When identified via routine screening, the gender balance is fairly even, with a slightly greater proportion of males than females. Recognising poor working memory in the classroom Most of the children who fall in the lowest 10 per cent in terms of their working memory show the characteristics outlined in the box opposite. Those with poor capacities will therefore struggle to meet the heavy working memory demands of many situations, of which the classroom is a prime example. There is also a substantial variation in working memory capacity between individuals. Working memory may be useful and flexible, but information held in working memory is easily lost through distraction or overload. Working memory consists of several interacting subsystems that include specialised stores for verbal and visuo-spatial material, and an attentional component that controls activity within working memory (see Baddeley, 2000). This is a term that is widely used to refer to a memory system that provides a kind of mental jotting pad storing information necessary for everyday activities such as remembering telephone numbers, following directions and instructions, and keeping track of shopping list items while in the supermarket. Nathan is typical of the hundreds of children that we have encountered in schools in recent years as part of our research on the consequences of poor working memory on learning and behaviour.īefore considering the detailed characteristics of such children more systematically, it is important to describe what is meant here by working memory. In the years to come, it is likely that he will be identified as having special education needs in reading and maths in primary school, and he is at risk of poor educational achievements at secondary level, and of entering adult life with few academic qualifications. Nathan, a child who came to our attention through routine screening, has not been diagnosed as having a developmental disorder but is making only slow progress in most areas of classroom learning.
Many teachers have pupils with similar profiles of behaviour and achievement to Nathan’s, but are unlikely to know that they have poor working memory, a problem shared by approximately 10 per cent of children. Nathan’s teacher says that he has a short attention span, and is easily distracted. Often he loses his place in complex tasks, making errors such as skipping important steps or repeating them. He also makes errors in activities that involve remembering even small amounts of information at the same time as processing other material. He often fails to follow instructions such as ‘Put your sheets on the green table, arrow cards in the packet, put your pencil away and come and sit on the carpet’ typically, he will complete the first part of the instruction and proceed no further. He is working in the lowest ability groups in both reading and maths, and is struggling with many classroom activities. Nathan is a six-year old child in his second full-time year of school.
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