Cross-modal working memory binding and learning of visual-phonological associations in children with reading difficulties

Garcia, Ricardo Basso; Tomaino, Alessandra; Cornoldi, Cesare

doi:10.1080/09297049.2019.1572729

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…It is possible that it supports critical reading-related subskills such as selective attention, rhythm perception, phonological awareness, and auditory working memory including verbal memory encoding and recall. In our intervention, it is likely that there was a strong involvement of working memory in supporting the learning of visual-auditory cross-modal associations; it may be that cross-modal 'binding' may help to explain the observed effect in the word recognition task (Garcia et al, 2019;Toffalini et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…What is not clear from the extant literature is what part learning to read music whilst learning an instrument, as opposed to playing by ear, plays in this observed improvement in working memory. The concept of working memory 'binding' cross-modal information (in this case audio and visual) may provide a clue to the involvement of working memory in the maintenance and learning of crossmodal associations (Garcia et al, 2019;Toffalini et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning to Play the Piano Whilst Reading Music: Short-Term School-Based Piano Instruction Improves Memory and Word Recognition in Children

Price-Mohr

Price

2021

IJEC

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There is a substantial body of evidence that demonstrates links between language and music and between music and improved cognitive ability, particularly with regard to verbal and working memory, in both adults and children. However, there is often a mix of type of musical training and instrument used and use of musical notation. The research reported here uses a randomised controlled trial with 32 novice children, aged seven, learning to play the piano with both hands whilst reading music notation. The intervention was conducted in a school setting, each child receiving in total four hours of instruction. Results confirm previous findings that short-term music instruction improves working memory. Results also demonstrated that children with this musical training outperformed controls on a word identification measure. Overall, the results show evidence for a causal relationship between music learning and improvements in verbal skills. The significant differences occurred after only one term of instruction and were stable 3 months post-intervention.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to Play the Piano Whilst Reading Music: Short-Term School-Based Piano Instruction Improves Memory and Word Recognition in Children

Price-Mohr

Price

2021

IJEC

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“…However, a few studies have not found an association between working memory and reading comprehension (Muijselaar and de Jong, 2015 ), a result that may depend on the fact that updating while reading is a far more demanding task than updating as assessed by standardized tests. Fewer studies investigated visuospatial working memory notwithstanding the literature points to the relevance of cross-modal working memory in reading task (Garcia et al, 2019 ) and to the role of visuospatial deficits in text comprehension impairment (Mammarella et al, 2015 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Contribution of Executive Functions When Reading Multiple Texts: A Systematic Literature Review

2021

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In the present-day knowledge society, people need to critically comprehend information across multiple sources that express diverse and contradictory viewpoints. Due to the complexity associated with this process, an important role can be played by Executive Functions, that is, cognitive control processes used to regulate mental functioning and behavior when automatized elaborations are not sufficient. The aim of this article is to review existing research on the roles of executive functions when reading from multiple texts. To identify the appropriate studies, we conducted a search in the following databases: Web of science, Scopus, PsycInfo, Eric. The search string was created by combining the terms used in past literature reviews on executive functions and multiple-texts comprehension. From the total number of 4,877 records identified, seven articles met all the inclusion criteria and were analyzed. Given the scarcity of studies on the topic, we decided to examine also eight articles reporting indirect evidence about the association between executive functions and multiple-text comprehension. Our review revealed that the study of the association between executive functions and multiple-texts comprehension is underdeveloped. The results seem to suggest that working memory is involved in surface comprehension, whereas results about sourcing and intertextual integration processes are mixed. Indirect evidence suggests that other executive functions, such as planning or monitoring, may be involved when learning from multiple texts. More research on this topic is needed given the increasing complexity of the contexts in which reading activities take place.

