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Oct 9, 2010 - Northumbria University, UK. Hannah Kirkwood .... (Lee, Lu, & Ko, 2007) it was found that mental abacus training and music training had posi-.
Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology Volume 9, Number 3, 2010

An Evaluation of a Classroom-Based Intervention to Help Overcome Working Memory Difficulties and Improve Long-Term Academic Achievement Julian G. Elliott Durham University, UK

Susan E. Gathercole University of York, UK

Tracy P. Alloway Stirling University, UK

Joni Holmes Northumbria University, UK

Hannah Kirkwood University of York, UK

Two contrasting forms of classroom-based intervention were implemented with 256 primary school children identified as having working memory (WM) difficulties. In one, teaching staff were trained to provide educational environments that were sensitive to the needs of identified children with WM difficulties. The second form of intervention utilized a behavioral teaching approach in which identified children were provided with regular, brief, and highly focused inputs in relevant basic skills areas. A third group of children with similar WM difficulties served as controls. At the end of the year, there was no evidence that either of the intervention programs had resulted in greater WM or academic performance (on Wechsler mathematics and reading tests) than for controls. However, classroom observation data indicated that the extent to which teachers implemented desirable strategies at any time point, inside or outside of the interventions (that is, across all of the research groups), proved to be a predictor of the children’s attainment. The implications of these findings for further work in this burgeoning field are discussed. Keywords: working memory; intervention; learning difficulties; precision teaching; reading; mathematics © 2010 Springer Publishing Company DOI: 10.1891/1945-8959.9.3.227

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his study reports on a systematic evaluation of a classroom-based intervention designed to help children with working memory (WM) difficulties. The approach was geared to equip classroom staff (teachers and aides) with the necessary knowledge, skills, and understanding to provide an educational environment that would help minimize the negative effects of WM difficulties and thus enhance identified children’s capacity to learn. A key aspect of the intervention was that this should focus upon the quality of staff interaction with students and thus, rather than introducing additional curricular material, it should be delivered without impacting upon the regular curriculum. The ultimate aim of the intervention was to improve both the children’s WM and, subsequently, their academic performance by transforming the children’s classroom experience. This was achieved primarily by helping teachers ensure that the amount of cognitive load (in particular, demands upon WM) placed upon the children was appropriate to their abilities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to have attempted an intervention of such complexity and detail. One of the paradoxes of educational research is that while it is often comparatively easy to identify specific factors that either singly or in combination have an important influence upon learning and behavior, applying this knowledge to inform educational practices such that children’s difficulties can be overcome is often a far less successful venture. Such a predicament seems to be true of many areas of educational psychology where advances in theory and measurement are often not easily translated into more effective professional practice. While there remains fierce debate about the scientific credibility and educational relevance of several popular psychological constructs, for example, learning styles (Coffield, Moseley, Hall, & Ecclestone, 2004), it is difficult to find serious objections to the assertion that WM is an important component for learning and that children’s difficulties in this respect need to be identified and overcome (Alloway, Gathercole, Kirkwood, & Elliott, 2008a, 2009; Swanson, Jerman, & Zheng, 2008). While identification of children with WM difficulties is not such a complex task, what is considerably more problematic is devising effective forms of intervention that can minimize the educational underachievement that so often results. The term WM refers to the capacity to store and manipulate information for brief periods of time. There are a number of influential conceptualizations of WM, most of which share a distinction between the storage-only capacity of short-term memory and a limited-capacity attentional control system (Baddeley, 2000; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Cowan, 2001). For further details of theoretical elements of WM in relation to the present study, see Alloway et al. (2009). It is now widely recognized that poor WM skills in childhood are related to a range of academic difficulties in relation to coping in class and to making sound academic progress (Cowan & Alloway, 2008; Gathercole & Alloway, 2008). Poor WM is associated with difficulties in maintaining focus in practical situations (Kane, Brown, McVay, Silvia, Myin-Germeys, & Kwapil, 2007), remembering and performing classroom instructions (Engle, Carullo, & Collins, 1991), planning and organizing information (Alloway et al., 2009), problem-solving (Swanson, Jerman, & Zheng, 2008), and keeping track of progress in complex tasks (Gathercole, Lamont, & Alloway, 2006). WM difficulties have also been found to be related to distractible and inattentive behavior in school (Alloway et al., 2009; Aronen, Vuontela, Steenari, Salmi, & Carlson, 2005; Gathercole, Alloway, Kirkwood, Elliott, Holmes, & Hilton, 2008).

