Working memory - can anyone explain it to me?

[foxinthebox]

Bit upset today.

Background:
My 8 year old DD had a skull injury when she was born. She had speech delay formally identified at 4 and at 5 we had her fully assessed. Her working memory came in at the lower 9 percentile. She had loads of learning support and speech therapy twice a week (and plenty of practice haranguing at home).

She has done well, pretty amazing for her, and has been reaching school SAT targets. She is in the process of changing to a prep school as she was no longer on learning support but i thought smaller class sizes etc would help her.

The new school assessment has her demonstrating a couple of months ahead for mental arithmatic and reading, but a bit lower for general maths and 9 months behind for non verbal development.

So i also had an assesment with her speech therapist and her auditory memory is at lower 20 percentile. Her other markers are all around 50 percentile. Her speech therapist told me that this was a great achievement seeing as her auditory recall is low.

We will do a working memory assessment next week.

Questions
Where in the brain does the working memory sit?
Can it be improved?
How is it linked to IQ?
What can i do to help her as she's looking down the barrel of an academic struggle?

Can anyone help me answer the above or point me in the right direction. I am so upset for her and the trainee midwife, who hurt her.

I know that slot of people with dyslexia have poor working memories. You will find literature on this within this field. The British dyslexia association (BDA) will be a useful starting point and they will have information.

There are techniques you can use to improve your working memory, strategies to put in place, use technology for reminders etc. I am not an expert but it does not affect IQ, but in a learning setting makes learning more difficult as you are at a disadvantage as can remember "less". However technology and aides are out there and once again those used by children with dyslexia might be appropriate for your daughter.
I will try and find some useful links for you later this week and post them to you.

Thank you Iwant for replying, i am so upset and haven't told my husband yet. We only had her place at her new school confirmed yesterday so were on such a high. Thought we had fixed her issue and were moving on from a few very tough years.

Dyslexia would certainly have some commonality, thank you for pointing that out.

I am no expert but will share what we were told about working memory. It is the bit you use to remember things temporarily that don't really need to be "filed away" for long term remembering eg a phone number while you look for paper to write it down, a list of instructions. We were given strategies to help day to day & ways to help improve this area of memory. Day to day we were told to make sure DD was really listening, getting her attention before giving instructions, making sure if she was doing an activity she stopped to listen, even fiddling with a pencil in her hand made concentration harder for her. Giving shorter instructions not verbal lists, using charts with a tick off box for each thing to do for daily stuff eg getting ready for school. Apparently memory games can help a bit. Hopefully someone else will see this that can answer your questions properly as I don't have lots of information

Fox I will see what resources I can send to you. I went to a working memory conference recently. However as mrs sprout says there are strategies out there, technology available to assist. It is hard for a young child at school as the classroom is laden with having to remember instructions. However many people with poor working memories, have succeeded in all fields of life, including academia.

I know this looks tough, but it seems to me that you have come so far. The assessment will guide you and your DD. Thoughts to you and I'll get back to you on some research papers, ideas etc .....
Firm hug coming your way

I was diagnosed with a working memory problem the beginning of this year. It had never shown up during school, because it just didn't have an effect on my general learning. I was always very academic, and and everyone just thought I was slightly forgetful. I always had to have good notes, and retread things a lot but nothing drastic. It was only this year (I'm now doing an engineering degree, which has a massive amount of mathematic involvement), that a tutor said to me I should get a report a done, after an exam where I'd massively screwed up.

Turns out, mathematics is where I am likely to have the most problems as it involves a massive amount of working memory and recall (both of which I have problems with). Since then I have found that as long as I make allowances (much more practice, even after I think I've 'got' something than other people, as an example), it's all fine.

Like Mrs sprout says, its the bit where stuff goes before it is filed in long term memory. Its often he pathways that are damaged so someone can't access things that are in short term memory but once the brain files them into long term memory the person can remember it.
Ds is like this. He can't always remember what he did today but has perfect recall of things that happened years ago.

Your daughters teachers will need to think of ways in which they can help her especially when it comes to verbal instructions. Be prepared to get lots of "lacks concentration" comments from school.

Thank you for your replies. They are helping.

One of my dear friends is very similar to this - gets a lot of criticism for appearing to not listen, has to write things down at the time so seems rude as doesn't make eye contact...is a fantastic doctor (though bedside manner has been criticised!). It's not everything, and there are strategies to overcome it.