The nature and causes of auditory memory difficulties

Short term auditory memory is sometimes called working memory because it is the system which we use when we have to hold information for a brief period of ... Home KnowledgeBase Assessments CoPSSupport Interpretingresultsoftheauditorymemorysubtests Thenatureandcausesofauditorymemorydifficulties BacktoInterpretingresultsoftheauditorymemorysubtests CoPSSupportHome AboutCoPS GettingStarted Beforeyoubegin AdministeringCoPS Aboutthesubtests InterpretingCoPSprofiles Interpretingresultsofthephonologicalsubtests Interpretingresultsoftheauditorymemorysubtests Interpretingresultsoftheauditorymemorysubtests Races Letternames Thenatureandcausesofauditorymemorydifficulties Interpretingresultsofthevisualmemorysubtests InterpretingcomplexCoPSprofiles InterpretingprofilesofstudentswhohaveEnglishasanadditionallanguage Teachingrecommendations Researchandstatisticalinformation CoPSIndicationsforActionTable Downloads LucidCoPS Findoutmore Thenatureandcausesofauditorymemorydifficulties Articlesinthissection: Thenatureandcausesofauditorymemorydifficulties Casestudy-auditoryworkingmemorydifficulties Thenatureandcausesofauditorymemorydifficulties Shorttermauditorymemoryissometimescalledworkingmemorybecauseitisthesystemwhichweusewhenwehavetoholdinformationforabriefperiodoftimewhileweprocessit.Workingmemoryisalimited-capacitysystem,andunlessrehearsedortransferredtolonger-termstorage,informationinworkingmemoryisonlyretainedforafewseconds(Baddeley,1986).Forexample,inordertounderstandwhatapersonissayingtouswehavetoholdtheirwordsinworkingmemoryuntiltheygettotheendofasentence(orequivalentbreak),thenwecanprocessthosewordsfortheirmeaning.Wecannotprocesseachindividualwordformeaningaswehearitbecausebythemselveswordsdonotconveysufficientmeaning.Furthermore,wordsheardlaterinanutterancecansubstantiallyalterthemeaningofwordsheardearlier(e.g.‘Themanopenedthemagazine–thenhecarefullyextractedtheremainingbulletsitcontained’). Inthesamewaythatitisnecessarytoholdspokenwordsinmemoryinconversation,thestudentmustholdlettersandsyllablesinmemorywhendecodingwords.Thisisveryimportantinthedevelopmentofphonicskills.Themajorityofdyslexicstudentshaveproblemsinthisareaofcognitiveprocessing(Thomson,1982).AwaidaandBeech(1995)foundthatphonologicalmemoryatage5predictednon-wordreading(i.e.phonicsskills)at6years.Whenreadingcontinuoustextformeaningthestudentmustalsoholdwordsinmemoryuntiltheendofthephraseorsentence.Poorworkingmemorywillthusaffectreadingcomprehension.Ofcourse,visualmemoryskillswillbeinvolvedinmuchofthiscognitiveactivity,especiallyformorecompetentreaderswhosecapacityforrapidvisualrecognitionofwordssteadilyincreaseswithage.Nevertheless,auditoryworkingmemoryremainsasignificantfactorinreadingdevelopmentandinwritingaswell.Studentswithweaknessesinauditoryworkingmemoryalsotendhavedifficultyinmonitoringtheirwrittenoutput,andareinclinedtomissletters,syllablesand/orwordsoutwhentheyarewriting(Baddeley,1986;Brady,1986;Jorm;1983;WagnerandTorgeson,1987.) Furtherresearchhassuggestedaverycloseconnectionbetweenauditorymemoryspanandarticulation(speech)rate(AvonsandHanna,1995;McDougallandHulme,1994).Itcouldwellbethatarticulationrateisanindexoftheefficiencywithwhichphonologicalrepresentationsofwordscanbelocatedinmemoryandactivated(i.e.spoken).Inturn,thiscouldbecloselyrelatedtohowquicklycognitiverepresentationsofwordsbeingreadcanbelocatedintheorthographicandsemanticlexiconsandactivated(i.e.recognisedandunderstood).Thethreelexicons(phonological,orthographicandsemantic)areallbelievedtobecloselyrelated(RaynerandPolatsek,1989).ThefactthatRaceswasasignificantpredictoroflaterliteracyskills(despitenotinvolvingthechildinanyspeech)suggeststhatsequentialprocessesinauditoryworkingmemoryareneverthelessimportantinreading,independentlyofarticulationrate. Casestudy-auditoryworkingmemorydifficulties InspectionofRobert’sreport(seeFigures35aand35b)suggeststhathedoesnothaveanymajorproblemsinvisualinformationprocessing.Hisphonologicalawareness(Rhymes)andauditorydiscriminationskills(Wock)arealsosatisfactory.Ontheotherhand,hehasmajordifficultiesinauditoryworkingmemory,bothassociative(Letternames)andsequential(Races).Consequently,Robertwouldbeexpectedtohaveproblemsinacquiringeffectivephonicskills.Therecommendationswouldbeforawell-structuredmultisensoryphonicapproachtoliteracylearningwithamplepracticetocompensateforhismemoryweakness,butusinghisstrongvisualchanneltomaintainconfidenceinhisskills.Hewillalmostcertainlyhaveproblemsinwritingandspelling,especiallywithregularwordsandneworuncommonwords.Wordprocessingactivities(especiallywithatalkingwordprocessor)wouldbeagreathelp.   Figure35a.Casestudy–Robert Figure35b.Casestudy–Robert Previous:Interpretingresultsoftheauditorymemorysubtests LucidCoPS Findoutmore Searchforanotherknowledgetopic