Exploring the roles of the visual-spatial sketch pad and central executivein children's arithmetical skills: Views from cognition and developmental neuropsychology

Short-term memory has often been found to play a major role in children's a rithmetical skills. However, Bull and Johnston (1997) found that when diffe rences in reading skills were controlled for, short-term memory, specifical ly the functioning of the articulatory loop, did not represent a fundamenta l deficit for children of low mathematical ability. This study examined the role of other working-memory mechanisms in arithmetical skills, namely the central executive, using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and the v isual-spatial sketch pad, using the Corsi Blocks. Results showed that child ren of high and low mathematics ability differed significantly on WCST meas ures after controlling for differences in reading ability and IQ but did no t differ in visual sequential memory. Correlation analyses revealed a signi ficant correlation between arithmetic performance and perseveration measure s from the WCST. The implications of this result are discussed in terms of central-executive functioning and related cognitive and behavioral difficul ties.