Tracy Packiam Alloway, PhD

The Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA) is a computer-based assessment of working memory skills, with a user-friendly interface. This culture-fair tool provides a practical and convenient way for educational professionals to screen individuals for significant working memory problems. It is standardized for use with individuals from early childhood (4 years) to adulthood (22 years). To date, it has been translated into over 15 languages.

BENEFITS

1. The AWMA is quick

The Screener version is made up of 2 tests (Listening Recall and Spatial Recall) and takes less than 10 minutes to administer. The automated presentation of tests and automatic generation of a report with standard scores and percentiles make it easy to use.

2. The AWMA provides standard scores that identify students with a deficit

The AWMA is highly effective in identifying students at risk. In my own research, I have used the AWMA in a recent study to screen over 4000 students. The majority of those with poor working memory (identified using the AWMA) scored poorly on attainment measures (such as the WIAT and BPVS).  Scores on the AWMA reliably identify those who need extra support in the classroom, as well as those who take longer to process information.

3. The AWMA is reliable and valid

Test reliability refers to the consistency with which a test can accurately measure what it aims to do. If an individual’s performance remains consistent over repeated trials, it is considered to be reliable. The test-retest coefficients for the AWMA are high, indicating a consistency in measuring working memory skills. These coefficients are reported in the AWMA manual.

Test validity of the AWMA was established by comparing performance to the Working Memory Index in the WISC. The findings demonstrate that the AWMA is a valid test of working memory.

4. The AWMA has been used in many published articles in high-quality peer-reviewed journals, linking working memory to learning.

The AWMA is a well-established test in assessing working memory. Published research confirms that those with low scores on the AWMA score below-average in learning outcomes and take much longer to process information.

To find out more about the AWMA, a free demo and research articles, click here.

There is a long-standing view that boys and girls learn differently. Some people suggest that the fact that so many more boys compared to girls are diagnosed with learning difficulties such as ADHD and dyslexia points to a lack in the education system in supporting a different learning style for boys. Boys just don’t learn language in the same way as girls and as a result struggle to keep up in the classroom.

There is now scientific support for this view: a recent study looked at different parts of the brain that boys and girls use when they do language tasks.* They used brain imaging (fMRI) to look at what part of the brain is activated during writing and spelling. They found that when learning language, boys are more sensory and girls are more abstract. Of course this has major implications for learning and teaching.

What about working memory? Do boys also struggle more in working memory compared to girls? Actually they don’t.** In a recent government-funded study, I surveyed over three thousand children, found that ten per cent of school children across all age ranges suffer from poor working memory seriously affecting their learning.  Nationally, this equates to almost half a million children in primary education alone being affected. However, girls are just as likely to struggle with working memory as boys.

The key is to support these students so they can achieve their potential. However, poor working memory is rarely identified by teachers, who often describe children with this problem as inattentive or as having lower levels of intelligence. There is a new tool, a combination of a checklist and computer program informed by several years of concentrated research into poor working memory in children, will for the first time enable teachers to identify and assess children’s memory capacity in the classroom from as early as four years old.

The checklist, called the Working Memory Rating Scale (WMRS), will enable teachers to identify children who they think may have a problem with working memory without immediately subjecting them to a test.  A high score on this checklist shows that a child is likely to have working memory problems that will affect their academic progress.

If the teacher feels significantly concerned about a child’s performance in class, he or she can then get the child to do the computerized Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA). The tools also suggest ways for teachers to manage the student’s working memory loads which will minimize the chances of children failing to complete tasks.  Recommendations include repetition of instructions, talking in simple short sentences and breaking down tasks into smaller chunks of information.

*J. Booth & T. Bitan (2008). Neuropsychologica
** T.Alloway (2009). Child Development

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.

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