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Given such findings, it is unsurprising that studies have repeatedly indicated that children’s WM skills are closely associated with academic progress in basic skills areas of reading (Alloway et al., 2009; de Jong, 1998; Swanson, 1994; Swanson, Ashbaker, & Lee, 1996), mathematics (Alloway et al., 2009; Bull & Scerif, 2001; Mayringer & Wimmer, 2000; Passolunghi & Siegel, 2001; Siegel & Ryan, 1989; Swanson & Jerman, 2006; Swanson & Kim, 2007), and language comprehension (e.g., Nation, Adams, Bowyer-Crane, & Snowling, 1999; Seigneuric, Ehrlich, Oakhill, & Yuill, 2000). An important next step is to find ways to overcome WM difficulties in order that children’s learning can be maximized. There are at least two ways in which this may be achieved. One approach involves the attempt to increase directly the individual’s WM capacity, with the expectation that this will lead to raised educational performance. An alternative approach is to address the learner’s environment in such a fashion that processing demands are simplified and effective learning strategies are employed, in order that the harmful effects of memory overload are reduced. The first approach, involving directly training WM, has recently been shown to have some success. Computerized programs that tax WM to its limits over extended periods of training have been shown to promote both WM performance (Holmes, Gathercole, & Dunning, 2009; Holmes et al., 2010; Klingberg, Fernell, Olesen, Johnson, Gustafsson, & Dahlstrom, 2005; Thorell, Lindquist, Bergman Nutley, Bohlin, & Klingberg, 2009; Van der Molen, Van Luit, Van der Molen, Klugkist, & Jongmans, 2010) and fluid intelligence (Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, & Perrig, 2008; Perrig, Hollenstein & Oelhafen, 2009). The extent to which such training schedules directly enhance the WM system as opposed to either developing strategies for overcoming limits on basic capacity or promoting other related skills such as attention is as yet unknown and is an important topic for current debate (Holmes et al., 2009; Moody, 2009). It is for this reason that an alternative approach that seeks to address WM and classroom performance directly, such as that described in the present paper, is deemed important. Much work has been undertaken with children with various forms of special educational need. Thus, Klingberg et al.’s (2005) pioneering work focused upon children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Van der Molen et al’s (2010) study demonstrated that WM could be effectively trained in adolescents with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities. Approaches involving rehearsal training have been shown capable of improving WM in individuals with Down syndrome (Conners, Rosenquist, Arnett, Moore, & Hume, 2008; Conners, Rosenquist, & Taylor, 2001) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (Loomes, Rasmussen, Pei, Manji, & Andrew, 2008). WM gains have also been found for typically developing children. Thus, in one study (Lee, Lu, & Ko, 2007) it was found that mental abacus training and music training had positive effects upon WM, with the former leading to improved visuospatial storage and the latter aiding phonological storage. Using an adaptive computerized training program focusing upon the development of visuospatial WM, Thorell et al., (2009) found WM gains for normally developing preschool children, with evidence of transfer effects from the visuospatial to the verbal domain. It has even been claimed that adaptive computerized training in WM can lead to improvements in general intellectual functioning (Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, & Perrig, 2008), although see Moody (2009) and Conway and Getz (2010) for critiques of this study.

