Learning
There is now extensive evidence that working memory is linked to key learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy. A longitudinal study confirmed that a child's working memory at 5 years old is a better predictor of academic success than IQ.
The information needs to enter working memory before it can be stored into long-term memory. E.g. in vision, the speed with which information is stored into long-term memory is determined by the amount of information that can be fit, at each step, into working memory. In other words, the larger the capacity of working memory for certain stimuli, the faster these materials can be learned.
In a large-scale screening study, one in ten children in mainstream classrooms were identified with working memory deficits. The majority of them performed very poorly in academic achievements, independent of their IQ. Without appropriate intervention, these children lag behind their peers. A recent study of 37 school-age children with significant learning disabilities has shown that working memory capacity at baseline measurement, but not IQ, predicts learning outcomes two years later. This suggests that working memory impairments are associated with low learning outcomes and constitute a high risk factor for educational underachievement for children. In children with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, ADHD, and developmental coordination disorder, a similar pattern is evident.
In a classroom, common characteristics of working memory impairment include a failure to remember instructions and an inability to complete learning activities. Without early diagnosis, working memory impairment negatively impacts a child's performance throughout their scholastic career.
However, strategies that target the specific strengths and weaknesses of the student's working memory profile are available for educators.
Read more about this topic: Working Memory
Famous quotes containing the word learning:
“Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men’s minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on,—s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)