Working Memory in Dyslexic Children — How General is the Deficit?

Abstract

The important role of working memory functions for reading and writing are discussed together with the proven impairments of working memory performance in dyslexic individuals for visual and auditory presentation of stimuli with different paradigms and types of material. 3 studies are introduced. The conceptual differentiation of these studies is based on the A. D. Baddeley and G. Hitch model, with its specific modalities for incoming and maintaining information as well as on N. Cowan's model, with regard to automatic vs controlled executive functions during the generation of response and action. The central issue is to investigate the importance and extent of assumed working memory impairments in dyslexic children with the focusing on the generality vs the specificity of these impairments. All 3 studies are conducted with samples of 62 dyslexic and 99 non-dyslexic 3rd grade children. The authors notice a dependency of working memory performance in dyslexic children on the training and language system (exp 1), the specific type of modality (exp 2) and on a specific kind of material (exp 3). Results of the 3 experiments cannot support the assumption of a general modality-, material-, and language-independent deficit in dyslexic individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(chapter)