developmental psychology in memory

• Dyslexia is a reading disorder defined as a problem in learning to recognize and decode words and difficulty to read fluently whilst still having normal levels of comprehension
• Children with dyslexia have poor verbal short term memory evidence of this comes from the phonological similarity effect and the word length effect.
• McDougall et al (1994) - 90 children into groups based on reading ability. Poor readers had lower memory spans for words and slower reading rates and sounded out words slower leading to less word being held in the STM. Concluded that the poor readers had an impairment in phonological processing.
• Alloway et al (2009) - Investigated 46 children with a reading deficit. She concluded that poor working memory was the cause. Children with dyslexia did not have the working memory capacity to store syllables for long enough for them to form a word.
• Smith-Spark et al (2010) - Adults with dyslexia had unimpaired spatial memory but impaired verbal memory compared to the control group. Results suggested a deficit inn the phonological loop of the dyslexic participants.
• Dyslexia is comorbid with other disorders making it difficult to isolate phonological issues. Difficult to find what role verbal memory plays in dyslexia as people present a range of sensory impairments.