Working memory and education

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Working memory and education

• Lorna Bourke

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Education in England and Wales

• Department for Education and Skills (DfES)
• The Department for Education and Skills was
  established with the purpose of creating
  opportunity, releasing potential and achieving
  excellence for all. (DfES, 2007)
• DfES Strategy
• Language and communication skills
• Literacy
• Numeracy
• ICT
• Science
• Increase in participation in HE

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Cognitive Psychology

• Interested in mental processes (e.g. thinking,
  memory, perception, language)
• Real-life application of mental processes
• Education is the development of scholastic skills
  utilising mental processes in a structured
  environment
• Individual differences in memory capacity and
  speed of processing
• Individual differences in educational attainment
• Atypical and typical development of educational
  skills

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Working memory

• Working memory is those mechanisms or processes
  that are involved in the control, regulation and
  active maintenance of task-relevant information
  in the service of complex cognition, including
  novel as well as familiar, skilled tasks.
  (Miyake Shah, 1999450)
• Devise tasks that represent what we think a
  working memory is there to do. Those tasks are
  indicative of models of working memory (e.g.
  Baddeley, 1986 1996 2001 Daneman Carpenter,
  1980 Just Carpenter, 1992 Conway Engle
  1994).

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Working memory and educational achievement

• Language
• Baddeley, Gathercole Papagno (1998)
• Reviewed studies in the following
• Children learning their first language
• Adults who have a particular aptitude for foreign
  languages
• Neuropsychological patients with short-term
  memory impairment who show deficits in vocabulary
  acquisition
• Strong and consistent link between phonological
  memory and vocabulary knowledge
• Further studies include
• Adams Gathercole (1995 1996 2000)
• Working memory, productive and receptive
  vocabulary (phonological memory)
• Botting Conti-Ramsden (2001)
• Working memory and children with SLI
• Vallar Shallice (1990)
• Neuropsychological evidence/language
  comprehension
• Oakhill, Yuill Parkin (1988)
• Good readers who are poor comprehenders (central
  executive)
• Adams, Bourke Willis (1999)
• Language comprehension central executive
  (verbal fluency)
• Eddy Glass (1981)

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Working memory and educational achievement

• Writing
• Like Ben, many children find independent writing
  a struggle because they are faced with too many
  hard things to do at once. He has to plan what
  he will write, think of which words to choose and
  how to order them into sentences, work out the
  spellings for each transcribe them all onto the
  page. For experienced writers, much of this is
  automatic, and only occasionally requires
  conscious control.
• There are parallels with other complex skills.
  Experienced drivers do not need to think about
  the controls which simply become an extension of
  themselves, leaving them free to concentrate on
  where they are going. The learner driver often
  needs someone else to take care of the pedals so
  he or she can concentrate on steering and vice
  versa (DfEE, 2001a p.10)

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Children 4-5 years
I play with my friends. I open the door. I played
out. I played hopscotch. I played with my
friends.
The boy and the cat went to the park and they
climbed up a tree.
I took my cat for a walk. He was good. When we
got home my cat ran up the stairs. I ran after
her. Then I went into the garden. I and my cat
went on the swing. I went up in the sky. So did
my cat. Mum shouted at the cat.
4-5 years
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Children aged 6-7 years
6-7 years
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Background

• Interactive nature of speaking and writing
• Working memory is associated with complex
  cognitive activities likely to impact on academic
  success (e.g. mathematics, language,
  comprehension, reading).
• Previous research in writing has suggested
  individual differences in the quality of writing
  are linked to childrens ability to
  simultaneously store and process information
• National Curriculum recognises individual
  differences in writing performance at Key Stages
  of assessment

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Cognitive Psychology and Writing
Source Hayes Flower, 1996
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Fig.1 A schematic diagram of the multi-component
model of working memory

Central Executive

Episodic Buffer
Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad
Phonological Loop
Visual Episodic
Language Semantics
LTM
Source Baddeley (2000)
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Fig.2 The relationship between long-term memory,
short-term memory, and the central executive
Magnitude of this link is determined by the
Central Executive Working Memory
Capacity Controlled Attention Focused
Attention Supervisory Attention System
extent to which the procedures for achieving and
maintaining activation are automated
or attention demanding.
Long-Term Memory
Grouping skills, coding strategies and procedures
for maintaining activation. Could be
phonological, visual, spatial, motoric, auditory,
etc. More, or less, attention demanding depending
on the task and the subject.
Short-Term Memory Long-Term Memory traces active
above threshold. Loss through decay/interference.
Some traces received further activation by
becoming focus of attention


Source Engle et al. (1999).
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Fig.3 Working memory resources and writing
processes (Kellogg, 1996)
Formulation Planning Translating
Execution Programming Executing
Monitoring Reading Editing
Visual-Spatial Sketchpad
Central Executive
Phonological Loop
Source Kellogg (1996)
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Challenges

