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. ;))

My child got a 1% (62) on the Working Memory Index of WISC-IV. She got got a 99.5% (139) on PRI. That pretty much spans the whole scale. She has an executive function disorder. It is not ADD with inattentiveness although it presents that way to some degree. Her language organization is extremely poor and she has word retrieval issues.

http://speech-language-pathology-audiology.advanceweb.com/Article/Executive-Dysfunction.aspx

One thing that did come up in the testing is that my daughter performs better on the higher order memory tests than on the lower order tests (simple recall). The more difficult the task, the more she seems to concentrate and pay attention. The little things in life go right by her as if they aren't even there, but something interesting -- snags her and she pays more attention and carries through more frequently. I would suspect this is the case with most very bright kids.

This discussion intrigues me. I'm still learning, having only had DD8 tested in May. She had a GAI calculated due to low WMI and PSI, specifically Digit Span and Coding, both 63%. A second psychologist gave me reason to believe WMI and PSI might even be lower.

All that to say, when I read these anecdotes I keep thinking of DD. I have lost count how many times we have shaken our heads, scratched our heads, and raised our voices at her because of her seeming inability to follow basic directions for getting to bed, getting ready for school, picking things up, etc. I confess we have both doubted her giftedness on account of this, asking ourselves, "How can this be gifted?"

Mixed into that is of course her stubborness but I cannot believe DD would purposely flake out and do this intentionally so often, given how much conflict and stress it brings to daily routines.

On the other hand, 63% is still above average, so how can I blame WMI/PSI ? Is it because the high scores elsewhere throw things out of whack?

Exactly! When it's above 50% most folks won't call it a Learning Disability, but it is still a key issue - we call it a Bottleneck around here. A psychologist described it as 'one leg shorter than the other' because there is nothing wrong with having short legs or 2 long legs but having one short and one long would really be difficult to walk around with if no accomidations were made.

chills, right?
Me too,
Grinity

Wow! That illustration was exactly what I needed to illuminate it.

It really does give me chills. Have I really been scolding and resenting what I perceive to be inordinate stubbornness or simple laziness in a child who may in fact be suffering from a real disability? Ouch.

What to do? I take it there is not a go-to handbook for this either.

We asks ourselves this same question. Some days, we just can't help the scolding. You get soooo frustrated and nothing seems to help, then you begin to think that maybe she IS doing it all on purpose. Later, the guilt sets in and we convince ourselves that we are expecting things from her that she is incapable of doing on her own (thus far). DD's WM was in the 34%-ile, most probably a reflection of her ADHD. Even seeing it on paper and hearing it from the psychologist, we STILL doubt her giftedness on a daily basis. How can a kid that smart have such a hard time with the smallest details of life??

My wife wonders the same thing about me on a daily basis.

You might try "Smart but Scattered" and/or "Late, Lost, and Unprepared". Both are about helping to build executive function.

Executive dysfunction is a disability. It's just not always viewed in that way, although the perception is changing with more concentration on EF difficulties in kids diagnosed, perhaps misdiagnosed, with ADD. Working memory is a big red flag for executive dysfunction. The problems become more pronounced as kids move through school with more demands placed on them. My child scored a 62 (1%) on the WMI of WISC-IV. In subsequent testing, she performed markedly better in higher order memory skills than the lower order skills, part of that is likely due to the fact that she pays more attention when she perceives the task to be more difficult. (Unintentionally double-posted) That's true in every day life activities where the more assumed activities we do don't get the same concentration as the more difficult and/or entertaining activities. When your working memory is weak to begin with, less concentration can exponentiate the problem rather quickly. Of course, when these kids become overwhelmed by their demands everything falls apart.

I love love love the analogy of having one short and one long leg. I'm going to use that.

My working memory is obviously substantially different from my husband. He has an amazing WM, whereas mine is clearly limited. A bottle neck is a good description of how I feel with some tasks.

When I think about WM I see his ability to juggle hundreds of little balls in the air, draw conclusions and make unusually accurate predictions with ease. I, on the other hand, can only juggle maybe a few or a dozen new balls at a time, depending on how new they are to me. Once I have those patterns learned I can use the information very well and even add a few more balls to my array- until then, my vision is too narrow. While I know there are balls falling, I cannot keep them in my vision. This can be extremely frustrating when I am in new environments. Later, I can never figure out why I found things even remotely difficult.

I have been thinking a lot about this b/c my younger 2 have such very different memories.

