Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Living with kids with low Working Memory

I started this thread in response to 'Figuring out test results' and I'd love parents who live with kids who are low in Working Memory to write about what it's like in daily life, and in school, and what has been useful to solve those challenges, and if they have been successful in doing particular learning tasks that you feel have raised the Working Memory overall.

In my personal life, Working Memory is the bottleneck, but I don't have experience working on it with DS. I'm the list making, phone buzz reminder, read all the books on 'getting organized,' do it now or forget about it forever kind of compensator. I don't depend on my Memory to get even from the courtesy desk of a hospital to a friend's room - I write it down, even if the staff is looking at me strangely.

Also - I have a hunch that WM can be independent of ADHD-I or related to it. DS's WM changed the most pre and post using medication to treat his ADHD-I.

Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Grinity

First question - What analogy helped you understand WM?

For me it was - It's more like the 'RAM' number on your computer, less like the capacity of the Hard Drive.

In normal speech, we call 'memory' the ability to remember things from long ago, and WM isn't that. I think it's more like the ability to pay attention to many mental details at once while problem solving.

Wiki says:[quote]Working memory is the ability to actively hold information in the mind needed to do complex tasks such as reasoning, comprehension and learning. Working memory tasks are those that require the goal-oriented active monitoring or manipulation of information or behaviors in the face of interfering processes and distractions. The cognitive processes involved include the executive and attention control of short-term memory which provide for the interim integration, processing, disposal, and retrieval of information. Working memory is a theoretical concept central both to cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
Theories exist both regarding the theoretical structure of working memory and the role of specific parts of the brain involved in working memory. Research identifies the frontal cortex, parietal cortex, anterior cingulate, and parts of the basal ganglia as crucial. The neural basis of working memory has been derived from lesion experiments in animals and functional imaging upon humans.[/quote}

DD10 has low working memory as well, no ADHD, but AS and Anxiety Disorder. It's a bit ironic for us, she can quote things she's read word for word (close to photographic memory), but if I ask her to brush her teeth and wash her face, she almost always forgets one or the other. She also still uses a lot of "finger math". Her school did not do "minute math", so it's not something she ever had to stress about, the multiplication tables she doe remember are because we have the schoolhouse rock series, and she can sit and sing the songs to herself. At home we handle it with list making, charts, etc. At school she does homebound this year, so she's one on one with 2 different teachers. This eliminates most of the challenges it would pose in the classroom. I would be interested in hearing if everyone knows of methods to improve WM.

I am also pretty bad at remembering all those details of daily life, although my long term memory is good and I was always able to parrot back the last question asked even when deep into an unrelated book (which used to drive my 3rd grade teacher insane :D). My compensation mechanism has been to marry a borderline OCD and unload all household tasks that require being on time with the right stuff on him.

Since the subject has been on my mind for a while (ever since my son's dismal results on the WISC came back last year, and like PipersMom we have AS and a 7yo who can't get dressed in the morning without 5 reminders), I had bookmarked this:

Increase your fluid intelligence?
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-brain_1.html

Another older article:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/smart_software

Open source software implementing the training:
http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

I haven't tried it, but maybe I should (and maybe I should get my son started on it ASAP).

Daily life with a child with low working memory? Frustrating.

Daily life with a child AND a husband with low working memory? Like beating my head against the wall.

Daily life with an OCD mother and husband and child with low working memory? A recipe for disaster!

Seriously, it is a lot of work on my part to keep my patience when I remind her/them of something for the upteenth time. This school year, DD made two lists for getting out the door in the morning. One is posted in her room for 'upstairs' stuff like getting dressed and brushing her hair, and one is on the fridge for 'downstairs' stuff like eating, brushing her teeth, remembering to check if her face is dirty, and checking her school bag before leaving. It worked great for the first week and this week the novelty is wearing off. BUT, at least I only have to remind her to check her list instead of listing off every single thing she was supposed to do. Semi-less frustrating. Now, she just needs to do one for betime.... and one for her father!

I have a very hard time relating to their struggles. I am uber-organized and have a great attention span. I am trying to work with them instead of against them, and I know they get as fustrated with my nagging as I do with their wandering attention. I selfishly hope that little DS grows up to be like me so I won't feel like a freak all by myself, LOL.

Being on the other side of the same equation is just as frustrating . Except I also have to be the one making list, because my husband simply can't understand why I would need one...

My DD has an appalling auditory working memory, though I suspect a decent visual and spatial working memory. She still struggles with two step instructions at 9yrs old. An iPod with the "home routines" app has changed our lives...

Not saying a word... but joining the group... with infant... agh...

This is my DS11 exactly. He has ADHD-in. He can memorize a poem in one reading, but with the face washing/tooth brushing/hair brushing trio, we're lucky if he does one out of three. He recently started meds for the ADHD and that has helped significantly.

I've been thinking alot about memory lately. My DS's working memory doesn't look too bad on the WISC (75 percentile or so). However, he struggles so much with things like bringing the right books home, remembering his bag and lunch in the morning, even putting on his shoes before going outside (he has been known to go down the street to his friends house in his socks). I'm not sure that this daily life distraction is related to WM. Maybe its more of a mental organization issue? I'm thinking about getting him a watch minder(a programmable watch that will vibrate and give you a short text message to remind you to do something). Has anybody tried that?

DS doesn't have problems holding information in his head long enough to do multi-step arithmetic with pretty good accuracy, which seems a clearer measure of WM.

I've wanted to jump in on so many threads lately, as I'm about to poke my eyes out because of these very same issues. I apologize if I should've started another thread. We took my ds7 to Dr. A earlier this year. This was the second time ds had been tested using the WISC. His GAI was identical to the first time.

We also came away with with a dx of AS. Dr. A didn't seem exactly sure where to place him on the spectrum -- "on this side or that... he's right there," as in he's on the cusp of AS and Dr. A's recommendations wouldn't change with or without the dx. There have been big social issues in the past that suddenly seem to be getting better as he's matured, so that puts me back where I was when we left Dr. A's office --not really feeling like our ds really fits the AS profile.

Where we see an obvious "glitch" is in math processing. He too does finger math, though I am the one to blame for that. I always used it and didn't see a problem with it. Now I wonder. Anyway, when doing math problems, he seems to be able to skip steps in his head and come up (usually) with the correct answers, but when he has to look at the problems, he sometimes cannot even add 2+3 without writing it down and/or thinking about it a long time --truly! What might be the reason for this?

Since the AS dx didn't really seem, to me, to fit our ds, I began to dig around again. When I found some info on NVLD, I thought that it really seemed to fit him better. The recent link someone put up on another thread comparing the two was great, and again, my ds seems to fit that, if he's going to fit anything.

I read these stories about children with low WM issues, and I don't know what to think. Mine is so much like PipersMom's dd, yet he had a 19 in digit span and 15 in letter sequencing. The only oddity on the WISC was a coding score of 5.

That's all for now, but I would love anyone's ideas on what could be going on here. Is it common for PG kids to have decent WM scores, yet to function as if they have a low WM? What else could be going on here? (Please don't tell me that I might have to clean my house. ;))