The Combined and Differential Roles of Working Memory Mechanisms in Academic Achievement

TL;DRAbstract

Generalized latent variable modeling was used to examine the relationship between working memory and academic achievement. The contributions of two working memory mechanisms that are involved in a wide variety of working memory tasks, namely short-term storage (STS) and generalized attention control (GAC) were examined. The contributions of two working memory mechanisms that are specific to two well-established measures of working memory (Digit Span and Letter-Number Sequencing), namely Backward Ordering (BO) and Mental Sorting (MS), were also examined. The contribution of these working memory mechanisms as a whole was additionally evaluated, and compared to the contribution of traditional measures of intelligence. Mechanisms that are common across multiple working memory tasks (specifically, STS and GAC) were found to make an important contribution to both intelligence and achievement, while task-specific factors (BO and MS) were not. Furthermore, in this study the combined working me

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