DS#2 (12) language/reading/creativity 97th %ile, WMI 34th plus a visual and an auditory processing disorder. He never could remember if he had gotten a ride to school that morning or had ridden the bus.
But he'll remember everything he ever actually heard, he amazes the rest of the family, and his Sunday School, all the time.

DD(8) thinking=99th, working memory=6th. She's completely organized and remembers what her "special" class is that day, where she goes after school. But she can't remember all of the smoke that covered our area from the Arizona fires in June. DS#2 is very distressed with her not reading chapter books - she complains they are "boring." This sounds like trouble concentrating to me.

What to do? I remember my mom always focusing on explaining my brother's dyslexia - till it drove me crazy. I finally fussed back, "It's not enough to *understand* it, you need to put your energy into compensating!"

DS#2, I tell DD, has proven that my dogging him has worked. From 2nd grade, we have told him he needs to work harder, to try harder, to put more effort into paying attention and using his planner. I am *delighted* with how he's doing, better than DS#1 was at his age. My mom used to say, "That which disables, enables also. That which enables, disables also."

However, neither of my younger 2 do all that well on this computerized assessment their schools do three times a year. I mean not 95th percentile - more like 87th.

I love these moments in life, even when they make me cringe for my former behavior - I love when the curtian drops and the penny drops and I finally have a path forward. Yum!

I dont' know any particular book (except my favorite go-to for almost anything book: "Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook" by Lisa Bravo which I think would work, actually, but has nothing specific about this particular challenge)

but Aimee Yermish might have an article written or be about to write one on this topic - she's like a walking handbook on this topic!

Smiles,
Grinity

So it looks like once DD8 gets into a routine, she can do really well with it. She is probably good at getting things into long term memory - check if she knows how she is doing this. I used to learn thing - really get them into long term memory, while the teacher was talking about them, as long as they had a tiny bit of abstract thinking content. And my processing speed is fast - so I could get stuff into long term memory almost in real time.

I'll bet DD8 would explain how she knows when the specials are by referencing some 'odd' coinsedence - such as 'Musical scales have 8 notes and Music is 8th period - how could I forget that?!?' or 'Art starts with the first letter of the alphabet, and it happens 1st period - that's easy!' Humor is a great way to shortcut into long term memory - remember the time.... (you get the picture)

As for chapter books being boring that worries me, and I don't think that saying 'it's concentration issue' is enough.

What - exactly - is she having trouble concentrating on?
Would she do better if she made a list of character names, and a few handle traits to remember them by?
Or draw a picture of the most dramatic scene in the chapter,
Or draw a family tree of the characters - and make up some kind of social 'family' tree to diagram the friendships
Or some kind of graphic organizer with what are the possible themes and big picture ideas the the author was trying to communicate about and place cartoons of moments that are evidence for various hypothesis?
Make clay characters of the books and simple sets, and move them from scene to scene.
Or somehow try and get into the head of the writers - maybe by reading several books by the same writer and seeing what big ideas or little ticks always come up? Roald Dahl and Orson Scott Card come to mind...


If she tries any of these techniques the idea is to review her notes just before she sits down to read, and then add to her project after every chapter. Writers try to end chapters in an emotionally exciting point - because they know that there is always the chance that folks will just close the book and never finish.

Maybe your daughter isn't reading books that are advance enough to be interesting to her brain because her reading skills are lower then her enjoying skills? How does she feel about audio books? I love it when my family has occasion to be trapped in the car together all enjoying an audio book for hours and hours.

Or maybe she was just pulling her brother's chain? Go EQ if that, huh?

Smiles,
Grinity

Grinity, you are *awesome*! You always have such great, thoughtful responses. I think my favorite is the clay figures of the characters. My weekend is taking shape!

BTW, after her brother fussed at her about reading chapter books, she checked one out of the school library and tore right through it. She and I had a discussion about being proud of your achievements.

After reading this section last week, I am planning to go ahead and get her tested. I have had her on a tincture for attention support but am actually *gasp* thinking of going the prescription route. Haven't I read it really helped your son?

My son feels so much more 'himself' on the stimulent medication. I waited until he was 12 and verbally insistant before I could bear for him to try it. I sure wasn't willing to do it to make him better behaved in the classrooms that weren't accomidating his strengths.

And it's no fun in the begining while trying all the different versions and strengths. But he's doing so well nowadays, and so happy and so hardworking...it could be coincidence, or the Nurtured Heart Approach parenting I started to practice, but it sure could be the medication.

Anyway - glad to hear that her brother's 'uncareful' words inspired some healthy competition. Sibling are such a great resource!

Grinity