Hi finca,
I took a look back at some of our previous correspondence, which I think is about the same child, and was reminded that your DC does actually have a pretty distinctively diverse learning profile which predicts possible relative struggles in quantitative concepts (basic numeracy), higher-level math (especially geometry and trigonometry), possibly in automaticity skills (basic skills learned to fluency or "second nature"), and also possibly impacts on executive function, all in the context of exceptional verbal intelligence, abstract problem-solving skills, and auditory memory.
Since your current concerns are focused on memory and attention, I'll spend a little more real estate on that aspect: in prior testing, one of the significant personal weaknesses identified was visual sequential memory. Irrespective of ADHD (which is not the only form of executive dysfunction), executive functions turn out to be significantly impacted by the length and robustness of one's visual working memory span. Being able to mentally walk through and visualize (forward and backward) the component steps of a task is a critical aspect of how people manage time, plan, and organize complex activities. If both visual-spatial reasoning and visual working memory are relatively poor, this mental image of what one actually has to do, when, and how, in order for a task to actually get done, will be blurry or incomplete, which leads in practice to missing steps or materials, inaccurate estimates of time to complete tasks, etc.--> poor execution.
Can one actually remediate visual working memory? So far, the data would suggest no. (Although auditory memory spans for specific types of information can be improved--but only narrowly, for that exact task. E.g., one can practice to increase digit span, but it doesn't translate even to very similar tasks, like letter span. You'd have to do that one all over again.) However, clearly, this is a type of scaffolding that the majority of adults in our society benefit from, since there are innumerable products on the market that essentially help externalize the so-called whiteboard of the mind onto executive functioning aids. I.e., organizers, calendars, agendabooks and reminder tools.
If you felt it would be of value to further investigate her learning profile, the next direction I would look would be at a neuropsychological evaluation that includes detailed explorations of executive functions, not only for ADHD, but for the finer structures of memory. Our current understanding of memory includes a few different angles. I'll try to simplify:
-Along one axis, we can think about visual versus auditory-verbal memory. The data we already have on your DC is that the latter is very strong, but the former is (if I recall) more or less average (which makes it experienced internally as weak, even if it is normatively unremarkable). The diverse performance seems to be more clear than in some other cases, as the task used images that could be easily named (and thus converted to auditory-verbal content), which would, of course, take an extra step, but did allow your DC an avenue for compensatory strategies using exceptional auditory-verbal memory strengths. I would not be surprised if assessment with symbolic (not-easily named) images found even weaker performance.
-We can also consider the difference between sequential and simultaneous memory. The measures we already have is sequential only, so we don't have any hard data on this for your DC. Auditory memory is usually examined only in its sequential form. (Although there are simultaneous forms of it too, those are harder to assess using existing tools. An example of simultaneous auditory memory would be recall of chords, which include multiple pieces of auditory information at the same time.) Visual memory is easier to distinguish along sequential/simultaneous lines. Some people can glance at an image or a scene and retain substantial detail from it in any order, often because their memory of it is like an actual image, where they can go back and look through the memory to respond to memory questions. But for some of those same people, if you asked them to indicate a sequence of visual images, they would get the images correct, but not necessarily in sequence.
-Another major aspect of memory that might be relevant is that of cued vs free recall. Some do better with one than the other. In practice, this might look like differential performance on multiple choice (cued recall) vs open-response (free recall) assessments. Often the difference reflects organizational differences in the way memories are stored. When someone says, "I'll file that away in my memory," you might say that some people have very tidy, easily accessed filing cabinets, and others are just throwing everything into a big heap on the dining room table. Or the back hall closet. It's there, but not all that easy to get to. People who seem to have learned how to memorize lots of people's names in a short time (supposedly many politicians and royalty) often have figured out or been taught an organizational strategy for names (something like color-coding your folders), so they can easily retrieve a person's name when they see or hear the cue attached to that person's appearance, voice, association, context, etc.
-Memory also has different stages on its way to long-term storage. There's immediate memory (registration), which is just that first few seconds of impression, and then there's what we usually associate with working memory, which is what we can hold in our heads for temporary processing (this has been called the whiteboard of the mind), and then there's the transfer to longer-term memory (encoding). If there's a bottle-neck at any of these stages, the outcome at the long-term storage end will look the same, but for different reasons. You can support a small mental whiteboard or immediate memory by presenting information in forms that aren't ephemera (printed products, in other words).
Some of the above factors might be involved in the behaviors that suggest an automaticity deficit (difficulty with learning lower-level skills to fluency, despite strong higher-level abilities). In the lower grades, being able to problem-solve your way to the correct response when others are struggling through those same basic skills is advanced. At higher grade levels, having to problem-solve your way to basic skills when others have memorized them to automaticity forces you to to devote higher-level abilities to low-level tasks, leaving less processing power for high-level skills.