• Working Memory Models
• Baddeleys (1986, 1996) Tripartite Model
• Integrated Models (e.g. Daneman Carpenter,
  1986 Engle et al, 1999)
• Working Memory Tasks
• Phonological Working Memory
• Visuo-Spatial Working Memory
• Central Executive
• Integrated Working Memory
• Writing Tasks
• Psycholinguistic measures (word sentence level)
• Baseline Assessment, KS1 Writing Criteria,
  Structural Coherence (text level)

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Methodology

• Longitudinal Study
• Children assessed at age 4-5 years and 6-7 years
  (Bourke Adams, 2003)
• Participants
• 67 (4-5 years) and 60 (6-7 years)
• Tasks
• Phonological Working Memory
• Digit span, word span, nonword repetition
• Visuo-spatial Working Memory
• Corsi Blocks, visuo-spatial pattern span
• Central Executive
• Dual-task co-ordination, verbal fluency,
  sustained attention to response
• Integrated Working Memory
• Listening Span Task

dog
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Written Compositions
The kiD and The mum web to The shop
went and The mum cle up The kib web to play
cleaned The BaD came home and KiD web to
Beb Dad bed The KiB ab a paby and
tay web to pay had party they
play and The kiD wed to Bed and tay got up
to Play went The MayD a hat and wen
made when The Mum wot up and wen the KiD got
got home The kiD god chet
got changed
Actions
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Written Compositions
Once there was a boy called Bungie he dident
like stopig. When he got there Bungie draged
away shopping from his mum. When they got
home bungie looked at the milk and said
mmmmmmmm mum said put the milk down so
Bungie cried and cried untill his mum said do
you want choclate no said Bungie I want a
football oh right said mum. Bungie got a
balloon
Characters
Internal Response
Setting
Dialogue
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Written Compositions
It was a bright moring it was a good day for
Indyas birthday mum wacke up first. She put on
her clothes and went to wack up Indya wack up
Indya what is it mum said it is your birthday
First they went shoping they bort candles, a
birthday cacke, ice-cream and a big plate of
jelly. Then they went home when they got home the
first thing mum would do was mack another ege of
the cacke. First mum got Indya redy then she
brushed her hear but she cept on hirting Indya
Indya was all the time was telling Mum is my
hear done mum said yes Just as soon as mum
whent down to get the cacke out of the oven some
of her friends noked very loudle on the door.
When Indya opend they souted Surprise Indya got
a grate big shock because of the loud nois mum
hird the nois all the way from the kitcen so she
went to the door and got a shock Mum said to her
freands wont you come in mum nerly droped the
cacke but Indya savd it thank you Indya mum said.
They had the party. After the party a child
wanted to stay What hapend Next
Orientation
Dialogue
Actions
Internal Response
Obstacle
Repair
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Results
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Results
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Conclusions

• Achievement in writing measured at all levels of
  instruction requires the efficient management of
  relevant information
• Educational instruction needs to take into
  account, from the earliest stage, that a major
  constraint stems from the resources available to
  concurrently address the demands of the writing
  task.
• Teaching practice should endeavour to provide
  plenty of opportunities for children to practice
  all the skills for writing simultaneously
• Instruction intended to encourage automisation in
  certain aspects of writing (e.g. transcription)
  will be advantageous in terms of the redirection
  of resources to others (e.g. coherence)
• However, the major challenge appears to be the
  integration of all these skills during writing.
• A fuller understanding of the processes involved
  in writing for young children and their
  interactive nature is required before further
  exploration of the mechanisms underpinning their
  development

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How can we apply this to practice?

• Listening Span is a measure of integrated working
  memory (phonological memory central executive)
  and has been explained by a trade off account
  between aspects of the writing process that
  requires storage processes (e,g, handwriting and
  spelling) and aspects that require executive
  functioning (generation of ideas and translation
  into text).
• What might we do to ease the cognitive load?
• What might we do to automatise some processes?
• Class Ideas for Practice
• Scaffold between low and high achievers
• Low Picture Book
• Flash cards with words
• Advance from word level to sentence level
• Med Picture Book
• Describe what was in picture (talk for writing)
  actually produce sentences
• Adv Picture Book
• Generate story opp to discuss
• Add extra ideas

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Ideas for Educational Practice

• Ability groups
• Spelling groups according to ability level
• Opportunities to practice composite skills
• Some more ideas
• DfES (2001)
• Talk for writing (including brainstorming)
• Shared writing
• Transcription skills to automatic level (Swanson
  Berninger, 1996)
• Orientating activities
• Graves (1980)
• Future topics files
• Fitzgerald Teasley (1986)
• Education children about the components that
  constitute a coherent text (structural
  categories)
• McCutchen et al (1994)
• Provide plenty of opportunities to practice.
• Anderson, Bereiter Smart (1980)
• List single words retrieval aids
• Bereiter Scardamalia (1987)
• Contentless prompts (provide children with cards
  with sentence openers e.g. Also, Thats why).