Tracy Packiam Alloway, PhD

Did you every play Marco Polo as a child? I used to love closing my eyes and spinning around faster and faster when I was ‘It’. Now imagine playing that game in the middle of a busy intersection. Cars are honking, dogs are barking, siren sounds get closer, and people are yelling. You are ‘It’ and are trying to listen to the where ‘Polo’ is coming from. For a student that is hypersensitive to sound, touch, and light, the world is a chaotic place. As a result, new surroundings can be very disorienting for them. Some label such sensory hypersensitivity as sensory integration dysfunction (SID).

The label of sensory integration disorder may come as a welcome relief to some parents who want an explanation for why their child has not reached certain milestones, like walking or talking. As parents, it is instinctive to worry that something may be wrong with our child. We view Bobby obsessively lining up cars in a row as a symptom of Autistic Spectrum, and Daisy mixing up words as dyslexic. Yet, does a label like SID actually help parents? Although it is a ‘condition’ identified by some health practitioners, there are many psychologists and neurologists who think that the label of SID is actually doing a disservice to parents. I will outline several reasons for why this is the case. The first issue is that the difficulties associated with SID reflect a neurodevelopmental immaturity, rather than a distinct disorder. The absence of adults receiving a diagnosis of SID begs the question of whether in some cases, the child might outgrow the symptoms naturally without the need for expensive and unproven treatments. The next point is related to this issue as sensory hypersensitivity is a symptom of other disorders such as dyspraxia, ADHD, and Autistic Spectrum. A label of SID might falsely lead to parent to feel comforted that their child is receiving support, when more serious problems might be going undiagnosed, and as a result, untreated or supported. Finally, there are very few published clinical trials on either the diagnosis of SID or the treatment of it. Those that are published have been criticized as flawed research, due to small samples and heterogeneous samples (ie, including students with ADHD, ASD, in the sample). It appears then while the symptoms of SID are indeed real, they can point to more serious disorders which merit diagnosis and treatment.

Students with dyspraxia (DCD) can also have comorbid language impairments (SLI). While these developmental disorders are distinguished by the domain of principal deficit, they are both associated with significant learning difficulties. Studies that followed 7-year olds with dyspraxia found that they struggled with reading and comprehension by the time they were 10 years old. I wanted to know whether the combination of motor coordination difficulties plus language impairments lead to worse learning outcomes compared to those with only motor coordination difficulties or language impairments. I looked at three groups of students: 1) those with SLI but no dyspraxia; 2) those with dyspraxia but normal language skills; 3) those with dyspraxia + language impairments.

There were two key findings. First, visual-spatial memory was the single best test to successfully distinguish a student with dyspraxia from those with language impairments. If you have a student with dyspraxia but normal language skills, their memory profile is the same as those with dyspraxia + language impairments: they will have marked difficulties in visual-spatial working memory. The second finding was that despite relative strengths in language, those with dyspraxia but no language impairments performed as poorly as the group with dyspraxia + language impairments. This means that for a student with dyspraxia their working memory abilities determine their learning difficulties. Any strength in language that they have is not able to sufficiently support their learning. If their working memory is not addressed, then any additional strengths they have, such as in language, will not provide a sufficient platform for learning.

Alloway and Archibald (2008). Journal of Learning Disabiliities. READ

The typical characteristics of students with poor working memory are as follows. They have normal social relationships with their peers, but are reserved in group situations in the classroom, in which they tend not to participate actively.  Their academic progress is very slow, particularly in reading and maths. They struggle to meet the working memory demands of many classroom activities, and have particularly problems in remembering and following instructions, in coping with tasks that involve combining the storage of information with demanding mental processing, and in keeping track of their progress in complex tasks.

Teachers view the students as having poor attention span and being highly distractible, features that we suggest are consequences of the loss of information that is relevant to the ongoing task from working memory, resulting in task failure and loss of focus.

While these characteristics typify the majority of students with working memory problems, they are not on their own sufficient for a definitive ‘diagnosis’. Reduced working memory capacity is not the only cause of many of these classroom difficulties, although there is growing evidence that it is the most common one.

Some students can have a broader constellation of cognitive problems of which reduced working memory capacity is only one. Several relatively common developmental disorders in which working memory is impaired, including language impairment, dyslexia, ADHD, and developmental coordination disorder (dyspraxia). Importantly, these disorders have distinct working memory strengths and weaknesses that impact academic attainment.

