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Journal ArticleDOI

Working memory in children with reading disabilities

TL;DR: It is suggested that working memory skills indexed by complex memory tasks represent an important constraint on the acquisition of skill and knowledge in reading and mathematics.
About: This article is published in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.The article was published on 2006-03-01 and is currently open access. It has received 742 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Phonological awareness & Short-term memory.

Summary (2 min read)

Reading disabilities Working memory Short-term memory IQ Mathematics

  • The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which impairments of working memory contribute to the severity of the learning difficulties experienced by children with reading disabilities.
  • Proponents of the working memory model have suggested that the storage demands of complex memory tasks depend on appropriate subsystems, with processing demands supported principally by the central executive (Baddeley & Logie, 1999; Cocchini, Logie Della Sala, MacPherson, & Baddeley, 2002) .
  • As the present research is not concerned specifically with distinctions between models, the theoretically neutral terms phonological and visuospatial short-term memory will be used to refer to storage-only assessments of the respective informational domains, and complex memory tasks will be interpreted as tapping working memory.
  • Addition commences with simple counting strategies, success at which contributes to the gradual acquisition of arithmetic facts.
  • In a recent study of working memory in children with learning disabilities (Pickering & Gathercole, 2004) , the authors found that children classified by their schools as having problems in both reading and mathematics had depressed performance on complex memory tasks, but that individuals with difficulties restricted to reading did not.

Method Participants

  • Data are reported for 46 children (13 girls, 33 boys) with a mean age of 9.00 years (range 6.06 to 11.00 years, SD = 12 months) taken from a larger study of children identifying by their schools as having special educational needs that required additional educational support.
  • This score is derived from three subtests: reading (of letters and single words), spelling (of letters and single words), and reading comprehension (involving passage reading followed by orally presented questions).
  • Test-retest reliability coefficients for children aged between 6 and 11 years range from .94 to .96 for reading, from .90 to .96 for spelling, and from .90 to .94 for reading comprehension in the WORD.
  • The numerical operations subtest measures abilities to solve computational problems involving mathematical operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and algebra.
  • Backwards digit recall, counting recall, and listening recall.

______________ Table 1 about

  • In counting recall, the child is required to count the number of dots in an array, and then recall the tallies of dots in the arrays in the sequence in which they were presented.
  • Test-retest reliability coefficients for children aged between 5 and 8 years are .53, .74, and .83 for backward digit recall, counting recall and listening recall respectively.
  • Digit recall and word list recall both involve spoken recall of sequences of spoken items (either single digits or high frequency monosyllabic words).
  • The number of lists increases in each block, and the number of correct trials is scored.
  • In the Visual Patterns Test (Della Sala, Gray, Baddeley, & Wilson, 1997) , the child views a two-dimensional grid of black and white squares.

Phonological processing tests. Three measures from the Phonological Assessment

  • Battery (Fredrickson et al., 1997) were administered.
  • The rhyme task assesses the child's ability to identify rhyming words in sequences of three monosyllabic words such as sand, hand, cup and bead, wheat, seat.
  • In the spoonerism task, the child is required to segment single syllable words and then exchange initial phonemes to produce new word combinations, for example by combining cot with a /g/ to give got, and by transforming riding boot to biding root.
  • Performance on all tasks was scored as the number of correct trials.
  • Testretest reliability coefficients for children aged between 6 and 8 years are .92, .95, and .90 for rhyme, spoonerism and alliteration tasks respectively.

Results

  • Table 2 provides descriptive statistics for the test scores.
  • About half of the sample also obtained performance IQ scores below 86, although comparable low scores were less common in the remaining measures phonological short-term memory, phonological processing, language and verbal IQ.
  • Phonological short-term memory scores were significantly correlated only with complex memory and mathematics scores.
  • Given the high degree of intercorrelation between these measures, it was important to establish which factors independently predicted scores on the reading and mathematics measures.

