Development of a children's memory questionnaire

The Everyday Memory Questionnaire (EMQ) (Sunderland, Harris & Baddeley, 1983) was examined for its suitability to assess children's memory function. The parents of 226 school children (aged from 6 to 12 years) completed the EMQ in relation to their children. A factor analysis conducted on these data revealed a structure similar to that found in adult EMQ data (Comish, 2000; Richardson & Chan, 1995) including factors associated with memory for everyday activities, expressive and receptive language, and visuo-spatial orientation. The validity of the EMQ was further assessed using 101 of these children in the 6, 8 and 10 years - age groups who completed subtests of the Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Leaming (WRAML) (Sheslow & Adams, 1990). In the 10 years age group aspects of verbal memory tests correlated moderately with the EMQ. There were only very low and unreliable correlations in the 8 years age group and in the 6 years age group aspects of visual memory correlated moderately with the EMQ. Preliminary data on the diagnostic utility of the EMQ for children with memory deficits was collected by comparing EMQ performance between school children and a clinical group with ADHD and/or learning disorders. Although there was a significant difference between the means on the EMQ between the school and clinical groups, diagnostic indicators demonstrated that the EMQ had poor positive predictive power in this situation and miscategorized 40% of the school group.