[en] Several studies explored associations between impairments in verbal working memory (WM) and numerical cognition, but with inconclusive findings. The present study explored verbal WM impairment in children with developmental dyscalculia, by adopting the critical distinction between WM for item information (the items to be retained) and WM for order information (the order of the items within a list). We hypothesized that especially WM for order should be related to impaired numerical abilities, given that recent studies suggest close interactions between the representation of order information in WM and ordinal numerical processing. We investigated item and order WM capacities as well as basic numerical processing abilities in 16 children with dyscalculia (age: 8-11 years) and 16 typically developing children matched on age, IQ and reading abilities. WM for order information was assessed via a serial order reconstruction task which maximized serial order storage requirements. WM for item information was assessed using a single monosyllabic nonword delayed repetition maximizing phonological item processing. We observed that the group with dyscalculia performed significantly slower than the control group in symbolic order and magnitude judgment task, while not being slowed on general measures of processing speed. Dyscalculic participants also performed significantly poorer and with less precision than controls in the order WM task, but not in the item WM task. These results highlight a specific impairment for WM for serial order in dyscalculia, and could reflect a more general serial order processing impairment for both WM and numerical domains.
Disciplines :
Theoretical & cognitive psychology
Author, co-author :
Attout, Lucie ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de Psychologie : cognition et comportement > Psychopathologie cognitive
Language :
English
Title :
Serial order working memory is impaired in developmental dyscalculia
Alternative titles :
[en] Deficit du traitement de l'ordre sériel en mémoire de travail dans la dyscalculie