Discussion

  • Working memory skills were significantly related to the severity of learning difficulties in both reading and mathematics in this sample of children with reading disabilities.
  • In the light of substantial evidence that children with reading difficulties have poor phonological processing, it is perhaps surprising these skills fell within the average range for the majority of children in the sample.
  • An observational study of study of children aged 5 and 6 years who performed very poorly on measures of verbal working memory provides support for this view (Gathercole, Lamont, & Alloway, 2005) .
  • Particularly high rates of failure were found in following complex instructions (which the child often forgot), performing tasks that imposed significant storage and processing loads, and in tasks with a complex hierarchical structure (in which the child often lost their place, and eventually abandoned prior to completion).
  • It predicts that promoting teacher awareness of working memory loads in classroom activities and effective management of these loads for children with impairments of working memory should boost their learning.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Correlational and regression analyses revealed that visual short-term and working memory were found to specifically predict math achievement at each time point, while executive function skills predicted learning in general rather than learning in one specific domain.
Abstract: This study examined whether measures of short-term memory, working memory, and executive functioning in preschool children predict later proficiency in academic achievement at 7 years of age (third year of primary school). Children were tested in preschool (M age = 4 years, 6 months) on a battery of cognitive measures, and mathematics and reading outcomes (from standardized, norm-referenced school-based assessments) were taken on entry to primary school, and at the end of the first and third year of primary school. Growth curve analyses examined predictors of math and reading achievement across the duration of the study and revealed that better digit span and executive function skills provided children with an immediate head start in math and reading that they maintained throughout the first three years of primary school. Visual-spatial short-term memory span was found to be a predictor specifically of math ability. Correlational and regression analyses revealed that visual short-term and working memory were found to specifically predict math achievement at each time point, while executive function skills predicted learning in general rather than learning in one specific domain. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to further understanding the role of cognitive skills in different mathematical tasks, and in relation to the impact of limited cognitive skills in the classroom environment.

1,414 citations


Cites background or methods from "Working memory in children with rea..."

  • ...…complex span tasks were highly related to learning achievement across the curriculum suggesting that capacity to process and store material in working memory significantly constrain a child’s ability to acquire skills during the early period of formal education (see also Gathercole et al., 2006)....

    [...]

  • ...Gathercole et al. (2006), in failing to find such a relationship in a study of 6–11 year olds, did find a relationship between phonological short-term memory and mathematics....

    [...]

  • ...Financial support for the first stage of this study was provided by grants from the British Academy (SG-30215) and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is found that working memory at the start of formal education is a more powerful predictor of subsequent academic success than IQ, which has important implications for education, particularly with respect to intervention.

1,058 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated whether these problems can be overcome by a training program designed to boost working memory, and found that common impairments in working memory and associated learning difficulties may be overcome with behavioral treatment.
Abstract: Working memory plays a crucial role in supporting learning, with poor progress in reading and mathematics characterizing children with low memory skills. This study investigated whether these problems can be overcome by a training program designed to boost working memory. Children with low working memory skills were assessed on measures of working memory, IQ and academic attainment before and after training on either adaptive or non-adaptive versions of the program. Adaptive training that taxed working memory to its limits was associated with substantial and sustained gains in working memory, with age-appropriate levels achieved by the majority of children. Mathematical ability also improved significantly 6 months following adaptive training. These findings indicate that common impairments in working memory and associated learning difficulties may be overcome with this behavioral treatment.

934 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Findings support the pivotal role of phonemic awareness as a predictor of individual differences in reading development and whether such a relationship is a causal one and the implications of research in this area for current approaches to the teaching of reading and interventions for children with reading difficulties.
Abstract: The authors report a systematic meta-analytic review of the relationships among 3 of the most widely studied measures of children's phonological skills (phonemic awareness, rime awareness, and verbal short-term memory) and children's word reading skills The review included both extreme group studies and correlational studies with unselected samples (235 studies were included, and 995 effect sizes were calculated) Results from extreme group comparisons indicated that children with dyslexia show a large deficit on phonemic awareness in relation to typically developing children of the same age (pooled effect size estimate: -137) and children matched on reading level (pooled effect size estimate: -057) There were significantly smaller group deficits on both rime awareness and verbal short-term memory (pooled effect size estimates: rime skills in relation to age-matched controls, -093, and reading-level controls, -037; verbal short-term memory skills in relation to age-matched controls, -071, and reading-level controls, -009) Analyses of studies of unselected samples showed that phonemic awareness was the strongest correlate of individual differences in word reading ability and that this effect remained reliable after controlling for variations in both verbal short-term memory and rime awareness These findings support the pivotal role of phonemic awareness as a predictor of individual differences in reading development We discuss whether such a relationship is a causal one and the implications of research in this area for current approaches to the teaching of reading and interventions for children with reading difficulties

