The differential role of verbal and visuospatial working memory in mathematics and reading

By D. Giofrè, Enrica Donolato, Irene Mammarella. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 2018

52 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Objectives Several studies have focused on the role of working memory (WM) in predicting mathematical and reading literacy. Alternative models of WM have been proposed and a modality-dependent model of WM, distinguishing between verbal and visuospatial WM modalities, has been advanced. In addition, the relationship between verbal and visuospatial WM and academic achievement has not been extensively and consistently studied, especially when it comes to distinguishing between mathematical and reading tasks. Method In the present study, we tested a large group of middle school children in several measures of WM, and in mathematical and reading tasks. Results Confirmatory factor analyses showed that verbal and visuospatial WM can be differentiated and that these factors have a different predictive power in explaining unique portions of variance in reading and mathematics. Conclusions Our findings point to the importance of distinguishing between WM modalities in evaluating the relationship between mathematics and reading.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/90a3515fc836944ab45b039073af3c7643ad93ea

Citations in the corpus

• Sensory stimulation enhances visual working memory capacity (2024, unknown): “…our ability to maintain visual information in an active state 1,2 , which is fundamental for sampling the environment 3,4 , object search 5,6 , and various higher cognitive functions, including decision-making 7 – 9 , goal-directed behavior 10,11 , and mathematical abilities 12,13 , among others.”