- Sebastian and Hernandez-Gil (2012): developmental issues in memory span development
- Children ages between 5-8 years old have a digit span of around 4 items, which raises to around 5 items by the age of 17, when it stops developing
- Digit span is additional evidence that memory capacity might develop with age and helps to show that children with dyslexia might have particular difficulties in learning if their working memory is effected
- Dyslexia is a developmental disorder usually diagnosed in childhood…
- Dyslexia is a reading disorder which affects up to 10 percent of children
- May have problems with: auditory STM and phonological awareness, processing speed, language skills, naming objects, distinguishing left and right, distracted by background noise
- They may only be able to use one slave system at a time, so can’t do a written task whilst a teacher is talking to them for example, and their processing speed may be slower
- McDougall (1994): split 90 children into 3 reading groups – poor, moderate, good readers. Good readers could articulate words quickly meaning greater number of words in STM, poor readers sound out words slowly meaning fewer words in STM
- Alloway (2009): suggested children cannot hold all speech sounds for long enough in WM to be able to bind them together to form a word
- Smith-Spark (2010): found that adults with dyslexia had unimpaired spatial working memory but verbal working memory was impaired
- Holmes (2009): suggested tasks should be broken down into small steps so there is less resilience on STM and instructions kept short and reinforced by writing them down/restating them
- often combined with other learning difficulties (ADHD) making it hard to study alone
- Alzheimer’s disease is a developmental issue as it develops as we age…
- Symptoms: memory loss, challenges in planning/solving problems, difficulty completing familiar tasks, confusion with time/place, trouble understand visual images
- most commonly occurs after the age of 65 and focused on the memory of new events and information
- unable to recall autobiographical information from episodic memory and make new memories, so affects STM and LTM
- depletion of brain matter, especially hippocampus and temporal cortex
- Baddeley (2001): conducted attentional tests with sufferers of Alzheimer’s against a control group. One task involved looking for a letter ‘Z’ within difficult distracter letters and another was a dual task procedure – sufferers performed worse, particularly in dual task