865 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper presented a theoretical framework designed to accommodate core evidence that the abilities to repeat nonwords and to learn the phonological forms of new words are closely linked, and concluded that word learning mediated by temporary phonological storage is a primitive learning mechanism that is particularly important in the early stages of acquiring a language, but remains available to support word learning across the life span.
Abstract: This article presents a theoretical framework designed to accommodate core evidence that the abilities to repeat nonwords and to learn the phonological forms of new words are closely linked. Basic findings relating nonword repetition and word learning both in typical samples of children and adults and in individuals with disorders of language learning are described. The theoretical analysis of this evidence is organized around the following claims: first, that nonword repetition and word learning both rely on phonological storage; second, that they are both multiply determined, constrained also by auditory, phonological, and speech–motor output processes; third, that a phonological storage deficit alone may not be sufficient to impair language learning to a substantial degree. It is concluded that word learning mediated by temporary phonological storage is a primitive learning mechanism that is particularly important in the early stages of acquiring a language, but remains available to support word learning across the life span.

824 citations

References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results suggest that it is important to recognize both the unity and diversity ofExecutive functions and that latent variable analysis is a useful approach to studying the organization and roles of executive functions.

12,182 citations

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: This chapter demonstrates the functional importance of dopamine to working memory function in several ways and demonstrates that a network of brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex, is critical for the active maintenance of internal representations.
Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the modern notion of short-term memory, called working memory. Working memory refers to the temporary maintenance of information that was just experienced or just retrieved from long-term memory but no longer exists in the external environment. These internal representations are short-lived, but can be maintained for longer periods of time through active rehearsal strategies, and can be subjected to various operations that manipulate the information in such a way that makes it useful for goal-directed behavior. Working memory is a system that is critically important in cognition and seems necessary in the course of performing many other cognitive functions, such as reasoning, language comprehension, planning, and spatial processing. This chapter demonstrates the functional importance of dopamine to working memory function in several ways. Elucidation of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying human working memory is an important focus of cognitive neuroscience and neurology for much of the past decade. One conclusion that arises from research is that working memory, a faculty that enables temporary storage and manipulation of information in the service of behavioral goals, can be viewed as neither a unitary, nor a dedicated system. Data from numerous neuropsychological and neurophysiological studies in animals and humans demonstrates that a network of brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex, is critical for the active maintenance of internal representations.

10,081 citations


"Working memory in children with rea..." refers background or methods in this paper

  • ...…Hitch (1974) model includes the central executive, responsible for a range of functions such as retrieval of information from long-term memory, regulation of information within working memory, attentional control of both encoding and retrieval strategies, and task shifting (Baddeley, 1986, 1996)....

    [...]

  • ...In the inXuential working memory model of Baddeley and Hitch (1974), developed subsequently by Baddeley (1986, 2000), these components correspond to diVerent slave systems....

    [...]

  • ...All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2005.08.003...

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The revised model differs from the old principally in focussing attention on the processes of integrating information, rather than on the isolation of the subsystems, which provides a better basis for tackling the more complex aspects of executive control in working memory.

6,350 citations


"Working memory in children with rea..." refers methods in this paper

  • ...In the inXuential working memory model of Baddeley and Hitch (1974), developed subsequently by Baddeley (1986, 2000), these components correspond to diVerent slave systems....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The reading span, the number of final words recalled, varied from two to five for 20 college students and was correlated with three reading comprehension measures, including verbal SAT and tests involving fact retrieval and pronominal reference.

6,041 citations


"Working memory in children with rea..." refers background in this paper

  • ...An example of a complex memory task is listening span, where participants are asked to make a meaning-based judgment about each of a series of spoken sentences and then to remember the last word of each sentence in sequence (e.g., Daneman & Carpenter, 1980)....

    [...]

