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Substantial evidence has established that individual differences in executive function (EF) in early childhood are uniquely predictive of children's academic readiness at school entry. The current study tested whether growth trajectories of EF across the early childhood period could be used to identify a subset of children who were at pronounced risk for academic impairment in kindergarten. Using data that were collected at the age 3, 4, and 5 home assessments in the Family Life Project (N = 1,120), growth mixture models were used to identify 9% of children who exhibited impaired EF performance (i.e., persistently low levels of EF that did not show expected improvements across time). Compared to children who exhibited typical trajectories of EF, the delayed group exhibited substantial impairments in multiple indicators of academic readiness in kindergarten (Cohen's ds = 0.9-2.7; odds ratios = 9.8-23.8). Although reduced in magnitude following control for a range of socioeconomic and cognitive (general intelligence screener, receptive vocabulary) covariates, moderate-sized group differences remained (Cohen's ds = 0.2-2.4; odds ratios = 3.9-5.4). Results are discussed with respect to the use of repeated measures of EF as a method of early identification, as well as the resulting translational implications of doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competent reading requires various skills beyond those for basic word reading (i.e., core language skills, rapid naming, phonological processing). Contributing "higher-level" or domain-general processes include information processing speed and executive functions (working memory, strategic problem solving, attentional switching). Research in this area has relied on largely Caucasian samples, with limited representation of children from racial or ethnic minority groups. This study examined contributions of executive skills to reading competence in 761 children of minority backgrounds. Hierarchical linear regressions examined unique contributions of executive functions (EF) to word reading, fluency, and comprehension. EF contributed uniquely to reading performance, over and above reading-related language skills; working memory contributed uniquely to all components of reading; while attentional switching, but not problem solving, contributed to isolated and contextual word reading and reading fluency. Problem solving uniquely predicted comprehension, suggesting that this skill may be especially important for reading comprehension in minority youth. Attentional switching may play a unique role in development of reading fluency in minority youth, perhaps as a result of the increased demand for switching between spoken versus written dialects. Findings have implications for educational and clinical practice with regard to reading instruction, remedial reading intervention, and assessment of individuals with reading difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study tested a multiple-cognitive predictor model of word reading, math ability, and attention in a community-based sample of twins ages 8 to 16 years (N = 636). The objective was to identify cognitive predictors unique to each skill domain as well as cognitive predictors shared among skills that could help explain their overlap and thus help illuminate the basis for comorbidity of related disorders (reading disability, math disability, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Results indicated that processing speed contributes to the overlap between reading and attention as well as math and attention, whereas verbal comprehension contributes to the overlap between reading and math. There was no evidence that executive functioning skills help account for covariation among these skill domains. Instead, specific executive functions differentially related to certain outcomes (i.e., working memory to math and inhibition to attention). We explored whether the model varied in younger versus older children and found only minor differences. Results are interpreted within the context of the multiple deficit framework for neurodevelopmental disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cohort-sequential study explored the components of working memory (WM) that underlie second language (L2) reading growth in 450 children at risk and not at risk for reading disabilities (RD) whose first language is Spanish. English language learners designated as balanced and nonbalanced bilinguals with and without risk for RD in Grades 1, 2, and 3 at Wave 1 were administered a battery of cognitive (short-term memory, WM, naming speed, and inhibition), vocabulary, and reading measures in Spanish and English. These same measures were administered 1 and 2 years later. Two important findings occurred: First, growth in the WM executive component was significantly related to growth in English word identification and passage comprehension when competing measures (phonological processing, naming speed, inhibition, and fluid intelligence) were entered into the multilevel growth model. Second, children defined as at risk for RD in Wave 1 had lower intercepts than children not at risk at Wave 3 across several measures of cognition, language, and achievement. However, except on measures of the executive component of WM, no significant group differences in linear growth emerged. These findings suggest that growth in L2 reading was tied to growth in the executive system of WM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents two studies investigating the role of executive functioning in written text comprehension in children and adolescents. In a first study, the involvement of executive functions in reading comprehension performance was examined in normally developing children in fifth grade. Two aspects of text comprehension were differentiated: literal and inferential processes. The results demonstrated that while three aspects of executive functioning (working memory, planning, and inhibition processes) were significantly predictive of the performance on the inferential