Abstract
This article reports two studies that investigate short-term memory (STM) deficits in dyslexic children and explores the relationship between STM and reading acquisition. In the first experiment, 36 dyslexic children and 61 control children performed an item STM task and a serial order STM task. The results of this experiment show that dyslexic children do not suffer from a specific serial order STM deficit. In addition, the results demonstrate that phonological processing skills are as closely related to both item STM and serial order STM. However, non-verbal intelligence was more strongly involved in serial order STM than in item STM. In the second experiment, the same two STM tasks were administered and reading acquisition was assessed by measuring orthographic learning in a group of 188 children. The results of this study show that orthographic learning is exclusively related to item STM and not to order STM. It is concluded that serial order STM is not the right place to look for a causal explanation of reading disability, nor for differences in word reading acquisition.
Highlights
Developmental dyslexia is commonly defined as a disability characterized by low reading achievement and deficiencies in learning to spell and write (Snowling, 2012)
We were unable to detect a specific deficit in serial order short-term memory (STM) capacity in dyslexic children
All children were proficient in Dutch, as they typically attended Flemish (Dutch speaking) schools from first grade on, it is possible that the reading problems of the bilingual dyslexic children were partly affected by their bilingual status
Summary
Developmental dyslexia is commonly defined as a disability characterized by low reading achievement and deficiencies in learning to spell and write (Snowling, 2012). Recently formulated is the visual attention span hypothesis which proposes that difficulties in processing visual elements simultaneously is at least one cause of dyslexia (Bosse et al, 2007), and according to the visual crowding hypothesis, dyslexics are impaired in recognizing a target due to the presence of neighboring objects in the peripheral visual field (Spinelli et al, 2002) Another hypothesis has been put forward that attributes the problems of dyslexics to a deficit in the perceptual experience of rhythmic timing (Goswami et al, 2002). Afterwards, we will focus on the relationship between STM and reading development
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