  • ...Another inXuential conceptualization of working memory is of a limited resource that can be Xexibly allocated to support either processing or storage (e.g., Daneman & Carpenter, 1980; Just & Carpenter, 1992)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A wide variety of data on capacity limits suggesting that the smaller capacity limit in short-term memory tasks is real is brought together and a capacity limit for the focus of attention is proposed.
Abstract: Miller (1956) summarized evidence that people can remember about seven chunks in short-term memory (STM) tasks. How- ever, that number was meant more as a rough estimate and a rhetorical device than as a real capacity limit. Others have since suggested that there is a more precise capacity limit, but that it is only three to five chunks. The present target article brings together a wide vari- ety of data on capacity limits suggesting that the smaller capacity limit is real. Capacity limits will be useful in analyses of information processing only if the boundary conditions for observing them can be carefully described. Four basic conditions in which chunks can be identified and capacity limits can accordingly be observed are: (1) when information overload limits chunks to individual stimulus items, (2) when other steps are taken specifically to block the recoding of stimulus items into larger chunks, (3) in performance discontinuities caused by the capacity limit, and (4) in various indirect effects of the capacity limit. Under these conditions, rehearsal and long-term memory cannot be used to combine stimulus items into chunks of an unknown size; nor can storage mechanisms that are not capacity- limited, such as sensory memory, allow the capacity-limited storage mechanism to be refilled during recall. A single, central capacity limit averaging about four chunks is implicated along with other, noncapacity-limited sources. The pure STM capacity limit expressed in chunks is distinguished from compound STM limits obtained when the number of separately held chunks is unclear. Reasons why pure capacity estimates fall within a narrow range are discussed and a capacity limit for the focus of attention is proposed.

5,677 citations


"Working memory in children with rea..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Other theorists have proposed that working memory consists of activated long-term memory representations and that STM is the subset of working memory that falls within the focus of attention (Cowan, 2001; Engle, Kane, & Tuholski, 1999)....

    [...]

Frequently Asked Questions (12)
Q1. What measures were significant predictors of mathematics ability in Model 4?

Verbal IQ and complex memory were both significant predictors of mathematics ability in Model 4, which incorporated the complex memory and phonological short-term memory measures. 

One limitation of the assessment of working memory skill in the present study is thedependence of verbally-based assessment methods only. 

Swanson has argued that working memory provides a resource that allows the learner to integrate information retrieved from long-term memory with current inputs, and so that poor working memory capacities will compromise the child’s attempts to carry out such important cognitive activities (Swanson & Saez, 2003; Swanson & Beebe-Frankenberger, 2004). 

In activities such as holding a sentence in mind while writing it down, the heavy storage and processing can be reduced by keeping sentences short and redundant, and using highly familiarvocabulary. 

Test-retest reliability coefficients for children aged between 5 and 8 years are .53, .74, and .83 for backward digit recall, counting recall and listening recall respectively. 

Tasks with complex structures could be simplified into component parts as a means of reducing the burden of monitoring the child’s current place within the task. 

The independentpredictors of reading ability in this analysis were mathematics and language scores, but not complex memory scores.----------------------------Tables 5 and 6 about here----------------------------The predictors of mathematics scores were also explored in a series of multipleregression analyses. 

Participants also completed the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - 3rd UK Edition (WISC-IIIUK; Wechsler, 1992), yielding measures of verbal IQ and performance IQ. 

working memory and phonological short-term memory have been found to have dissociable links with learning abilities (e.g., Gathercole & Pickering, 2000; Swanson et al., 2004), suggesting that variation in working memory scores is not mediated simply by the contribution of phonological STM to performance on complex memory tasks (e.g., Baddeley & Logie, 1999). 

The rhyme task assesses the child’s ability to identify rhyming words in sequences of three monosyllabic words such as sand, hand, cup and bead, wheat, seat. 

The authors propose that this association arizes because working memory acts as a bottleneck for learning in classroom activities, and suggest that effective management of working memory loads in structured learning activities may ameliorate the problems of learning that are associated with impairments of working memory. 

The association between working memory and reading ability in this sample of childrenwith learning disabilities was not mediated by fluid intelligence, verbal abilities, short-term memory or phonological processing skills. 

Trending Questions (1)
How to study with poor working memory?

These findings suggest that working memory skills indexed by complex memory tasks represent an important constraint on the acquisition of skill and knowledge in reading and mathematics.