Jacob has dyscalculia, a math disability where students struggle to learn or understand mathematics. Students with dyscalculia find it difficult to decipher math symbols (e.g. +, –), counting principles (‘two’ stands for 2), solving arithmetic problems, and usually transpose numbers (e.g. 75 becomes 57). However, dyscalculia encompasses more than problems with numbers – there is also a struggle with telling the time as in Jacob’s case, identifying left from right, and recognizing patterns.

But why do some students struggle to learn numbers and certain mathematical principles?

Working Memory plays a key role. To solve a mathematical problem like 1 + 1, we need to use our Visuo-Spatial Working Memory. Visuo–spatial working memory functions like a big mental blackboard that gives us a space to write all of the numbers necessary to solve a problem.

It also works together with the brain’s calculator known as the Intraparietal Sulcus (IPS), located in the right hemisphere. Brain imaging studies that looked at brain activity while people were counting and calculating quantities reveal that when we count, regardless of whether it is shapes, numbers, or objects, the IPS is activated. In dyscalculics, this area underperforms and may underpin their maths difficulties.

Like Jacob, the student with dyscalculia has clear working memory deficits. However, the link between working memory and math skills depends on the age of the child as well as the type of math task. Verbal working memory plays a strong role in math skills in seven-year-olds and is a reliable indicator of dyscalculia in the first year of formal schooling. Once children reach adolescence, verbal working memory is no longer significantly linked to mathematical skills. One explanation for this change is that verbal working memory plays a crucial role for basic arithmetic skills like learning arithmetic rules and retaining relevant data such as carried digits when they are young. However, as children get older other factors such as number knowledge and strategies play a greater role.

If you are working with a student with dyscalculia, it is important not only to address their difficulties with numbers, but to also assess their Working Memory. It is possible that they have a small mental blackboard (visuo-spatial Working Memory) that is making it harder for them to apply their number knowledge in a classroom situation.

– Tracy Pack­iam Alloway, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Florida. She was recently awarded the pres­ti­gious Joseph Lis­ter Award by the British Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion for her con­tri­bu­tion to sci­ence. Tracy devel­oped a stan­dard­ized working-memory tests for edu­ca­tors pub­lished by Psy­cho­log­i­cal Cor­po­ra­tion, which to date has been trans­lated into 15 lan­guages and used to screen for work­ing mem­ory prob­lems in stu­dents with dyslexia, motor dys­praxia (Devel­op­men­tal Coor­di­na­tion Dis­or­der), ADHD and Autis­tic Spec­trum Dis­or­der. She pro­vides con­sul­tancy to the World Bank and her research has received wide­spread inter­na­tional cov­er­age in hun­dreds of media out­lets, includ­ing Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can, the BBC, Reuters, ABC News, and NBC.

Reference

Alloway, T.P. & Passolunghi, MC. (2011). The relations between working memory and arithmetical abilities: A comparison between Italian and British children. Learning and Individual Differences, 21, 133–137.

To learn more:

• 10% Stu­dents may have work­ing mem­ory prob­lems: Why does it mat­ter, by Tracy Alloway
• Try Think­ing and Learn­ing with­out work­ing mem­ory, by Bill Klemm

We are on the cusp of a new revolution in intelligence that affects every aspect of our lives from work and relationships, to our childhood, education, and old age. Working Memory, the ability to remember and mentally process information, is so important that without it we could not function as a society or as individuals. One way to visualise working memory is as the brain’s “Post-it Note”: we make mental scribbles of bits of information we need to remember and work with. For example, we use working memory to remember directions while driving or someone’s name and phone number. Without it, we would be literally lost; we wouldn’t know how to get to that important meeting and would forget important contacts. Working memory is critical for many activities at school, from complex subjects such as reading comprehension, mental arithmetic, and word problems to simple tasks like copying from the board and navigating the halls.

Working memory makes a difference beyond the classroom walls as well. People with superior working memory tend to have better jobs, better relationships, and more happy and fulfilling lives. People with poor working memory struggle in their work, their personal lives, and are more likely to experience trouble with the law. More recently, a growing number of studies demonstrate that working memory is also important for our mental health. In a recent study that I conducted with 20-year-olds, I found that people who view the glass as half-empty but have good working memory are less likely to suffer depression compared to those who view the glass as half-empty and have low working memory. So while we may think that seeing the glass as half-empty, having good working memory acts like a buffer to protect our mental health.
What about you? What does your working memory tell you about your world-view? Why not find out by participating in an online study. Here is what you will have to do:

1. Take some memory tests: Don’t worry, I don’t want to know how often you forget where you left your car keys or if you can remember your loved one’s birthday. You will have to do something much easier. You will see some shapes and just have to remember where you saw them on a grid. Try to do this as quickly as you can without making mistakes.