Clear identification of working memory problems and their underlying causes is therefore a priority, and a range of methods has now been developed to support the assessment of working memory in children. I will discuss different assessments in next week’s blog.

Excerpt taken from Working memory and learning: A practical guide.

In the last few years, there have been various claims in the media on how simple exercises like jumping jacks and balancing can make children smarter.  In the UK, it was a matter of heated debate when a psychologist suggested that such exercise can actually improve reading skills. So is there any basis to these claims?

Well, yes and no. Let’s first look at the evidence for whether motor skills improve as a result of these exercises. If the exercise is simple like skipping, then you notice improvement in skipping skills very quickly. However, if the exercise is relatively complicated like hockey-puck shooting, then there is very little improvement, even after over 1000 practices!

What about learning? In a recent study, I asked students with learning difficulties and motor problems to take part in a 13-week exercise program. In addition to Brain Gym, they also did different balancing exercises, as well as trained their fine and gross motor skills.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that these students had better motor skills compared to the group that did not take part in this exercise program. However, these increased motor skills did not result in better reading and math scores! These students were still struggling in their academic attainments.

What does this mean? While I am certainly not discouraging exercise, this study, and a growing number like this, illustrate that it’s not enough to ask students to do some jumping jacks and skipping if we actually want to help them do better in the classroom.

READ THE ARTICLE

I was recently invited to write a blog for SharpBrains on a paper I published on this topic. Here is a copy of the blog post.

Working memory is our ability to store and manipulate information for a brief time. It is typically measured by dual-tasks, where the individual has to remember an item while simultaneously processing a sometimes unrelated piece of information. A widely used working memory task is the reading span task where the individual reads a sentence, verifies it, and the recalls the final word. Individual differences in working memory performance are closely related to a range of academic skills such as reading, spelling, comprehension, and mathematics. Crucially, there is emerging research that working memory predicts learning outcomes independently of IQ. One explanation for the importance of working memory in academic attainment is that because it appears to be relatively unaffected by environmental influences, such as parental educational level and financial background, it measures a student’s capacity to acquire knowledge rather than what they have already learned.

However little is known about the consequences of low working memory capacity per se, independent of other associated learning difficulties. In particular, it is not known either what proportion of students with low working memory capacities has significant learning difficulties or what their behavioral characteristics are. The aim of a recent study was to provide the first systematic large-scale examination of the cognitive and behavioral characteristics of school-aged students who have been identified solely on the basis of very low working memory scores.

In screening of over 3000 school-aged students in mainstream schools, 1 in 10 was identified as having working memory difficulties. There were several key findings regarding their cognitive skills. The first is that the majority of them performed below age-expected levels in reading and mathematics. This suggests that low working memory skills constitute a high risk factor for educational underachievement for students. This corresponds with evidence that working memory impacts all areas of learning from kindergarten to college. It is a basic cognitive skill that we need to perform a variety of activities, and we use it in core subjects like reading and maths, as well as general topics like Art and Music. Crucially, this pattern of poor performance in learning outcomes remains even when students’ IQ is statistically accounted. This fits well with evidence suggesting that working memory is even more important to learning than other cognitive skills such as IQ. For example, in typically developing students, I found that their working memory skills, rather than IQ, at 5 years old were the best predictor of predictor of reading, spelling, and math outcomes six years later.

The next major finding from the studies of students with working memory difficulties is that teachers typically judged the students to be highly inattentive, and have short poor attention spans and high levels of distractibility. They were also commonly described as forgetting what they are currently doing and things they have learned, failing to remember instructions, and failing to complete tasks. In everyday classroom activities, they often made careless mistakes, particularly in writing, and had difficulty in solving problems. In contrast, relatively few of the students were judged to exhibit the high levels of hyperactive and impulsive behaviors.

The final key finding is that students with working memory difficulties take a much longer time to process information. They are unable to cope with timed activities and fast presentation of information. As a result, they often end up abandoning the activities all together out of frustration. One way to overcome this difficulty is to provide them with a shorter activity and to allow for more time during tests.