questions of the comprehension test, these factors did not predict the scores on the literal tasks of the test. In a second experiment, the linguistic and cognitive profiles of children in third/fifth and seventh/ninth grades with a specific reading comprehension deficit were examined. This analysis revealed that the deficits experienced by the less skilled comprehenders in both the linguistic and the executive domains could evolve over time. As a result, linguistic factors do not make it possible to distinguish between good and poor comprehenders among the group of older children, whereas the difficulties relating to executive processing remain stable over development. These findings are discussed in the context of the need to take account of the executive difficulties that characterize less skilled comprehenders of any age, especially for remediation purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In transparent orthographies like German, isolated learning disabilities in either reading or spelling are common and occur as often as a combined reading and spelling disability. However, most issues surrounding the cognitive causes of these isolated or combined literacy difficulties are yet unresolved. Recently, working memory dysfunctions have been demonstrated to be promising in explaining the emergence of literacy difficulties. Thus, we applied a 2 (reading disability: yes vs. no) × 2 (spelling disability: yes vs. no) factorial design to examine distinct and overlapping working memory profiles associated with learning disabilities in reading versus spelling. Working memory was assessed in 204 third graders, and multivariate analyses of variance were conducted for each working memory component. Children with spelling disability suffered from more pronounced phonological loop impairments than those with reading disability. In contrast, domain-general central-executive dysfunctions were solely associated with reading disability, but not with spelling disability. Concerning the visuospatial sketchpad, no impairments were found. In sum, children with reading disability and those with spelling disability seem to be characterized by different working memory profiles. Thus, it is important to take both reading and spelling into account when investigating cognitive factors of literacy difficulties in transparent orthographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that children with learning disabilities (LD) encounter severe problems in working memory (WM) tasks, especially when they need to update information stored in their WM. It is not clear, however, to what extent this is due to a generally poor updating ability or to a difficulty specific to the domain to be processed. To examine this issue, two groups of children with arithmetic or reading comprehension LD and a group of typically developing children (9 to 10 years old) were assessed using two updating tasks requiring to select the smallest numbers or objects presented. The results showed that children with an arithmetic disability failed in a number updating task, but not in the object updating task. The opposite was true for the group with poor reading comprehension, whose performance was worse in the object than in the number updating task. It may be concluded that the problem of WM updating in children with LD is also due to a poor representation of the material to be updated. In addition, our findings suggest that the mental representation of the size of objects relates to the semantic representation of the objects’ properties and differs from the quantitative representation of numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments investigated the effects of strategy knowledge and strategy training on the working memory (WM) performance in children (ages 10-11) with and without reading disabilities (RD). Experiment I examined the relationship between strategy knowledge (stability of strategy choices) and WM performance as a function of initial, gain (cued), and maintenance conditions. WM performance was significantly improved for both groups under cued conditions; however, the performances of children with RD were inferior to those of children without RD across all memory conditions. Measures of WM capacity rather than strategy stability or processing efficiency best predicted reading comprehension performance. Experiment 2 assessed the effects of strategy training on WM performance by randomly assigning children to strategy instruction or control conditions. Significant improvements in WM performance occurred as a function of training conditions, but the residual WM differences between the reading groups remained. Although the results showed that stable strategy choices, cued performance, and strategy instruction significantly bolstered WM performance in children with RD, their overall WM performance, however, was constrained by capacity limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to evaluate rapid automatized naming skills (RAN) and immediate memory processes in 243 Chinese Mandarin-speaking elementary readers (ranging from Grade 1 to Grade 5). For RAN subtests, the mean naming time decreased monotonically with grade level in good and average readers, and a similar trajectory was found in poor readers, even though they were generally slower in rapid naming. Regardless of grouping methods (counting all participants or counting good readers only), RAN Character emerged as a significant predictor of various Chinese reading measures. Different from classical findings in English readers indicating that RAN Number was a better correlate of reading than RAN Object, RAN Object outperformed RAN Number and became a significant predictor of Chinese reading speed and spelling, suggesting that the differences in predictive power of RAN tasks may be language specific. Comparison of memory profiles for good, average, and poor readers revealed that the patterns varied depending on mode of stimulus presentation or response. Poor readers performed poorly on subtests involving a visual component and did relatively better on subtests involving verbal