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Despite encouraging findings from experimental studies, the extent to which training can help children with WM and associated learning difficulties to progress educationally is still unclear. A complementary approach to conducting training programs is to address directly the environmental demands that are faced by the child. Given that WM problems can often go undetected in the classroom or be misconstrued as poor behavior or low motivation on the part of the child (Gathercole, Alloway, Kirkwood, & Elliott, 2008; Gathercole, Lamont, & Alloway, 2006), it is possible that helping teachers to gain greater understanding of the child’s difficulties, to provide a classroom environment where WM overload is minimized, and to assist the child in using strategies that reduce demands on their WM may result in higher quality learning. It is such an approach that underpins the experiment reported in the present article. In undertaking an intervention that sought to modify the classroom environment of children with WM difficulties, we were struck by the virtual absence of such an approach in the WM literature. Thus, we were largely unable to draw upon existing programs to guide our actions and, instead, were obligated to design an intervention that drew upon the research team’s detailed experience of addressing memory difficulties in clinical and educational settings. Such insights have been incorporated into several publications providing practical guidance to teachers (e.g., Gathercole & Alloway, 2008). In designing our program, it was recognized that interventions that “stack the treatment condition” with additional procedures are very likely to inflate effect sizes (Swanson, 1999). For this reason, we introduced into our design a very different form of intervention for a second experimental group that, nevertheless, made similar levels of demand upon the children’s teachers. This article reports findings from a quasi-experimental study in which primary school children with WM difficulties were allocated to one of three groups. One group intervention consisted primarily of a training program in which teachers and classroom aides were provided with greater understanding of the problems that students with WM difficulties encountered. Having raised practitioner awareness and understanding, these professionals were then shown how they might make adjustments to their teaching in order that the memory load demands placed upon students were appropriate. Finally, they were taught how to encourage the children to use strategies to minimize memory load. A second intervention also commenced with a training program. Here, teachers and classroom aides were trained in the use of behavioral approaches to learning and teaching (direct instruction and precision teaching) that have a long pedigree in the field of special education. However, the focus of these approaches is typically to raise student performance in basic skills of language, reading, and mathematics. Details of this approach are included in the Intervention section of this article. A third group received regular instruction only, providing a no intervention control condition. In summary, this study represents an attempt to increase WM and academic performance in children identified as having WM difficulties and evaluate the value of a classroom-based approach that attempts to modify the WM demands placed upon children with such difficulties. This approach is compared with a traditional behavioral approach in which academic skills are directly targeted. It is hypothesized that both of these two experimental approaches will lead to greater gains in a) WM performance and b) superior academic gains than for control children. A further aim of the study is to examine whether one of the experimental approaches proves superior in subsequent WM and/or academic performance.

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METHOD Participants Participants were identified through screening of 25 local education authority primary, infant, and junior schools in County Durham, North-East England. Schools were located in both urban and rural areas and selected to reflect the national demographic profile of children receiving free school meals (an index of socioeconomic status) and of performance on national assessments in reading, writing, and mathematics. The screening tests were two measures of WM from the Automated Working Memory Assessment (Alloway, 2008): backward digit recall and listening recall (details of the tests are provided in the Procedure). These PC-based assessments were administered to 1470 children aged 4 and 5 years during the last term of their fi rst year of full-time education (Reception class), and 1719 children aged 8 and 9 years in the fi nal term of their fourth year of school (Year 4). Thus, a total of 3189 native English-speaking children completed the screening. Children who performed at levels at or below the 10th percentile for their screening sample on both tests and did not have either physical impairments, sensory problems, or autistic spectrum disorder were selected for participation, subject to parental consent. Two cohorts of children were selected for participation in the study. Cohort A was selected through screening in the summer term and completed the intervention during the course of the subsequent school year. Cohort B operated in exactly the same way, 12 months later. While operational procedures were generally similar for both cohorts, some modifications to monitoring and support were made for Cohort B in the light of a review of the first year of the project. Two age groups participated in each cohort: The two younger groups were both aged 5/6 years during the school year in which each of the interventions took place, and the older groups were aged 9/10 years. Data are reported here for the 139 children aged 5/6 years and 117 children aged 9/10 years across both cohorts who completed all reported assessments. Across both cohorts, 41% of the low WM children were female and 59% were male. The numbers of children of each sex and age group in the two cohorts are provided in Table 1. Further information on the cognitive profiles of the larger sample of 308 low WM children from which they were drawn is provided in Alloway et al. (2009). Noting widespread recognition of the importance of early identification and intervention with children with learning difficulties, it was considered important that we should draw upon groups of children in both infant and junior school phases. Given the imperatives of national testing in English primary schools and the effect this typically has upon teacher practices and priorities, it was considered necessary to ensure that the interventions were not conducted with those infant and junior classes that would receive the national tests within the same year (nb. national testing in England takes place with 6- to 7- and 10- to 11-year-olds). Thus, in the case of our infant cohorts, we were obliged to screen and intervene with children at a very young age. Given that most of these children were aged 5 years at the outset of the intervention and a significant proportion of them had learning difficulties, standardized academic testing was clearly inappropriate. Thus, for the infant cohorts, we did not set out to measure academic progress and, instead, confined ourselves to examination as to whether the interventions would improve WM and vocabulary scores. For the junior-aged children,

