Mammarella Irene C, Caviola Sara, Giofrè David, Szűcs Dénes
Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Italy.
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2018 Jun;36(2):220-235. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12202. Epub 2017 Aug 18.
This study examined visual, spatial-sequential, and spatial-simultaneous working memory (WM) performance in children with mathematical learning disability (MLD) and low mathematics achievement (LMA) compared with typically developing (TD) children. Groups were matched on reading decoding performance and verbal intelligence. Besides statistical significance testing, we used bootstrap confidence interval estimation and computed effect sizes. Children were individually tested with six computerized tasks, two for each visuospatial WM subcomponent. We found that both MLD and LMA children had low visuospatial WM function in both spatial-simultaneous and spatial-sequential WM tasks. The WM deficit was most expressed in MLD children and less in LMA children. This suggests that WM scores are distributed along a continuum with TD children achieving top scores and MLD children achieving low scores. The theoretical and practical significance of findings is discussed. Statement of Contribution What is already known on this subject? Working memory plays an important role in mathematical achievement. Children with mathematical learning disability (MLD) usually have low working memory resources. Conflicting results have been reported concerning the role of VSWM in individuals with MLD. What the present study adds? Children with different degree of impairment in math achievement and typically developing children were tested. Visual, spatial-sequential, and spatial-simultaneous working memory tasks were examined. Only spatial-sequential and spatial-simultaneous working memory tasks discriminated the two impairments groups.
本研究考察了数学学习障碍（MLD）和数学成绩低（LMA）儿童与正常发育（TD）儿童相比在视觉、空间序列和空间同时性工作记忆（WM）方面的表现。各小组在阅读解码能力和语言智力方面进行了匹配。除了进行统计显著性检验外，我们还使用了自助置信区间估计并计算了效应量。对儿童进行了六项计算机化任务的个体测试，每个视觉空间WM子成分两项任务。我们发现，MLD和LMA儿童在空间同时性和空间序列WM任务中视觉空间WM功能均较低。WM缺陷在MLD儿童中表现最为明显，在LMA儿童中表现较轻。这表明WM分数沿一个连续体分布，TD儿童得分最高，MLD儿童得分最低。本文讨论了研究结果的理论和实践意义。贡献声明关于该主题已知的内容是什么？工作记忆在数学成绩中起着重要作用。数学学习障碍（MLD）儿童通常工作记忆资源较低。关于视觉空间工作记忆（VSWM）在MLD个体中的作用，已有相互矛盾的报道。本研究增加了什么？对数学成绩有不同程度损伤的儿童和正常发育儿童进行了测试。对视觉、空间序列和空间同时性工作记忆任务进行了考察。只有空间序列和空间同时性工作记忆任务区分了两个损伤组。
