. The similar pattern in both cultures, together with findings from Zaïre, supports the hypothesis that the relationship between Auditory-Verbal and Visual Memory Span may change with reading training.

Digit span (DS) and visual memory span (VMS) tasks have been shown to be distinct in young children but fail to show modality specificity in older American children and adults (Fastenau, Conant, & Lauer, 1997, 1998). The present study examines the possibility that processing of VMS becomes automatized with written language training. In a sample of 139 Zaïrian children, separate factor analyses on K-ABC data for younger children (6.1-8.5 years) and older children (8.6-12.8 years) yielded two-factor solutions in both cases, which appear to represent verbal and visual-spatial abilities. Modality specificity of the visual span task is supported in both age groups. Findings of modality specificity in both Zaïrian age groups provides support for the theoretical distinction between verbal and visual memory span. Continued modality specificity of visual memory span tasks in older Zaïrian children suggests that the increased verbal loadings of these tasks seen for older American children may reflect differences in written language development.