Studies such as these demonstrate that students with working memory difficulties have an extremely high risk of making poor academic progress and are relatively common in the classroom - they represent approximately 10% of their age group in mainstream schooling. Without early intervention, working memory deficits cannot be made up over time and will continue to compromise a child’s likelihood of academic success. How can we support students’ learning? The first crucial step in supporting students with working memory impairments is proper diagnosis, which can be conducted by a school psychologist. However, at present working memory problems often go undetected in students or are misdiagnosed as attentional problems. There are several test batteries that can be used to assess working memory, including the Working Memory Index in the WISC. However, most assessment instruments that are currently available require considerable experience in the administration, scoring and interpretation of cognitive tests. One useful tool to identify and support students with working memory impairments is the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA; Alloway, 2007 published by Pearson) . The benefit of the AWMA is that it is designed to provide a practical and convenient way for non-expert assessors such as teachers to screen their pupils for significant working memory problems, with a user-friendly interface. The automated presentation and scoring of tasks provide consistency in presentation of stimuli across participants, thus reducing experimenter error. The AWMA was used in the study described here, as well as in numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on the role of working memory in learning, anxiety, and development in typical and clinical populations.

The main goal of this article was to explore the link between working memory and academic performance. On the basis of a large-scale screening study of over 3000 student, 10% were found to have working memory impairments that jeopardize their chance of academic success. The majority perform below age-expected levels in all areas of learning and struggle to follow simple instructions in the classroom. These difficulties highlight the need for early assessment to identify those at risk. In a future article, I will discuss ways to help students with working memory problems, inc luding clinical trials demonstrating successful transfer of cognitive training to academic attainments.

REFERENCE:  Alloway et al. (2009). The cognitive and behavioral characteristics of children with low working memory.  Child Development, 80 , 606-621.

READ IT AT SHARPBRAINS

YOU CAN ALSO READ IT HERE AT SCIENTIA PRO PUBLICA (under ‘Psychology’)

As a thank you to those who have been reading my blog, I have attached a 20% off voucher for a book:
Working Memory and Learning: A Practical Guide for Teachers

DOWNLOAD VOUCHER

Here are some comments about the book:

‘A clear and accessible account of current theory and research, which is then applied to children’s learning in the classroom….The range of strategies…are well grounded in theory derived from research and sit within a coherent conceptual model’ - The Psychologist

‘An easy to read yet informative book that explains the concepts clearly and offers practitioners ways to support those with poor working memory in the classroom’ - SNIP

`The topic of working memory nowadays tends to dominate discussions with teachers and parents, and both groups can helpfully be directed to this easy-to-read but serious text … (it) is likely to prove a turning-point in the management and facilitation of hard-to-teach children. In a situation muddied by ever-multiplying syndromes and disorders, this book delivers a clarifying and reassuring isolation of the major cognitive characteristic that cuts across all the boundaries and leaves the class teacher and SENCO empowered. I think very highly of the book and shall be recommending it steadily’ - Martin Turner, Child Center for Evaluation and Teaching, Kuwait

As a parent of a 10 year old who is struggling in school, even with an Individualized Education Program, what hope is there to catch up our child?  He’s realizing that he is not able, and is now suffering with self-confidence.  In the US this is not well known, what tools are available?

-Cheryl, AZ

The term ‘working memory’ refers to the capacity to store and manipulate information for brief periods of time. It provides a mental workspace that is used in many important activities in learning. Working memory is a pure measure of a child’s learning potential. As it is not influenced by the child’s prior experiences such as pre-school education, or their socio-economic background, it tells us about a child’s capacity to learn. In contrast, school-based assessments or even IQ tests measure knowledge that the child has already learned.

Behaviors in the classroom characteristic of children with working memory impairments include: failing to obey instructions, not listening, being in a world of his own, and not being able to copy sentences from the board. It is very common that students with poor working memory begin to lose their confidence. They feel unmotivated as every time they try, they can’t remember what they are supposed to do.

There are a few options available to you.
1. The first option is to receive a professional psychological report on your child’s working memory profile, ways in which it will impact their learning, and suggested strategies that the classroom teacher can use, as well as additional activities that you can use at home. This professional report will also take into account any other psychological assessments to provide you with a complete picture of your child’s cognitive skills and the link to working memory. This is suitable for 5 to 16 year olds. More details are available here, click on Expert Consultation. This is an online assessment and has been used by parents in the USA and the UK, as well as around the world. Feedback from other parents is available HERE.

3. The next option is a cognitive training program that we are using in schools across the UK, USA, and Australia. In a recent scientific study, JungleMemory© was found to improve not only working memory but IQ, Reading, and Math. The students who used the program increased their grades from a C to a B, and from a B to an A in just 8 weeks. This is very exciting, as other programs have not demonstrated such an improvement. This is suitable for 6 to 16 year olds and is endorsed by the Psychological Corporation.

For more information, go to the homepage and click on each bullet point. You can also try a free demo and watch a short video presentation HERE.