Disentangling the relationship between working memory and language: The roles of short-term storage and cognitive control

This study investigates the relationship between working memory and language in young children growing up in a multilingual environment. The aim is to explore whether mechanisms of short-term storage and cognitive control hold similar relations to emerging language skills and to investigate if potential links are mediated by related cognitive abilities. A sample of 119 Luxembourgish 6-year-olds completed several assessments of working memory (complex and simple span), native and foreign vocabulary, syntax, reading, rhyme awareness, and fluid intelligence. Results showed that short-term storage and cognitive control manifested differential links with developing language abilities: Whereas verbal short-term storage was specifically linked to vocabulary; cognitive control manifested unique and robust links with syntax and early reading development. The study suggests that in young children the working memory system is composed of separate but interacting components corresponding to short-term storage and cognitive control that can be distinguished by the roles they play in supporting language acquisition.     

Four and twenty blackbirds: how transcoding ability mediates the relationship between visuospatial working memory and math in a language with inversion

Writing down spoken number words (transcoding) is an ability that is predictive of math performance and related to working memory ability. We analysed these relationships in a large sample of over 25,000 children, from kindergarten to the end of primary school, who solved transcoding items with a computer adaptive system. Furthermore, we investigated the nature of transcoding difficulty of over 300 two- and three-digit numbers. All data come from a Dutch sample, meaning that transcoding is complicated by decade-unit inversion: 24 is pronounced as ‘four-and-twenty’. Omission to invert the digits of a spoken number when writing it down is an inversion error: the incidence of these declined but did not disappear in later elementary school. Furthermore, transcoding ability mediated the relationship between visuospatial working memory and mathematics performance, a strong effect that declined with age. Inversion error making mediated this same relationship in an inverted U-shaped curve, peaking around grade 2 (8 years old). At the item level, structural characteristics related to inversion and irregular pronunciation of units and decades explained a large part of the variance in item difficulty. We conclude that number transcoding is an important ability to develop mathematical proficiency and discuss the implications of these findings.     

Short-term memory and working memory in children as a function of language-specific knowledge in English and Spanish

This study determined the degree to which the phonological and executive components of memory reflect language-specific capacities in Spanish and English vocabulary. We tested whether the memory processes in a sample of English language learners found in Grade 1 also emerged in Grade 2. For the total sample (N = 90), Grade 1 English STM measures shared a common construct with Spanish STM, whereas Grade 2 STM measures were language dependent. In contrast, WM measures were language independent across grades 1 and 2. When vocabulary subgroups were analyzed, a subgroup × type of memory task emerged. The results showed that performance on Spanish and English STM tasks were a function of high and low Spanish and English vocabulary knowledge, whereas WM was not. The relationship between language-specific processes in memory was discussed.     

Individual differences in children's writing: A function of working memory or reading or both processes?

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a general or specific working memory (WM) system is related to writing and whether individual differences in reading and/or processing efficiency underlie the correlations between WM and writing. Two studies correlated WM with writing (Test of Written Language-TOWL) and reading measures. In Study 1, WM was correlated significantly with a number of writing measures, particularly to those measures related to text generation. Working-memory also contributed unique variance to writing, beyond what is predicted by reading comprehension. Study 2 compared the correlations of verbal and visual-spatial WM measures with the TOWL under initial and enhanced memory processing (dynamic assessment) conditions. The coefficients were statistically comparable between initial and enhanced processing conditions, suggesting that individual differences in processing efficiency do not account for the correlations between WM and writing. Overall, the results indicated that (a) WM measures contribute unique variance to writing, especially text generation, and (b) working memory performance improves under gain conditions, but this enhanced processing efficiency did not appear to mediate the links between WM and writing. Taken together, the two studies support a general capacity explanation for the relationship between working memory and text generation.     

Reasoning and working memory as predictors of school grades

The present paper contributes to individual difference research in the field of working memory (WM) and reasoning and their contribution to the prediction of real-life criteria. Therefore, a broad WM test battery, a well-established measure of reasoning, and school grades were applied. It is argued that abilities as assessed with the WM component coordination are relevant for good performances at school, especially for science courses. The verbal task of the WM component storage in the context of processing was assumed to be relevant for the prediction of performance in language courses. As expected, reasoning turned out to be the best predictor of school grades. However, it was also confirmed that variance shared by coordination and reasoning can explain school performance, especially as concerns science courses. The verbal storage in the context of processing task significantly accounted for variance in language courses above and beyond reasoning. Thus, the present study provided further insights into the differential validity of different WM components.     

