Effects of working memory intervention on students with reading comprehension difficulties

Abstract

Purpose: to investigate the effectiveness of a working memory-based intervention proposal for reading comprehension. Methods: 43 children divided into two groups according to their performance in a reading comprehension test - G1: children with reading comprehension difficulty; G2: children with no difficulties. All the children were evaluated regarding reading, writing, sentence reading comprehension, and phonological working memory - PWM (repetition of pseudo-words and digits). After this evaluation, children from G1 participated in an intervention program (15 meetings) that stimulated the PWM. Following the intervention, all the children were reevaluated. The results were compared intra- and intergroup, and pertinent statistical tests were applied, by adopting the significance level lower than 0.05%. Results: after the intervention program, the children of G1 showed a significant improvement in all tests. In the intergroup analysis, at the time of evaluation, G1 was different from G2 in reading, writing and reading comprehension. In the reevaluation, G1 equaled G2 in reading and got closer to G2 in writing and reading comprehension. Conclusion: PWM training brought benefits to children with academic difficulties. Thus, these strategies could be used in the classroom, aiming to promote learning.

A Systematic Literature Review of the Impact of Cognitive Stimulation Programs on Reading Skills in Children Aged between 6 and 12 Years Old

“…Following the method described in the previous section, a total of 16 articles were selected, six of which implemented training in verbal and visuospatial working memory [44,53,[124][125][126][127], one focused on verbal working memory interventions [33], two specifically targeted visuospatial working memory development [34,128], and two stimulated central working memory or did not specify the specific working memory skill they targeted [70,129]. It is noteworthy that two studies conducted combined training of working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility [130] or working memory and inhibitory control [19], and only one of the selected studies addressed inhibitory control training individually [34].…”

“…Finally, reading comprehension was the most notable variable in this sample, as it was assessed in 13 of the 16 selected articles [19,34,44,53,62,70,71,[124][125][126][127]129,130]. Although in this case no specific battery stands out in terms of frequency of use within the selected articles, it is noteworthy for its high internal consistency the use of several tests.…”

Reading Comprehension Predictors in European Portuguese Adults

“…The backward condition of the Digit Span subtest of the WAIS-III (Portuguese version; Wechsler, 2008 ) was used to assess working memory, considering that this task requires storage and manipulation of auditory information ( Novaes et al, 2019 ). The raw scores were used as a working memory measure.…”

Desenvolvimento do processamento fonológico em crianças inseridas no ensino bilíngue

“…De maneira mais específica, o baixo desempenho em tarefas envolvendo a alça fonológica está associado a dificuldades de escrita, a dificuldades de compreensão leitora e também a dificuldades em aritmética. O desempenho inferior em tarefas de maior complexidade, como repetição de dígitos em ordem inversa (executivo central) está associado a dificuldades de leitura e de compreensão leitora (BRANDENBURG et al, 2015;BOVO et al, 2016;SILVA et al, 2017;ZUANETTI;FUKUDA, 2019).…”

“…O efeito de similaridade fonológica e o de fala irrelevante podem prejudicar o sistema armazenador fonológico. O efeito de idade está relacionado de forma positiva ao processo maturacional da velocidade do processamento(BADDELEY, 2003;BARBOZA;GARCIA; GALERA, 2015;ZUANETTI; FUKUDA, 2019).Para a avaliar a habilidade de memória de trabalho -alça fonológicatambém conhecida por memória fonológica, foram propostas provas de repetição de dígitos em ordem direta, repetição de palavras, de pseudopalavras ou não palavras.A repetição de pseudopalavras/não palavras avalia com maior precisão o armazenador fonológico, uma vez que o armazenamento destas é desprovido das influências lexicais, de semântica e sintaxe(BADDELEY, 2003;ZUANETTI; FUKUDA, 2019).ParaNathan et al (2004) a habilidade de repetir palavras mostra informações sobre a proficiência do processamento fonológico da criança. Em tarefas de repetição, ela se baseia menos nas suas próprias representações fonológicas, uma vez que o avaliador fornece a palavra.…”