Abstract: Visual short-term memory behaviors for Chinese bi-syllable phrases were tested on Grades 3 and 6 chil- dren under the conditions of two different reverberation times and three different interference noise levels,and the effects of noise and reverberation time on the visual short-term memory for Chinese phases of children with different ages were investigated.Then,the differences between auditory memory and visual memory behaviors of children in reverberation and noise environments were analyzed in a comparative way.The results show that (1) both interfer- ence noise level and age have significant effects on the visual short-term memory of children in classroom; (2) with the decrease of interference noise level,the shortening of reverberation time and the increase of children's age,the visual short-term memory scores of children for Chinese phrases increase; and (3) the effects of noise and reverber- ation time on auditory memory behavior are greater than those on visual memory,and the difference in scores be- tween the auditory and visual memory behavior decreases with the decrease of noise level and with the shortening of reverberation time.

Key words: noise, reverberation time, children, visual short-term memory