Distinctive patterns of relationship of phonological awareness and working memory with reading development

The purpose of this study was to assess the contributions of specific components of verbal and nonverbal working memory and of phonological awareness to the prediction of reading achievement. One hundred and three children from grades 1, 2, and 3 were administered a measure of phonological awareness, four measures of working memory, four measures of academic achievement, and a measure of verbal intelligence. Separate multiple regression analyses controlling for the effects of age, sex and verbal intelligence showed that tests of verbal memory and of direct recall significantly predicted reading and spelling achievement whereas tests of backward recall significantly predicted only pseudoword identification. Phonological awareness was also found to relate significantly to reading and spelling achievement even when working memory was partialled out. Thus, phonological awareness and measures of working memory predicted specific and significant amounts of variance in reading and spelling achievement. Further, none of these measures were specifically related to arithmetic achievement. The specific roles of phonological awareness and working memory in reading development are examined in the discussion.     

The impact of working memory training in young people with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties

This study examined the impact of a working memory (WM) training programme on measures of WM, IQ, behavioural inhibition, self-report test and trait anxiety and teacher reported emotional and behavioural difficulties and attentional control before and after WM training and at a 3 month follow-up. The WM training group (N = 7) showed significantly better post-training on measures of IQ, inhibition, test anxiety and teacher-reported behaviour, attention and emotional symptoms, compared with a non-intervention passive control group (N = 8). Group differences in WM were also evident at follow-up. The results indicated that WM training has some potential to be used to reduce the development of school related difficulties and associated mental health problems in young people. Further research using larger sample sizes and monitoring over a longer time period is needed to replicate and extend these results.     

Learning to read Chinese: Semantic,syntactic, phonological and working memory skills in normally achieving and poor Chinese readers

Whereas many studies point to a positive relationship between phonological skills and reading in English, little is known about these relationships for children learning to read in a morphemic orthography such as Chinese. The aim of this study was to examine the relationships among reading ability, phonological, semantic and syntactic skills in Chinese. The participants were 196 grade 1 to grade 4 Chinese children in Hong Kong. A word recognition task in Chinese was developed and children who scored in the lowest quartile were classified as poor readers. The children were administered phonological tasks (tone and rhyming discrimination), semantic tasks (choosing similar words and sentences meanings), a syntactic task (oral cloze), and a working memory task. The results showed that word recognition was highly correlated with phonological skills and semantic processing, and was only moderately related to syntactic knowledge and working memory. Poor readers showed a significant lag in the development of these skills with the most significant problems at the phonological and semantic levels. Phonological skills are important to the acquisition of reading skills in both Chinese and English.     

The role of visual and phonological representations in the processing of written words by readers with diagnosed dyslexia: evidence from a working memory task

The aim of the study was to elucidate the nature and efficiency of the strategies that readers with phonological dyslexia use for temporary retention of written words in Working Memory (WM). Data was gathered through a paradigm whereby participants had to identify serially presented written (target) words from within larger word pools according to their presentation order, with word pools containing code-specific distracter (CSD) words and non-code-specific distracter (NCSD) words. Analyses focused on three aspects of performance: (1) false recognition of target words; (2) correct recognition of target words; and (3) retention of word presentation order. Participants were readers with diagnosed phonological dyslexia (n = 20, mean grade level = 9.05 [0.89]) and a control group of regular readers (n = 25, mean grade level = 9.00 [0.76]). Results provide direct evidence that the dyslexic readers and the regular readers used essentially different memory coding strategies for the temporary retention of written words, with the former predominantly relying on a visual strategy and the latter on a phonological strategy. Findings further pinpointed a notably impoverished ability of the dyslexic readers to retain word presentation order. The implication of these findings is discussed in relation to theories predicting the acquisition and mastery of reading.

The role of the working memory and language skills in the prediction of word problem solving in 4- to 7-year-old children

The aim of this study was to analyse the role of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) and language skills (vocabulary, listening comprehension) in predicting preschool and kindergarten-aged children’s ability to solve mathematical word problems presented orally. The participants were 116 Finnish-speaking children aged 4–7?years. The results showed that verbal WM (VWM) did not have a direct effect on word problems in young children but was indirectly related to word problems through vocabulary and listening comprehension. These results suggest that in young children, VWM resources support language skills which, furthermore, contribute to variation in solving orally presented word problems. The results also showed that visuo-spatial WM had a direct effect on performance in word problems, suggesting that it plays an important role in word problem solving among this age group.