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Talk;memory

Thursday stream 3 Session 14.00 - 15.40 Length 25 minutes

Dyslexia and deficits in short-term memory: phonological versus sequential explanations

John Everatt, John Groeger, Ian Smythe, Susan Baalam, Jo Richardson and Sue McNamara.

University of Surrey j.everatt@surrey.ac.uk

Abstract

This talk will present the findings of a series of studies investigating memory deficits amongst dyslexic children and adults. Consistent with evidence reported by numerous researchers/practitioners, the studies point to differences between dyslexics and matched non-dyslexics in tasks requiring the short-term retention of sequences of linguistic information (such as in digit span tasks). These differences are evident across child and adult populations, potentially identifying the cause of these differences as a pervasive problem amongst dyslexic individuals. Data will be reported which indicate that although phonological-related deficits could be the root-cause of some of these problems, dyslexics also experience difficulties when they are required to learn and reproduce sequences of non-phonological information. Similarly, although the sequential nature of the information in short-term retention tasks has been proposed as the cause of the differences between dyslexics and non-dyslexics, the findings of the present studies indicate little difference between these groups when visual and/or spatial encoding of sequential information is required. These findings will be discussed with reference to current theories of the cause of dyslexia and Working Memory models.