Investigating the predictive roles of working memory and IQ in academic attainment

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThere is growing evidence for the relationship between working memory and academic attainment. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether working memory is simply a proxy for IQ or whether there is a unique contribution to learning outcomes. The findings indicate that children's working memory skills at 5 years of age were the best predictor of literacy and numeracy 6 years later. IQ, in contrast, accounted for a smaller portion of unique variance to these learning outcomes. The results demonstrate that working memory is not a proxy for IQ but rather represents a dissociable cognitive skill with unique links to academic attainment. Critically, we find that working memory at the start of formal education is a more powerful predictor of subsequent academic success than IQ. This result has important implications for education, particularly with respect to intervention.Ó 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. IntroductionWorking memory, our ability to process and remember information, is linked to a range of cognitive activities from reasoning tasks to verbal comprehension (Kane & Engle, 2002). Working memory is composed of multiple components whose coordinated activity is responsible for the temporary storage and manipulation of information. According to one widely used model, working memory is a domain-general component responsible for the control of attention and processing that is involved in a range of regulatory functions, including the retrieval of information from long-term memory (Baddeley, 2000). This model also includes two domain-specific stores responsible for the temporary storage of verbal and visuospatial information and has been supported in studies of children (Alloway, 0022-0965/$ -see front matter Ó

A combined experimental and individual-differences investigation into mind wandering during a video lecture.

“…Principles from the memory literature, such as the benefits of spaced practice, testing, and metacognitive selfevaluations, have been most successfully employed and broadly disseminated (for reviews, see Benassi, Overson, & Hakala, 2014;Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014;Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013). We suggest that this education-focused research should also embrace two additional domains: (a) individual differences in cognitive abilities and domain experience (e.g., interest and knowledge) and (b) the functions-and dysfunctions-of attention in learning contexts.Stable cognitive-ability differences, such as those in working memory capacity (WMC), predict many indices of academic achievement (e.g., Alloway & Alloway, 2010;Cowan et al, 2005). Educational psychology has further identified personality and experience constructs linked to scholastic success, such as conscientiousness, self-efficacy, and mastery goals (e.g., Pintrich, 2003;Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012;Robbins et al, 2004).…”

School performance at the end of elementary school: Contributions of intelligence, language, and executive functions

“…Moreover, in third step of the regressions, when all skills were included, working memory did not have a significant contribution to the final model, as it was expected (T. Alloway & Alloway, 2010). One explanation for this finding is a possible overlap of the measures used, i.e., the PA tasks require, to some extent, processing or mental manipulation of information (for example, when blending the sounds /g/, /a/, /t/, /o/, the child needs to hold all of these sounds in memory and blend them to form the word "gato", in Brazilian Portuguese.…”

“…Moreover, among the executive function skills, some authors have highlighted the role of working memory in learning, suggesting that poor working memory skills constitute a risk factor for school failure. Those authors reiterate that working memory at the start of formal education is a more powerful predictor of subsequent academic success than Intelligence Quotient (T. Alloway & Alloway, 2010).…”

Improved cognitive performance in preadolescent Danish children after the school‐based physical activity programme “FIFA 11 for Health” for Europe – A cluster‐randomised controlled trial

“…Cognitive function is regarded as a predictor of and a prerequisite for academic learning and achievement (Alloway & Alloway, 2010;Blair & Peters Razza, 2007). Especially, executive function (EF) has been identified to play a critical role in learning and academic achievements during childhood (Van der Niet, Hartman, Smith, & Visscher, 2014).…”