Sorry for any confusion. Awkward.
Again, I don't know how old your child is or how much of a hinderence the low working memory is at this point, but, education does make kids smarter. Working on the basics of grammer, arithmatic, and writing essays, the sluggish parts of education, provides a framework for manipulating and directing information for use in your thinking.
I'm sure that since you're worried about WM he is most probably not eager to work extra on reading writing and 'rithmatic. Those kinds of lessons take away a lot of the difficulty that makes these lessons difficult.
Here some people discuss low working memory, slow processing speed as it relates between the test results and guiding your child.
http://www.mothering.com/community/t/1341396/wisc-iv-working-memory-and-processing-speedThis following link shows upon skimming it that low working memory shows up in some kids as math disability.
http://web.missouri.edu/~gearyd/JECP04.pdf
Quote:
With formal schooling and especially with complex problems, such as 27 + 38, children will use the commonly taught columnar strategy (i.e., summing the ones-column integers and then summing the tens-column integers).
Children with MD. During the solving of simple arithmetic problems (e.g., 4 + 3), children with MD use the same types of strategies (e.g., verbal counting) as their nor- mally achieving peers, but differ in the strategy mix, strategy accuracy, and in the pat- tern of developmental change
Unquote.
The working memory problem in that case is knowing which addition strategy to use. The working memory challenge: how to create the knowledge & skills bank so they can begin to map the memory process when they have started off with a comparatively low working memory? I said comparatively low. Since you are posting on a gifted forum I assume you're referring to the not uncommon issue of low working memory and/or processing speed paired with high reasoning abilities.
I've read that in that type of situation it's better to make use of tools to teach at the higher conceptional level matching the reasoning abilities, for example allowing a multiplication chart for reference while teaching long division, which uses multiplication, instead of waiting for the total memorization of the multiplication table.
I'm not suggesting you "do all this" I'm repeating things i've read discussing this hoping it might be helpful understanding how some people are talking about these problems. iow many of these things are self correcting as you continue to pursue an education. It can't always be self correcting because otherwise why would it be a widely identified problem.
I like the description on page one of the following link describing the memory process.
http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/courses/2nd_yr/memorization_and_practice.pdf
