Interventions for Students With Working Memory Deficits

Abstract

A number of articles I have reviewed in Word of Mouth in recent years have discussed the role of working memory (WM) in a variety of language and learning disabilities. Deficits in WM are implicated in many of the social and academic difficulties exhibited by students with language learning disabilities. Researchers and clinicians are asking (a) if we can modify a person's WM capacity and (b) whether changes in WM skills will result in improved language abilities or academic performance. A few intervention studies have attempted to train WM skills in persons with traumatic brain injury and school-age children with attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder. At this time there are no data available that indicate training of students with language impairments can result in increases in WM capacity. Although educators and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) do not have programs to train WM abilities directly, there are a number of other ways they can support students with WM difficulties affecting academic performance. The goals of such efforts are to reduce demands in those contexts in which it is believed that WM limitations are affecting performance, while at the same time improving the efficiency with which children use their available resources and capacity. Boudreau and Costanza-Smith discuss strategies for modifying the environment as well as ideas for addressing child-specific knowledge, skills, and strategies as ways to reduce WM demands. Identify WM Demands of the ClassroomClassroom and discourse practices. A first step for the SLP is to observe the classroom and analyze the WM demands of both classroom discourse and assignments. Some types of instructional activities place greater WM demands on children. WM demands are greater when instructions are lengthy and do not reflect a routine activity of the classroom, when students must complete demanding activities that include storage and processing of information, and when students must engage in any writing task that requires them to generate content.Instructional materials. SLPs should also consider the WM demands within classroom texts. In early elementary school, the ability to comprehend and construct oral and written stories comprises a substantial component of classroom expectations. Complex narratives place a greater demand on children than simple narratives do. Analyses of the complexity of stories used in the curriculum, such as the difficulty of vocabulary and syntax, the number of episodes included, and the intricacies of interaction of characters, will provide insight into the level of WM demand these texts place on a child. Expository texts typically require more WM than narrative texts because of their less familiar vocabulary and concepts and more complex syntactic patterns. Because children must contribute a great deal of mental resources to the comprehension of vocabulary and syntactic forms in expository texts, they have fewer WM resources available to integrate the content information with previous information to create new knowledge or learn...