How common are WM deficits in children with difficulties in reading and mathematics?

Gathercole, Susan E.; Woolgar, Francesca; Kievit, Rogier A.; Astle, Duncan E.; Manly, Tom; Holmes, Joni

doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2016.07.013

Cited by 72 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 78 publications

(124 reference statements)

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“…Working memory is an important predictor of key developmental outcomes, is fundamental to learning, and predicts academic attainment (Alloway & Alloway, ; Alloway, Gathercole, Kirkwood, & Elliott, ; Cragg & Gilmore, ; Gathercole, Pickering, Knight, & Stegmann, ; Monette, Bigras, & Guay, ). In order to complete classroom learning activities, children must encode, retain, and manipulate information (Baddeley, ; Gathercole & Baddeley, ; Gathercole et al, , ). Therefore, children with poor working memory perform less well on measures of numeracy and literacy (Alloway et al, ; Gathercole et al, ; Holmes et al, ), and this link continues into secondary education (Gathercole & Alloway, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to complete classroom learning activities, children must encode, retain, and manipulate information (Baddeley, ; Gathercole & Baddeley, ; Gathercole et al, , ). Therefore, children with poor working memory perform less well on measures of numeracy and literacy (Alloway et al, ; Gathercole et al, ; Holmes et al, ), and this link continues into secondary education (Gathercole & Alloway, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cognitive Offloading: Structuring the Environment to Improve Children's Working Memory Task Performance

et al. 2019

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Research has shown that adults can engage in cognitive offloading, whereby internal processes are offloaded onto the environment to help task performance. Here, we investigate an application of this approach with children, in particular children with poor working memory. Participants were required to remember and recall sequences of colors by placing colored blocks in the correct serial order. In one condition the blocks were arranged to facilitate cognitive offloading (i.e., grouped by color), whereas in the other condition they were arranged randomly. Across two experiments (total N = 166) the ordered condition improved task performance for children with low working memory ability. In addition, participants in Experiment 2 rated the difficulty of the two arrangements and performed a further condition in which they were given an opportunity to freely arrange the blocks before completing the task. Despite performing better in the ordered condition, children with low working memory ability did not rate the ordered arrangement as easier, nor did they choose an ordered arrangement when given the opportunity to do so. This research shows that cognitive offloading can also be a useful process in populations other than typical adults, and the implications of this work for supporting children with poor working memory are discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Offloading: Structuring the Environment to Improve Children's Working Memory Task Performance

et al. 2019

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“…So, a reasonable prediction is that our large sample of struggling learners will include subgroups of children with either phonological problems or spatial short‐term/working memory difficulties, and that these children will predominantly struggle with reading or maths respectively. Below average nonverbal reasoning is common among individuals with reading (Duranovic, Tinjak, & Turbic‐Hadzagic, ; Gathercole et al., ; Pointus, ; Winner et al., ) and maths problems (Gathercole et al., ; Swanson & Beebe‐Frankenberger, ; Fuchs et al., 2005, , Cirino et al, ), as well as those with ADHD (Holmes et al., 2013). So, another reasonable prediction is that our sample of struggling learners will include a subgroup of children with low fluid reasoning skills, and this will be associated with problems in both reading and maths.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remapping the cognitive and neural profiles of children who struggle at school

Astle

Bathelt

Holmes

2018

Developmental Science

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Our understanding of learning difficulties largely comes from children with specific diagnoses or individuals selected from community/clinical samples according to strict inclusion criteria. Applying strict exclusionary criteria overemphasizes within group homogeneity and between group differences, and fails to capture comorbidity. Here, we identify cognitive profiles in a large heterogeneous sample of struggling learners, using unsupervised machine learning in the form of an artificial neural network. Children were referred to the Centre for Attention Learning and Memory (CALM) by health and education professionals, irrespective of diagnosis or comorbidity, for problems in attention, memory, language, or poor school progress (n = 530). Children completed a battery of cognitive and learning assessments, underwent a structural MRI scan, and their parents completed behavior questionnaires. Within the network we could identify four groups of children: (a) children with broad cognitive difficulties, and severe reading, spelling and maths problems; (b) children with age-typical cognitive abilities and learning profiles; (c) children with working memory problems; and (d) children with phonological difficulties. Despite their contrasting cognitive profiles, the learning profiles for the latter two groups did not differ: both were around 1 SD below age-expected levels on all learning measures. Importantly a child's cognitive profile was not predicted by diagnosis or referral reason. We also constructed whole-brain structural connectomes for children from these four groupings (n = 184), alongside an additional group of typically developing children (n = 36), and identified distinct patterns of brain organization for each group. This study represents a novel move toward identifying data-driven neurocognitive dimensions underlying learning-related difficulties in a representative sample of poor learners.

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“…From a cognitive perspective, LRLM could be driven by: (a) domain-specific problems, separately affecting reading and mathematics-specific functions, which are expressed additively in children with LRLM, (b) domain-general problems, in which difficulties in reading and math are secondary to difficulties in general cognitive skills, such as memory, necessary for both domains (Gathercole et al, 2016; Mammarella et al, 2017; Szűcs, 2016; Wang & Gathercole, 2013), or (c) a combination of domain-specific and domain-general problems. Results from behavioral studies have not conclusively identified the contributions of domain-specific and general problems to LRLM.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural signatures of co‐occurring reading and mathematical difficulties

Skeide

Evans

Mei

et al. 2018

Developmental Science

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Impaired abilities in multiple domains is common in children with learning difficulties. Co-occurrence of low reading and mathematical abilities (LRLM) appears in almost every second child with learning difficulties. However, little is known regarding the neural bases of this combination. Leveraging a unique and tightly controlled sample including children with LRLM, isolated low reading ability (LR), and isolated low mathematical ability (LM), we uncover a distinct neural signature in children with co-occurring low reading and mathematical abilities differentiable from LR and LM. Specifically, we show that LRLM is neuroanatomically distinct from both LR and LM based on reduced cortical folding of the right parahippocampal gyrus, a medial temporal lobe region implicated in visual associative learning. LRLM children were further distinguished from LR and LM by patterns of intrinsic functional connectivity between parahippocampal gyrus and brain circuitry underlying reading and numerical quantity processing. Our results critically inform cognitive and neural models of LRLM by implicating aberrations in both domain-specific and domain-general brain regions involved in reading and mathematics. More generally, our results provide the first evidence for distinct multimodal neural signatures associated with LRLM, and suggest that this population displays an independent phenotype of learning difficulty that cannot be explained simply as a combination of isolated low reading and mathematical abilities.

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How common are WM deficits in children with difficulties in reading and mathematics?

Abstract: HighlightsChildren's learning abilities were associated with WM.The link with verbal WM was stronger for reading than mathematics.The majority of children with learning difficulties had WM deficits.

Cited by 72 publications

References 78 publications

Cognitive Offloading: Structuring the Environment to Improve Children's Working Memory Task Performance

Cognitive Offloading: Structuring the Environment to Improve Children's Working Memory Task Performance

Remapping the cognitive and neural profiles of children who struggle at school

Neural signatures of co‐occurring reading and mathematical difficulties

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