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Elliott et al. TABLE 1. Numbers of Participants as a Function of Intervention Condition,

Age, Sex, and Cohort Number of Participants Intervention

Age

Sex

Cohort A

Cohort B

Total

Control

5/6

F M Total F M Total F

10 16 26 5 16 21 8

19 17 36 7 15 22 9

29 33 62 12 31 43 17

M Total F M Total F M Total F M Total

9 17 2 10 12 6 17 23 9 8 17

4 13 8 9 17 8 16 24 14 14 28

13 30 10 19 29 14 33 47 23 22 45

9/10

Direct instruction

5/6

9/10

Working memory

5/6

9/10

however, we were also able to examine whether the interventions resulted in greater gains in academic performance (reading and number) than for controls.

Design and Procedure Participants were allocated to one of three intervention conditions (WM, Direct Instruction, and No Intervention) using a nested design. As the numbers of children with WM difficulties in participating classes varied, we sought to ensure that approximately equal numbers of children were allocated to each condition. In order to minimize the potential for cross-group contamination each school participated in one condition only. All children completed all four phases of the study: screening, preintervention assessments, intervention (or no intervention control), and postintervention assessments. The preintervention assessments were completed between September and November of the school year, prior to commencing the intervention. Each child was tested individually in a quiet area of the school for two or three sessions lasting up to 40 minutes per session across a 2-week period. The tests were administered in a fi xed sequence designed to vary task demands

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across each testing session. The postintervention assessments were conducted in a single individual session for each child that took place between May and July at the end of the school year in which the intervention was undertaken.

Measures WM. The Automated WM Assessment (Alloway, 2008), a computer-based standardized battery designed to assess each of the components of the Baddeley (1986) model of WM (see Alloway & Gathercole, 2006), was administered. The three verbal short-term memory measures that tap the phonological loop in the Baddeley (1986) WM model are Digit Recall, Word Recall, and Nonword Recall. In each test, the child hears a sequence of verbal items (digits, one-syllable words, and one-syllable nonwords, respectively), and has to recall each sequence in the correct order. Three further measures assess the visuospatial sketchpad component of the WM model. In the Dot Matrix task, the child is shown the position of a red dot in a series of four by four matrices and has to recall this position by tapping the squares on the computer screen. In the Mazes Memory task, the child is shown a maze with a red path drawn through it for 3 seconds. The child then attempts to trace in the same path on a blank maze presented on the computer screen. In the Block Recall task, the child views a video recording of a series of randomly located blocks on a rectangular plinth being tapped and reproduces the sequence in the correct order by tapping on a picture of the blocks. Three tests of verbal WM, associated with the central executive component of the WM model, were also administered. In the Listening Recall task the child is presented with a series of spoken sentences and is required firstly to verify each sentence by stating whether it is factually true or false, and then, following the final sentence of the trial, to recall the final word of each sentence in their original sequence. In the Backward Digit Recall task, the child is required to recall a sequence of spoken digits in the reverse order of the presentation sequence. In the Counting Recall task, the child is presented with a sequence of visual arrays containing red circles and blue triangles, and required to count the number of circles in each array and then finally recall, in correct sequence, the numbers of circles in each successive array. Three measures of visuospatial WM also tap the central executive. In the odd-oneout task, the child views three shapes, each in a box presented in a row, and identifies the odd-one-out shape. At the end of each trial, the child recalls the location of each odd one out shape, in the correct order, by tapping the correct box on the screen. In the Mr. X task, the child is presented with a picture of two Mr. X figures. The child identifies whether the Mr. X with the blue hat is holding the ball in the same hand as the Mr. X with the yellow hat. The Mr. X with the blue hat may also be rotated. At the end of each trial, the child has to recall the location of each ball in the blue Mr. X’s hand in sequence by pointing to a picture with eight compass points. In the Spatial Recall task, the child views a picture of two arbitrary shapes where the shape on the right has a red dot on it, and identifies whether the shape on the right is the same or opposite of the shape on the left. The shape with the red dot may also be rotated. At the end of each trial, the child has to recall the location of each red dot on the shape in sequence by pointing to a display with three compass points corresponding to the potential recall positions. Standard scores (M = 100, SD = 15) for individual tests and composite scores for each component of WM were calculated. Test–retest reliabilities for the tests are as follows: Digit Recall (0.89), Word Recall (0.88), Nonword Recall (0.69), Listening Recall (0.88), Counting

