This article summarizes a comprehensive synthesis of experimental intervention studies that have included students with learning disabilities. Effect sizes for 180 intervention studies were analyzed across instructional domains, sample characteristics, intervention parameters, methodological procedures, and article characteristics. The overall mean effect size of instructional intervention was positive and of high magnitude (M = 0.79). Effect sizes were more positive for a combined model that included components of direct and strategy instruction than for competing models. Interventions that included instructional components related to controlling task difficulty, small interactive groups, and directed responses and questioning of students were significant predictors of effect size, and interventions that varied from control conditions in terms of setting, teacher, and number of instructional steps yielded larger effect sizes than studies that failed to control for such variations. The results are support...

Experimental Intervention Research on Students with Learning Disabilities: A Meta-Analysis of Treatment Outcomes:

Seventy-five children and adults with learning disabilities (age range = 5.0 to 42.10 yrs.) and 86 normally achieving children and adults (age range = 5.11 to 58.0 yrs.) were compared on short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) tasks to assess the relationship between STM and WM, and to test whether these measures independently relate to achievement. For both ability groups, the factor analyses indicated that STM and WM loaded on different factors, and the regressions and partial correlations showed that these different factors accounted for separate variance in reading comprehension and mathematics. Both STM and WM are important in understanding reading comprehension and mathematics performance in children and adults with learning disabilities; however, WM is more important for children and adults without learning disabilities. In contrast to WM, STM contributed minimal variance to word recognition in both ability groups. Overall, it was concluded that STM and WM do reflect different processes, both of which seem to separate the two ability groups. However, models of memory that view STM and WM as interchangeable, or STM in isolation, do not provide an adequate framework for capturing academic performance in children and adults with learning disabilities.

Short-Term Memory and Working Memory Do Both Contribute to Our Understanding of Academic Achievement in Children and Adults with Learning Disabilities?

“Spontaneous” strategy use: Perspectives from metacognitive theory☆

Working Memory, Short-term Memory, Speech Rate, Word Recognition and Reading Comprehension in Learning Disabled Readers: Does the Executive System Have a Role?.

https://www.archives-pmr.org/article/0003-9993(93)90363-F/pdf

Lynn M. Gelzheiser

Papers

Generalization from categorical memory tasks to prose by learning disabled adolescents