Working memory profiles of children with reading difficulties who are learning to read in Greek

Abstract

This study investigated working memory skills in a small group of 13 nine‐year‐old Greek children facing reading difficulties and a group of 14 age matched typical Greek readers. The children were assessed on working memory tasks measuring separately the four components of the working memory model of Baddeley and Hitch (1974) as revised by Baddeley (2000): the phonological loop, visuo‐spatial sketchpad, episodic buffer and central executive. Both groups completed tests of accuracy of reading, speed of reading and text understanding. The children with reading difficulties performed significantly more poorly than typical readers on all aspects of working memory apart from visual‐spatial short‐term memory. These results indicate a similar verbal working memory impairment in Greek children with reading difficulties as in their English peers, despite the fact that they are learning to read a language with a transparent rather than an opaque orthography.

Development of Decoding Abilities in Bosnian-speaking Children: a Two-year Follow-up Study

“…Thus the study needs to be replicated in different samples with a larger number of participants . We also did not consider some cognitive variables, such as working memory, that impact reading skills [24] . The inclusion of variables such as working memory, processing speed, and vocabulary might have created an even better model of decoding skills .…”

The Contribution of Working Memory to Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension Performance: Longitudinal Results

“…Tüm bu bulgular çalışma belleği, okuma akıcılığı ve okuduğunu anlama arasındaki ilişkileri ortaya koyarken, konuyla ilgili araştırmaların çoğunun harf-ses tutarlılığının düşük olduğu opak ortografilerde gerçekleştirildiği dikkati çekmektedir. Bununla birlikte, özellikle okumanın edinimine odaklanan çalışmalarda, okuyucunun kullandığı dilin yapısal özelliklerinin ve yazı dilindeki harf-ses tutarlılığının, okuma ve okuduğunu anlamanın edinimi üzerinde rol oynayabileceği belirtilmekte (Ziegler ve Goswami, 2005), güncel çalışmalarda sözel ve görsel çalışma belleğinin katkısının opak ve şeffaf ortografilerde farklılaşabileceği ifade edilmektedir (Dolean vd., 2021;Masoura, Gogou ve Gathercole, 2020). Bu noktadan hareketle yapılan araştırmada, Türkçe konuşan çocukların anasınıfında değerlendirilen sözel ve görsel çalışma belleği performanslarının birinci ve ikinci sınıftaki okuma akıcılığı ve okuduğunu anlama performanslarını yordama düzeyinin boylamsal olarak incelenmesi amaçlanmıştır.…”

Assessing phonological short-term memory in Greek: Reliability and validity of a non-word repetition test

“…More specifically, there are only few studies examining NWR skills of typically developing (TD) children (e.g., Masoura and Gathercole, 1999 ; Gathercole and Masoura, 2005 ; Masoura, 2006 ) and of clinical populations such as DLD and/or SLD in the native language (e.g., Lalioti et al, 2016 ; Talli et al, 2016 ; Mengisidou and Marshall, 2019 ; Talli and Stavrakaki, 2020 ) and in the second language ( Kotsoni, 2021 ) as compared to TD children, with the studies being conducted mainly by employing non-standardizing measures of NWR tests. Further, as regards the diagnostic value of the NWR test, several studies have shown that TD students’ performance in an NWR task (in Greek) differed significantly from that of students with reading impairment ( Talli et al, 2016 ; Kotsoni, 2021 ; Masoura et al, 2021 ) and to students with DLD ( Lalioti et al, 2016 ; Talli et al, 2016 ; Talli and Stavrakaki, 2020 ). Additionally, regarding the predictive value of the NWR task in the study, Kotsoni (2021) indicated that the NWR task in Greek significantly predicted TD and reading impaired students’ second language (L2) vocabulary learning (English) in an inclusive environment.…”