2. Next, tell me your views about different sentences, like “I felt hopeful about the future”; or “I was bothered by things that don’t usually bother me”. Please rate how strongly you feel these types of statements applied to you during the past week (not how the statements may have applied to you at any point in your lives). You will be asked to rate the sentences using one of the four options:

a. rarely or none of the time (less than once day);
b. some or a little of the time (1–2 days);
c. occasionally or a moderate amount of time (3–4 days);
d. most or all of the time (5–7 days).

The study is launched in conjunction with the British Science Festival and you can participate Here.

–Tracy Packiam Alloway, PhD, is the Director of the Center for Memory and Learning in the Lifespan at the University of Stirling, UK. She is the author of over 75 scientific articles and books on working memory and learning, and has developed the world’s first standardized working-memory tests for educators published by Pearson. She has published academic books, as well as books for the layperson on Improving Working Memory (Sage, 2010) and Training Your Brain for Dummies (Wiley, 2010). Her research has received widespread international coverage, appearing in outlets such as the Scientific American, Forbes, US News, ABC News, NBC, BBC, Guardian, and Daily Mail. She is a much in demand international speaker in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia and is an advisor to the World Bank on the importance of working memory. She was the 2009 winner of the prestigious Joseph Lister Award by the British Science Association for bringing her scientific discoveries to a wide audience.

–About the British Science Festival: The British Science Festival is one of Europe’s largest science festivals and regularly attracts over 350 of the UK’s top scientists and speakers to discuss the latest developments in science with the public. Over 50,000 visitors regularly attend the talks, discussions and workshops. The Festival takes place at a different location each year.

Pic: Flickr (Plasticinaa)

manipulate it mentally. You use this mental workspace when adding up two numbers spoken to you by someone else without being able to use pen and paper or a calculator. Children at school need this memory on a daily basis for a variety of tasks such as following teachers’ instructions or remembering sentences they have been asked to write down.

The main goal of our recent paper published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology was to investigate the predictive power of working memory and IQ in learning in typically developing children over a six-year period. This issue is important because distinguishing between the cognitive skills underpinning success in learning is crucial for early screening and intervention.

In this study, typically developing students were tested for their IQ and working memory at 5 years old and again when they were 11 years old. They were also tested on their academic attainments in reading, spelling and maths.

Findings and Educational Implications

The findings revealed that a child’s success in all aspects of learning is down to how good their working memory is regardless of IQ score. Critically, working memory at the start of formal education is a more powerful predictor of subsequent academic success than IQ in the early years.

This unique finding is important as it addresses concerns that general intelligence, still viewed as a key predictor of academic success, is unreliable. An individual can have an average IQ score but perform poorly in learning.

Some psychologists suggest that the link between IQ and learning is greatest when the individual is learning new information, rather than at later stages when it is suggested that gains made are the result of practice.

Yet the findings from this research that working memory capacity predicted subsequent skills in reading, spelling, and math suggests that some cognitive skills contribute to learning beyond practice effects.

The study also found that, as opposed to IQ, working memory is not linked to the parents level of education or socio-economic background. This means all children regardless of background or environmental influence can have the same opportunities to fulfill potential if working memory is assessed and problems addressed where necessary.

Working memory is a relatively stable construct that has powerful implications for academic success. While working memory does increase with age, its relative capacity remains constant. This means that a child at the bottom 10 percentile compared to their same-aged peers is likely to remain at this level throughout their academic career.

What’s Next

In summary, the present article suggests that the traditional reliance on IQ as a benchmark for academic success may be misguided. Instead, schools should focus on assessing working memory as it is the best predictor of reading, spelling and math skills six years later. At present, poor working memory is rarely identified by teachers, who often describe children with this problem as inattentive or as having lower levels of intelligence. However, there are standardized assessments that are suitable for educators to use to screen their students for working memory problems. For example, the Automated Working Memory Assessment (published by the Psychological Corporation) allows non-specialist assessors such as classroom teachers to screen their students for significant working memory problems quickly and effectively.

Problems with working memory can be easily addressed in schools—an advantage over IQ which is more difficult to influence by teachers. Early intervention in working memory could lead to a reduction in the number of those failing schools and help address the problem of under-achievement in schools.

Reference: Alloway, T.P. & Alloway, R. G. (2010). Investigating the predictive roles of working memory and IQ in academic attainment. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
DOI: http://10.1016/j.jecp.2009.11.003

Tracy Packiam Alloway, PhD, is the Director of the Center for Memory and Learning in the Lifespan at the University of Stirling, UK. She was recently awarded the prestigious Joseph Lister Award by the British Science Association for her contribution to science. Tracy has developed the only standardized working-memory tests for educators published by Psychological Corporation, which to date has been translated into 15 languages and used to screen for working memory problems in students with dyslexia, motor dyspraxia (Developmental Coordination Disorder), ADHD and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. She provides consultancy to the World Bank and her research has received widespread international coverage in hundreds of media outlets, including Scientific American, the BBC, Reuters, ABC News, and NBC.