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Recall (0.83), Backward Digit Recall (0.86), Dot Matrix (0.85), Mazes Memory (0.86), Block Recall (0.90), odd-one-out (0.88), Mr. X (0.84), and Spatial Recall (0.79). The Backward Digit Recall and Listening Recall tests were administered at screening and the remaining tests in the preintervention phase. Four tests were given again at the postintervention phase: Nonword Recall, Backward Digit Recall, Dot Matrix, and Spatial Recall. Details of test reliability and validity are reported in Alloway et al. (2008b). Reading. The Wechsler Objective Reading Dimensions (Wechsler, 1993) consists of tests of basic reading, reading comprehension, and spelling for children. Standard scores are generated for each subtest. As the battery is appropriate for children aged 6 years and above, it was administered only to those children in the 9/10-year age group. Test–retest reliabilities are as follows: Basic Reading (0.95), Reading Comprehension (0.92), and Spelling (0.91). These tests were administered both in the pre- and postintervention phases. Mathematics. The Wechsler Objective Numerical Dimensions (Wechsler, 1996) assesses mathematical reasoning and number operations. Similar to reading, as the test battery is appropriate for children aged 6 years and above, it was administered only to children in the 9-/10-year age groups. Standard scores are generated for each subtest. Test–retest reliabilities are 0.89 and 0.85, respectively. Both tests were administered in the pre- and postintervention phases. Vocabulary. The British Picture Vocabulary Scale II–Short Form (BPVS; Dunn, Dunn, Whetton, & Pintillie, 1997) is a measure of receptive vocabulary that requires the child on each trial to select one of four pictures that corresponds to a word spoken by the tester. Split-half reliability is 0.86. The test was administered in both the pre- and postintervention phases for all children. General Ability. Two tests of the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI, Wechsler, 1999) were administered to children in the 9/10 age groups at the preintervention assessment phase only. The vocabulary test involves the child generating definitions of single words spoken by the tester. In the block design test, the child is required to construct a number of increasingly complex patterns as illustrated, beginning with two red and white blocks to a maximum of nine blocks. Raw scores are converted into scaled scores with a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 3. Corrected coefficients for test-retest reliabilities are 0.87 for both vocabulary and block design.

Interventions The intervention period extended from the point at which the preintervention assessments were completed for all participating children in each school (between month one (September) and month three (November), depending on the school) and the point at which the postintervention assessments began (between month 9 (May) and month 11 (July), again, depending on the school). Prior to the commencement of the interventions, a series of twilight training sessions (with a differing focus depending upon the particular intervention that was being undertaken) were provided in the host schools. These were attended by the relevant class teachers and classroom aides/learning support assistants and, in some cases, the school’s special education coordinator and senior management. Further input and support was provided to teaching staff during the operation of the program by a full-time research assistant, either during their school monitoring visits or via telephone and email.

