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Improving Deaf Children’s Working Memory through Training (IJSLPA v2n2a1) - synergy - synergy

Improving Deaf Children’s Working Memory through Training Pages 51-66

Terezinha Nunes, Rossana Barros, Deborah Evans and Diana Burman

Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12970/2311-1917.2014.02.02.1

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Abstract: The aim of this study was to design and to assess the effectiveness of a working memory (WM) intervention for deaf children. A review of factors that explain deaf students’ poor results in WM tasks was used to identify deaf participants’ strengths and difficulties in WM tasks. This review formed the basis for the design of the WM training program assessed in the study.

Participants were 77 children in a comparison group and 73 in an intervention group, with the mean age of 8y5m at the start of the program. The participants’ severity of hearing loss was at least moderate; approximately 68% of the children had one cochlear implant and the rest had hearing aids only. The design was quasi-experimental: teachers rather than children were assigned either to the comparison or the intervention group.

The children were pre- and post-tested in three WM tasks; the regression factor score was used as the measure of their WM. The intervention was implemented by the teachers and comprised two types of games: teacher led games, during which the teachers taught the children rehearsal strategies that combined linguistic and visual-spatial encoding, and web-based games, which the children played without a tutor and involved biased competition with the aim of developing attention control.

An analysis of covariance (controlling for pre-test WM scores, age, cognitive ability and pre- to post-test interval) showed that the intervention group differed significantly from the comparison group at post-test; Cohen’s d effect size was 0.78. We conclude that it is possible to improve deaf children’s performance in WM measures by training that targets their attention problems and teaches them rehearsal strategies.

Keywords: Working memory, deaf children, rehearsal training, attention control. Read more →