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“…However, some struggle to form novel audiovisual mappings, a difficulty that can persist well into adulthood (Blau et al, 2009;Jones et al, 2013bJones et al, , 2018. Readers with developmental dyslexia exhibit indications of less-integrated grapheme-phoneme representations (Blau et al, 2009(Blau et al, , 2010Blomert, 2011;Warmington and Hulme, 2012;Aravena et al, 2013Aravena et al, , 2018Žarić et al, 2015), a deficit owing in part to their comparatively poorer cross-modal binding skills (Aravena et al, 2013;Jones et al, 2013bJones et al, , 2018Žarić et al, 2015;Albano et al, 2016;Toffalini et al, 2018Toffalini et al, , 2019Garcia et al, 2019). Despite the well-known link between audiovisual integration and ultimate reading attainment, the cognitive mechanisms underlying typical and atypical cross-modal binding ability are not yet fully understood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In terms of accuracy, we predicted that, compared with typical readers, readers with dyslexia would show generally higher error rates, and a shallower function of learning (Messbauer and de Jong, 2003;Aravena et al, 2013;Jones et al, 2013bJones et al, , 2018Albano et al, 2016;Toffalini et al, 2018Toffalini et al, , 2019Garcia et al, 2019). Further, whilst we predicted that consistently presenting targets in the same spatial location and/or in the context of the same alternatives would generally decrease error rates, we suspected that these consistency effects would disproportionately benefit readers with dyslexia: though previous work indicates that readers with dyslexia are less likely to track single-feature statistics (e.g., location) over multiple exposures (Jones et al, 2013b(Jones et al, , 2018Toffalini et al, 2018), providing both spatial (i.e., item screen location) and contextual consistencies (i.e., item co-occurrences) might prove particularly advantageous to help impaired readers bootstrap degraded representations/poorer retrieval of individual items.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Audiovisual Learning in Dyslexic and Typical Adults: Modulating Influences of Location and Context Consistency

2021

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Learning to read involves efficient binding of visual to auditory information. Aberrant cross-modal binding skill has been observed in both children and adults with developmental dyslexia. Here, we examine the contribution of episodic memory to acquisition of novel cross-modal bindings in typical and dyslexic adult readers. Participants gradually learned arbitrary associations between unfamiliar Mandarin Chinese characters and English-like pseudowords over multiple exposures, simulating the early stages of letter-to-letter sound mapping. The novel cross-modal bindings were presented in consistent or varied locations (i.e., screen positions), and within consistent or varied contexts (i.e., co-occurring distractor items). Our goal was to examine the contribution, if any, of these episodic memory cues (i.e., the contextual and spatial properties of the stimuli) to binding acquisition, and investigate the extent to which readers with and without dyslexia would differ in their reliance on episodic memory during the learning process. Participants were tested on their ability to recognize and recall the bindings both during training and then in post-training tasks. We tracked participants’ eye movements remotely with their personal webcams to assess whether they would re-fixate relevant empty screen locations upon hearing an auditory cue—indicative of episodic memory retrieval—and the extent to which the so-called “looking-at-nothing behavior” would modulate recognition of the novel bindings. Readers with dyslexia both recognized and recalled significantly fewer bindings than typical readers, providing further evidence of their persistent difficulties with cross-modal binding. Looking-at-nothing behavior was generally associated with higher recognition error rates for both groups, a pattern that was particularly more evident in later blocks for bindings encoded in the inconsistent location condition. Our findings also show that whilst readers with and without dyslexia are capable of using stimulus consistencies in the input—both location and context—to assist in audiovisual learning, readers with dyslexia appear particularly reliant on consistent contextual information. Taken together, our results suggest that whilst readers with dyslexia fail to efficiently learn audiovisual binding as a function of stimulus frequency, they are able to use stimulus consistency—aided by episodic recall—to assist in the learning process.

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Cross-modal working memory binding and learning of visual-phonological associations in children with reading difficulties

Cited by 7 publications

References 37 publications

Learning to Play the Piano Whilst Reading Music: Short-Term School-Based Piano Instruction Improves Memory and Word Recognition in Children

Learning to Play the Piano Whilst Reading Music: Short-Term School-Based Piano Instruction Improves Memory and Word Recognition in Children

The Contribution of Executive Functions When Reading Multiple Texts: A Systematic Literature Review

Audiovisual Learning in Dyslexic and Typical Adults: Modulating Influences of Location and Context Consistency

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