cues only, whereas a reversed pattern was shown in the group of good readers. The findings were interpreted to suggest that good and poor Chinese readers may be essentially different in applying visual strategies and verbal mediation during visual-verbal intra- and intermodal processing, and visual skills appear to be particularly important in reading of Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the performance of persons with reading disabilities (PRD) on a variety of sequential visualcomparison tasks that have different working-memory requirements. In addition, mediating relationships between the sequential comparison process and attention and memory skills were looked for. Our findings suggest that PRD perform worse than normally achieving readers (NAR) when the task requires more than a minimal amount of working memory, unrelated to presentation rate. We also demonstrate high correlations between performance on the task with the most working-memory demands and reading-related skills, suggesting that poor working-memory abilities may be one of the underlying mechanisms of dyslexia. The mediating model analysis indicates that order judgment tasks are mediating to verbal working memory, suggesting that visual sequence memory precedes auditory sequence memory. We further suggest that visual tasks involving sequential comparisons could probe for poor working memory in PRD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we explored the relationship between beginning readers' phonological awareness and other aspects of phonological processing, specifically as manifested in short-term memory and comprehension tasks. The theoretical questions underlying the study were (a) what roles phonological processes play in children's beginning reading, from word identification through sentence comprehension, and (b) whether those roles are sufficiently related that potential difficulties at one level directly affect processing at other levels. Phonologically induced effects were observed for word-list memory and for sentence judgments for both novice readers (at the end of kindergarten) and relatively more experienced readers (end of Grades 1 and 2). For both age groups, correlational analyses revealed relationships among phonological awareness, phonological processing in list memory, and word reading. However, phonological processing in sentence comprehension was not related to other types of phonological processing. These results indicate that although phonology plays a role during comprehension, phonological processing may not be as limiting a factor in comprehension as in word reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the memory performance of children with reading disabilities (RD) using methodology representative of three theoretical perspectives on RD subtypes: the phonological deficit, dual route, and phonological-core variable-difference models. Analyses compared the serial memory, verbal learning, and abstract visual-spatial memory performance of 45 children with RD to that of chronological-age (CA)- and reading-level (RL)-matched controls, using subtype identification methods from each of the theoretical models to classify children with RD. Phonological deficit and dual route comparisons indicated that children with RD, regardless of subtype, performed more poorly than CA-and better than RL-matched participants on all memory tasks. Phonological-core variable-difference methodology yielded three RD subtypes, two of which exhibited distinctive memory deficits relative to both CA and RL control groups. The phonological-core variable-difference model accounted for more variance in memory performance than either of the other two models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated the effect of sound—symbol association training on visual and phonological memory in children with a history of dyslexia. Pretests of phonological and visual memory, a sound—symbol training procedure, and phonological and visual memory posttests were administered to children with dyslexia, to children whose dyslexia had been compensated through remedial training, and to age- and reading level—matched comparison groups. Deficits in visual and phonological memory and memory for sound—symbol associations were demonstrated in the dyslexia group. For children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been remediated, the sound—symbol training scores were significantly associated with word and pseudoword reading, scores and were significantly lower than those of the comparison groups. Children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been compensated showed significantly less facilitation of phonological memory following the training than did typical readers. Skilled readers showed some reduction in accuracy of visual memory following the training, which may be the result of interference of verbalization with a predominantly visual task. A parallel decrease was not observed in the children with dyslexia, possibly because these children did not use the verbal cues. Children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been compensated seemed to have difficulty encoding the novel sounds in memory. As a result, they derived less phonological memory advantage and less visual memory interference from the training than did typical readers. Children in the compensated dyslexia group scored lower on sound—symbol training than their age peers. In other respects, the scores of these children were equivalent to those of the typically reading comparison groups. Children in the compensated dyslexia group exhibited higher phonological rehearsal, iconic memory, and associative memory scores than children in the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates taxonomic clustering and use of frequency associations as features in the semantic memory of children with learning disabilities (LD). Free-recall organization; Types of primary and secondary word lists; Items associated with frequency; Items related by category members; Measures of clustering; Effects of cuing and knowledge base on memory organization.

