Working Memory and Inference Generation Part 2

Classroom Indicators of a Working Memory Disability

Working memory disabilities are often misidentified as reading comprehension disabilities. Reading comprehension disabilities manifest in academic achievement at a slower rate than a student's peers despite systematic and sequential instruction. A reading comprehension disability results in limited or poor literal comprehension (the student reads the paragraph or story and is then asked questions based on it); inferential comprehension (the student reads a paragraph or story and must interpret what has been read); listening comprehension (the student is read a paragraph or story and is then asked questions about what has been read); critical comprehension (the student reads a paragraph or story and then analyzes, evaluates, or makes judgments about what he or she has read); affective comprehension (the student reads a paragraph or story, and evaluates his or her emotional responses to the text); lexical comprehension (the student reads a paragraph or story, and assesses his or her knowledge of vocabulary words).

Working memory disabilities in the classroom are found in students who rarely volunteer answers and, sometimes, not answering direct questions; behave as though they have not paid attention, for example forgetting part or all of instructions or reading passages; do not see tasks through to completion; frequently lose their place in complicated comprehension tasks that they may eventually abandon; forget the content of reading passages and instructions; make poor academic progress during the school year, particularly in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics; and are considered by their teachers to have short attention spans and also to be easily distracted.

Educators may understandably confuse a working memory disability with a reading comprehension disability and intervene accordingly. The risks of ineffective or inappropriate instructional interventions are numerous: a student falls even further behind their peers; remediation becomes more difficult and time consuming; or a student loses academic confidence and self-esteem. A student with a working memory disability is unable to meet the memory demands of a particular academic task. When this occurs, information that is critical and crucial to the successful completion of a task is lost to the student because of this information processing constraint.

Neuropsychologists agree that working memory is not a unitary entity that occurs in one area of the brain. A profile of a student's working memory through a comprehensive evaluation is a must to determine targeted accommodations, modifications, and interventions.

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Working Memory and Inference Generation

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The Common Core State Standards, in the USA, has standards related to inference generation, for example read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it and cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. These are excellent educational standard; however, they are often difficult for children with a working memory deficit or disability to achieve along with their peers.

Readers or listeners need to maintain a similitude of recently processed information in working memory to make automatic on-line (while reading or listening) referential and logical/causal inferences. Inferences are connections made between separate parts of the text or discourse, creating a coherent model for comprehension. Referential inferences often integrate category exemplars, synonyms, and pronouns. For example, working memory load in comprehension is reduced in "John is cold. John put on his jacket." In contrast, working memory load is increased by "John is cold. He put on something warmer." Logical/causal inferences establish explanations or links between separate events in a text or discourse. For instance, working memory load is reduced in "The wind was blowing very hard. The wind broke the string to the boy's kite." In contrast, working memory load is increased in "The wind was blowing very hard. The boy's string to his kite broke." In these examples, we are assuming close proximity of the elements in the text or discourse.

Working memory is a fundamental cognitive process in learning and memory along with attention, processing speed, long-term memory, and sensory-motor, all of which can affect inference generalization. Inference generation is also related to vocabulary development, reading or listening fluency, prior knowledge (conditioned organization of knowledge in long-term memory), and executive functioning. A Psychological Educational Evaluation can establish the role a student's working memory is playing in support of comprehension or if it is a barrier to comprehension, targeting data-driven accommodations, modifications, and interventions to bring a student to their full learning potential.

I have a tested axiom in special education, it is easier to remdiate a deficit or disability than it is to remdiate a history of disorganized learning.

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