Previous related articles:

• 10% Students may have working memory problems: Why does it matter, by Tracy Alloway
• Try Thinking and Learning without working memory, by Bill Klemm

However little is known about the consequences of low working memory capacity per se, independent of other associated learning difficulties. In particular, it is not known either what proportion of students with low working memory capacities has significant learning difficulties or what their behavioral characteristics are. The aim of a recent study published in Child Development (reference below) was to provide the first systematic large-scale examination of the cognitive and behavioral characteristics of school-aged students who have been identified solely on the basis of very low working memory scores.

In screening of over 3000 school-aged students in mainstream schools, 1 in 10 was identified as having working memory difficulties. There were several key findings regarding their cognitive skills. The first is that the majority of them performed below age-expected levels in reading and mathematics. This suggests that low working memory skills constitute a high risk factor for educational underachievement for students. This corresponds with evidence that working memory impacts all areas of learning from kindergarten to college. It is a basic cognitive skill that we need to perform a variety of activities, and we use it in core subjects like reading and maths, as well as general topics like Art and Music. Crucially, this pattern of poor performance in learning outcomes remains even when students’ IQ is statistically accounted.

This fits well with evidence suggesting that working memory is even more important to learning than other cognitive skills such as IQ. For example, in typically developing students, I found that their working memory skills, rather than IQ, at 5 years old were the best predictor of predictor of reading, spelling, and math outcomes six years later.

The next major finding from the studies of students with working memory difficulties is that teachers typically judged the students to be highly inattentive, and have short poor attention spans and high levels of distractibility. They were also commonly described as forgetting what they are currently doing and things they have learned, failing to remember instructions, and failing to complete tasks. In everyday classroom activities, they often made careless mistakes, particularly in writing, and had difficulty in solving problems. In contrast, relatively few of the students were judged to exhibit the high levels of hyperactive and impulsive behaviors.

The final key finding is that students with working memory difficulties take a much longer time to process information. They are unable to cope with timed activities and fast presentation of information. As a result, they often end up abandoning the activities all together out of frustration. One way to overcome this difficulty is to provide them with a shorter activity and to allow for more time during tests.

Studies such as these demonstrate that students with working memory difficulties have an extremely high risk of making poor academic progress and are relatively common in the classroom — they represent approximately 10% of their age group in mainstream schooling. Without early intervention, working memory deficits cannot be made up over time and will continue to compromise a child’s likelihood of academic success.

How can we support students’ learning? The first crucial step in supporting students with working memory impairments is proper diagnosis, which can be conducted by a school psychologist. However, at present working memory problems often go undetected in students or are misdiagnosed as attentional problems. There are several test batteries that can be used to assess working memory, including the Working Memory Index in the WISC. However, most assessment instruments that are currently available require considerable experience in the administration, scoring and interpretation of cognitive tests. One useful tool to identify and support students with working memory impairments is the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA; Alloway, 2007 published by Pearson). The benefit of the AWMA is that it is designed to provide a practical and convenient way for non-expert assessors such as teachers to screen their pupils for significant working memory problems, with a user-friendly interface. The automated presentation and scoring of tasks provide consistency in presentation of stimuli across participants, thus reducing experimenter error. The AWMA was used in the study described here, as well as in numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on the role of working memory in learning, anxiety, and development in typical and clinical populations.

The main goal of this article was to explore the link between working memory and academic performance. On the basis of a large-scale screening study of over 3000 student, 10% were found to have working memory impairments that jeopardize their chance of academic success. The majority perform below age-expected levels in all areas of learning and struggle to follow simple instructions in the classroom. These difficulties highlight the need for early assessment to identify those at risk. In a future article, I will discuss ways to help students with working memory problems, including clinical trials demonstrating successful transfer of cognitive training to academic attainments.

Reference: Alloway et al. (2009). The cognitive and behavioural characteristics of children with low working memory. Child Development, 80, 606–621.

Tracy Packiam Alloway, PhD, is the Director of the Center for Memory and Learning in the Lifespan at the University of Stirling, UK. She was recently awarded the prestigious Joseph Lister Award by the British Science Association for her contribution to science and has developed the world’s first standardized working-memory tests for educators published by Pearson. To date, it has been translated into 15 languages and used to screen for working memory problems in students with dyslexia, motor dyspraxia (Developmental Coordination Disorder), ADHD and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. She provides consultancy to the World Bank and her research has received widespread international coverage in hundreds of media outlets, including Scientific American, the BBC, and Reuters.