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WM Intervention. At the beginning of the school year in September, schools were informed which children had been selected to participate in the intervention, and project staff ran training sessions for the teaching staff responsible for the classroom care of each child. Training sessions were typically run for local groups of participating schools although in some cases, individual sessions were run for single schools. During the training, staff were given the booklet Understanding Working Memory: A Classroom Guide, which provides a summary of the key material covered in the training session, with several case studies for illustration (Gatherole & Alloway, 2007). The training session had several key aims. The fi rst was to teach participants the concept of WM and to illustrate the contexts in which WM plays a role in everyday classroom activities, such as remembering instructions, holding in mind the detailed content of material, and keeping track of progress in a task. The fact that WM failures are often associated with inattentive behavior (Gathercole et al., 2008) was also emphasized. The session incorporated many examples from our previous observations of the problems that typify children with low WM (see Gathercole et al., 2006; Gathercole & Alloway, 2008). The second aim was to provide the teaching staff with guidance that would enable them to modify and reduce WM loads for the child where necessary, while still working with the standard curriculum materials used in the classroom. This was achieved through eight principles: 1) recognize WM failures; 2) monitor the child for warning signs; 3) evaluate the WM demands of activities; 4) reduce WM loads if necessary; 5) be aware that increasing processing demands can increase WM load; 6) frequently repeat important information; 7) encourage the use of memory aids; 8) develop the child’s use of memory-supporting strategies. Small-group exercises in the training session were designed to allow staff to develop skills in applying these principles and to promote discussion about these with peers and the project team. Staff attending the training session received feedback sheets to complete (weekly for cohort A and fortnightly for cohort B, to be sent by post to the project coordinator). These listed the eight principles, asked for an indication of how frequently each had been applied (not at all, 1–2 times weekly, 3–4 times weekly, daily), and requested respondents, where possible, to give examples of the ways in which any of these had been applied. The intervention commenced once the child’s preintervention assessments were complete. Schools were encouraged to contact the project team if they had any queries or concerns. For those schools participating in cohort B, the project team ran a half-day seminar halfway through the school year in order to remind teaching staff of the principles and practicalities of the intervention approach, and also to receive feedback from them concerning its implementation. To evaluate the extent to which teaching staff were successfully applying the WM intervention approach, the project coordinator observed for approximately 1 hour a literacy or numeracy lesson or both for each member of staff responsible for implementing the intervention. For cohort B, an observation template was used in which the observer completed an outline of the lesson being observed, and provided ratings of the extent to which each of eight features of the intervention was being effectively applied. A 5-point rating scale was used: 1 = no evidence that the strategy was being applied, 2 = fairly frequent and effective use of the strategy, 3 = frequent and effective use of the strategy, 4 = very frequent and effective use of the strategy, and 5 = frequent and effective use of the strategy whenever possible. The

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observer also generated a rating of the overall adequacy with which the intervention strategy had been implemented. Observations were completed for 10 teachers in literacy lessons and for 13 teachers in numeracy lessons. All observations were undertaken by the same member of the research team obviating the need for inter-rater reliability estimates. Direct Instruction Intervention. The second group of teachers and classroom aides received a similar amount of training and consultation although the nature of the recommended intervention was very different. As for the WM group, participants were provided with training about WM difficulties and how these could result in underperformance in school. It was pointed out, however, that practice in special education had demonstrated that an appropriate way to address children’s learning difficulties was to address basic academic skills in a direct and structured fashion, in contrast with approaches that focused upon the modification of underlying cognitive processes (Swanson, 1999). [Note: some evidence has emerged to suggest that limitations in WM capacity can be compensated for by improved proficiency and fluency on academic tasks (Swanson, Jerman & Zheng, 2008)]. All teachers and support staff in the direct instruction group were provided with a specially prepared booklet, Direct instruction: A classroom guide (Elliott, Alloway, & Gathercole, n.d.) in which the basic principles of the direct instruction approach were outlined and exemplified by supplementary illustrative case study material. In training sessions, staff were shown how to conduct detailed assessment of fine-grained basic skills, how to identify criterion-based targets, and how to undertake daily targeted intervention (individually or in small groups) using a precision-teaching approach (Downer, 2007; Lindsley, 1964; Raybould & Solity, 1988). Underpinning this method is a focus upon accuracy, and subsequently, fluency, in order to achieve mastery (Haring & Eaton, 1978). While the behavioral approach, of which precision teaching is but one component, has fallen out of favor somewhat (Binder & Watkins, 1990; Kessissoglou & Farrell, 1995), studies have shown it to be highly effective for children with a range of special educational needs (Beck, 1979; Lindsley, 1990). One of the project team (J.G.E.), formerly an educational (school) psychologist, had significant experience in operating behavioral approaches in school, and served as the consultant to this group. Staff were asked to send their targets to him each week as a means of ensuring that they had understood and were following the appropriate procedures. In addition, the project coordinator sought to ensure that the frequency of her visits to their classrooms and discussions as to the target children’s progress, mirrored that of the WM group. Control/No Intervention. Children assigned to the no intervention condition completed the pre- and postintervention assessments, but received only regular classroom tuition without any additional support.