Presents results of a study where two groups of children with reading disabilities and verbal deficits were given a memory-for-colors task designed to evaluate intra- and intermodal serial memory functioning. Memory span of the children; Developmental differences in the relative influence of specific modalities in the immediate memory functions of the children; Emphasis on the role of intramodal verbal factors across ages.

Focuses on four groups of children tested with a serial short term memory (STM) task. Matching of three groups in intelligence quotient and age, with differences in reading ability from reading-disabled to reading-superior; Competent readers in the fourth group; Data from the STM task; Implication of results for physiological approaches to the STM/reading relationship and for the possible causal nature of the relationship.

Examines the visual scanning strategies of perceptually impaired and normal children viewing the motor-free visual perception test. Recording of eye movements of children; Quantitative and qualitative differences in rates of encoding information and reliance upon visual memory; Inadequacy of relying on verbal response to visual perception tests in measuring differences in perceptual abilities.

Examines the possibility that the deficits responsible for low recall in learning disabled children are also responsible for slow acquisition. Comparison between short-term recall and acquisition rate of learning disabled children and nondisabled children; Serial recall and acquisition of supraspan color sequences of learning disabled and nondisabled children.

Long-term perceptual memory effects in the perception of apparent movement by children with learning disabilities were investigated. In a situation in which prior training was given to facilitate the perception of the illusion after intervals of either 3 minutes or 24 hours, the learning disabled showed perception memory effects the same as those found in normal children (Raskin, 1968). However, when the training was given with the expectation of its hindering the occurrence of perceived movement, it did so only after a 3-minute delay and not in those children who waited 24 hours. The latter result has also been reported for educable mentally retarded children (Raskin, 1969b) and indicates that these children may share a specific perceptual memory problem parallel to their general lack of inhibitory control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the use of two-digit span tasks to compare distraction performance of learning-disabled (LD) and normal learning (NL) children. Assumed deficiency in attention and memory performance in LD children; Absence of a differential distraction effect in the ability to discriminate differences; Need for researchers to consider the psychometric properties of their tasks as important variables and as another explanation for some of the findings in the distractibility literature with LD children.

Discusses memory improvement through motor encoding in learning disabled children. Means and standard deviations of the sentence recall scores; Determination of motor status; Description of the memory for sentences technique and motor enactment procedures.

Compares the development of encoding preferences in learning disabled (LD) 2nd and sixth grade children and non-disabled children. Relative dominance of attributes encoded by the two groups at the two ages; Comparison of number of false recognitions for three types of distractions; LD students' nonspontaneous use of the effortful semantic processing strategy of elaborative rehearsal.

Reports on various topics concerning the field of learning disabilities (LD) as of August 1984. Concept of sharing a common classroom among students with three major mild-to-moderate handicapping conditions; Validity of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised to identify LD problems; Effect of mainstreaming on student behavior; Test of children's free-recall capacity.

Examines the efficacy of a memory strategy for eliminating reversal behavior in reading and writing among children. Determination of correct symbol orientation; Effects of the strategy on various types of reversal behavior; Mnemonic method used for diminishing the number of reversals.

Summarizes relevant linguistic research and instructional strategies for the development of linguistic auditory memory patterns (LAMP) for learning disabled children. Processing skills important for the acquisition of language operations; Components of LAMP; Common language patterns; Categories of developmental instruction of syntactic language patterns in normal and dyslexics children; Five levels of LAMP.

Examines the influence of attention-retention functions of learning disabled boys on a modeling task. Relation of attention to and retention of relevant versus irrelevant stimuli with modeling performances of learning disabled children; Relationship between modeling performances and academic achievement; Influence of modeling as a technique for effecting behavioral change in these children.