CHILDRENS ARITHMETICAL DIFFICULTIES - CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PROCESSING SPEED, ITEM IDENTIFICATION, AND SHORT-TERM-MEMORY

Children's arithmetical difficulties are often explained in terms of a short-term memory deficit. However, the underlying cause of this memo ry deficit is unclear, with some researchers suggesting a slow articul ation rate and hence increased decay of information during recall, whi le others offer an explanation in terms of slow speed of item identifi cation, indicating difficulty in retrieving information stored in long term memory. General processing speed is also related to measures of s hort-term memory but has rarely been assessed in studies of children's arithmetic. Measures of short-term memory, processing speed, sequenci ng ability, and retrieval of information from long-term memory were th erefore given to 7-year-old children. When reading ability was control led for, arithmetic ability was best predicted by processing speed, wi th short-term memory accounting for no further unique variance. It was concluded that children with arithmetic difficulties have problems sp ecifically in automating basic arithmetic facts which may stem from a general speed-of-processing deficit. (C) 1997 Academic Press.