Working-memory, attention control and reading comprehension.

There is a condition often referred to as the year four slump which affects a large number of students and their reading ability. Many of these children enter grade four with identified reading difficulties despite having adequate phonic and decoding skills.  One reason for this is the increased complexity of sentence structures at this stage and that reading for understanding rather than learning to read becomes the focus.

Often general language problems are the basis for student difficulties rather than inadequate phonic skills. Research suggests that these children have inadequate oral language skills including verbal knowledge, and listening comprehension. This is because listening comprehension requires the learner to encode incoming words using aural signals, transform the coded information into a mental representation, integrate this representation into existing knowledge structures and store the new knowledge into long-term memory. Poor listening comprehension has a negative impact on the ability to read for understanding. This is because listening comprehension facilitates reading comprehension and shares many of the same cognitive processes.

Working memory also influences the ability to process incoming information during listening or reading. It has a limited capacity for holding information while readers process aural or written meanings, particularly when it is necessary to think about or solve problems while mentally processing the message. One factor that limits working memory capacity is the ability to attend to information that is central to the reader's learning goals. Obviously, if working-memory has a limited storage capacity then it is absolutely imperative that the reader/listener is able to filter and attend to the most important information. One major problem is that many students either attend to unimportant information or mind-wander while reading. Obviously, if readers do not have clear goals and are not motivated to achieve them they will be more likely to take in superfluous information or develop mind-wandering tendencies while reading. Mind-wandering takes place when the reader/listener entertains thoughts that are irrelevant to the task at hand. This will occur in individuals who lack prior experience with the topic or interest.

Self-efficacy influences reading attention effort, reading engagement, and persistence in the face of distractions. It is related to a person's belief in his or her own ability to perform a task at a desired level.  As students become more self-aware those with learning difficulties will, most likely, have lower self-efficacy. This will affect the willingness of individuals to develop adequate goals, persist at attaining those goals and allocate attention effort.

How then can we support the student who is affected by this reading comprehension slump?

1. Give the student reading material that is at a reasonable level of ease. A rule of thumb is that word accuracy should be around 90-96% accuracy level. 
2. Develop an interest in the topic, or develop a topic around the student's interest. 
3. Make sure that the student is familiar with the language and that unfamiliar words are discussed. Adequate discussion before a reading activity is just as important as the reading activity itself.
4. Fill in the knowledge and experience gaps before reading e.g. go on an excursion or watch a video and follow-up with lots of discussion. Students can learn a lot from each other if they are given an opportunity to share their experiences.
5. Develop shared and clear learning goals. Make sure that the students are taking responsibility for their goals. Readers will generally persist in the face of difficulty if they have a goal that they value.
6. Develop self-efficacy by encouraging them to be reflective learners. Always give feedback by relating success to the amount of effort that students expend.

For more about this topic read:

Cho, E., Roberts, G. J., Capin, P., Miciak, J., & Vaughn, S. (2015). Cognitive attributes, attention, and self-efficacy of adequate and inadequate responders in a fourth grade reading intervention. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 30(4), 159-170.

Robinson, M. K., & Unsworth, N. (2015). Working memory capacity offers resistance to mind-wandering and external distraction in a context-specific manner. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29, 680-690.

Book Review - Thinking Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman 

This was an interesting and thought provoking book. I must admit that I was more interested in part 1 (pages 1 to 105) because it gave me some fresh insights into human cognition and memory. The author simply divides thinking into two systems: system 1 - thinking processes that are automatic, and system 2 - thinking that involves conscious effort. To show the difference between the two systems I will use an illustration from the book.

“Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in their book ‘The Invisible Gorilla. They constructed a short film of two teams passing basketballs, one team wearing white shirts, the other wearing black. The viewers of the film are instructed to count the number of passes made by the white team, ignoring the black players. This task is difficult and completely absorbing. Halfway through the video, a woman wearing a gorilla suit appears, crosses the court, thumps her chest, and moves on. The gorilla is in view for 9 seconds. Many thousands of people have seen the video, and about half of them do not notice anything unusual. It is the counting task – and especially the instruction to ignor one of the teams – that causes the blindness. No one who watches the video without that task would miss the gorilla.”

The people who are not given the counting task operated using system 1 and tended to see the gorilla because they were not focused on particular details but attended to the more general information. They noticed the unexpected because of its novelty impact. On the other hand those given the counting task used system 2 and focused all their attention on the counting task, they tended to use conscious attention and this meant that they actively ignored other extraneous information. In order to achieve their goal they attended to some things but were bind to others. 

What struck me as being important was that I related this idea to the task of reading - if readers are using conscious attention to decode print then they will miss out on the broader thematic or global ideas that hold a story together. In other words if you attend to the details such as letter by letter or word by word decoding it will overload working memory and other information will tend to be ignored. This also has challenged my thinking about having children set personal reading goals before they read. In other words, if the reading goal is too specific it may narrow the reading focus and some other story information will be ignored.  Alternatively, if the reading goals are made too general then some finer details will be missed. The balance might depend on the purpose for the reading.

Making executive (memory) functioning more efficient

To achieve success with any academic task  requires learners to plan, allocate their time, organise their mental resources, prioritise information, flexibly apply thinking strategies, monitor their progress, and reflect upon meaning. This is part of the executive functioning of working memory and for children to use their thinking processes more efficiently they may need to be shown how to develop these skills. 

However, many children with learning difficulties struggle with some or all of the following working memory functions:

Before the learning activity (Conceptualise)

• Attending:  focusing attention on the task and excluding extraneous information.
• Planning: ordering information (what is known) and prioritising time. This may take the form of writing notes, drawing diagrams, visualising.
• Goal setting: prioritising and setting goals for the activity. 

During the learning activity (Organise)

• Organising: sifting the main ideas from the details,  by shifting and categorising.
• Encoding: arranging information and linking with background knowledge from long-term memory, encoding and storing information into long-term memory.
• Monitoring: checking whether the encoding process is making sense and whether the reading or writing strategies are adequate or whether an alternative strategy will work better.

After the learning activity (Reflect)

• Reviewing: Recollecting the events of a story or the ideas presented in an article.
• Reorganising: Reframing the recollections in a way that is more meaningful and connected to one's life experience.
• Reflecting: Thinking about what has been learned and forming an opinion, making judgements, and predicting outcomes.

In this blog I will focus on attending.

The central executive determines what to focus on when performing a particular task. If we were not able to focus our attention then we would very quickly overload working memory with too much information.

What can I do to help children focus their attention?

1. Make the question or task simple and not too long.
2. If the stated task has a number of steps then break it up into a small number of short sentences.
3. Draw a diagram, picture, or sequence of symbols to accompany the directions.
4. Ask the child to repeat the directions.
5. Ask the child to take notes and repeat the directions.
6. Give prompts.
7. Say, "What do you have to do first? What do you need to do next? and What is the last thing that you have to do?"
8. Make sure that the content of the directions are familiar and meaningful to the child.
9. Make sure that the directions are naturally sequential and logical.
10. Reduce distracting or extraneous material that is unnecessary.

N.B. Above all, be patient and have realistic but have high expectations. Children often try and meet your expectations particularly if they are challenged.

For more information on the COR Reading Framework see 'Catalyst' (pages 24-27) at 

http://www.aisq.qld.edu.au/files/files/Communications/Catalyst/Catalyst%20-%20Winter%202011.pdf