RESULTS Preintervention Comparisons Between Groups Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for the WM and general ability scores prior to the interventions, at screening and preassessment, for each cohort, intervention condition, and age group. For these and all subsequent data, the scores for girls and boys are combined in each group, as no statistically significant differences were found as a function of sex, in any case. For cohort A, there were no significant differences between intervention groups for either WM measures, F(8, 200) = 1.662, p > .05, or WASI scores, (age 9-/10-year group only), F(2, 50) .05 in each case). For cohort B, the only term that included intervention group that reached significance was the three-way interaction between intervention group, WM measures, and time: F(6, 396) = 3.243, p = .004. Exploration of this term established

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that it reflected a selective increase in performance on the dot matrix measure of visuospatial short-term memory at postintervention assessment in the WM intervention group compared with both other groups; when the dot matrix measure was omitted from the analysis, this interaction term was nonsignificant, F(4, 264) = 1.845, p > .05. Thus, there is some evidence for a relatively specific improvement in WM skill following the WM intervention.

Impact of the Interventions on Academic Attainment Academic attainment scores are presented in Tables 4 (reading) and 5 (mathematics). Note, that academic attainment scores were only available for the older cohorts. A series of twoTABLE 4. Descriptive Statistics for Reading Measures Before and After Intervention for the

9/10 Year Group as a Function of Cohort and Intervention Preintervention Cohort A

Intervention Control

DI

Working memory

B

Control

DI

Working memory

Note. DI = Direct Instruction.

Postintervention

Test

M

SD

M

SD

Reading Spelling Comprehension Overall Reading Spelling Comprehension Overall Reading Spelling Comprehension Overall Reading Spelling Comprehension Overall Reading Spelling Comprehension Overall Reading Spelling Comprehension Overall

80.55 83.00 74.60 75.00 78.58 77.58 75.42 72.17 84.47 82.41 77.53 77.59 83.95 85.36 81.32 79.95 81.59 85.24 81.53 85.24 81.82 81.07 81.07 76.79

12.87 12.23 14.18 15.32 12.21 11.81 13.81 14.36 16.91 12.51 14.01 15.92 14.968 12.261 14.885 16.17 10.423 11.071 11.253 79.06 9.956 8.764 8.764 10.983

83.60 85.90 77.90 78.55 79.58 80.42 75.92 74.08 86.35 85.82 77.35 79.59 86.64 88.73 83.27 83.18 82.88 86.76 83.18 80.82 81.68 84.25 79.5 77.89

15.02 14.08 15.80 17.20 13.22 11.64 14.75 15.05 13.42 13.90 12.02 15.12 15.72 12.90 13.18 15.82 9.94 12.86 10.48 12.53 9.96 10.43 11.63 13.45

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TABLE 5. Descriptive Statistics for Mathematics Measures Before and After Intervention

for the 9/10 Year Group as a Function of Cohort and Intervention Preintervention Cohort A

Intervention Control

DI

Working memory

B

Control

DI

Working memory

Postintervention

Test

M

SD

M

SD

Math reasoning Number operations Overall Math reasoning Number operations Overall Math reasoning

84.45 79.15 78.55 78.50 70.58 70.58 79.06

11.67 12.11 12.63 11.55 8.12 10.04 9.73

86.10 77.70 80.95 79.75 73.33 72.17 82.06

10.45 16.76 11.51 11.49 9.99 11.56 9.24

Number operations Overall Math reasoning Number operations Overall Math reasoning Number operations Overall Math reasoning Number operations Overall

74.00 72.29 87.04 80.37 82.07 84.67 82.22 80.33 84.58 77.94 77.90

8.67 9.67 10.60 10.48 13.98 9.56 10.32 11.02 8.69 9.27 9.55

78.65 76.82 87.44 83.63 82.85 87.11 83.78 82.72 84.58 80.23 78.00

11.77 11.21 13.03 11.92 13.96 10.76 11.90 12.59 8.41 10.20 13.42

Note. DI = Direct Instruction.

way analyses (with intervention group and time as the factors) was performed on each of the main dependent variables. For cohort A, all terms that included intervention group as a factor were nonsignificant: basic reading, spelling, reading comprehension, and mathematical reasoning, F(2, 46) .05, as was the interaction between group and time, F(2, 46) = 1.435, p > .05. For cohort B, all terms including intervention group were again nonsignificant: for reading, F(2, 64) .05 for group by time; for spelling, F(2, 64)