Working memory capacity training for elementary school children: which specific reading skills show the most significant improvements?
Márcia Helena Bragio Flores | 2017
Many children face difficulties during the process of learning to read and that seems to be particularly true within the Brazilian public schools’ educational context. Working memory capacity (WMC) has been associated with learning processes such as reading ability and academic achievement. The present study draws on Mascarello (2016), who carried out an experiment with second graders from a Brazilian public school aiming at verifying the impact of WMC training on the learning of reading skills. The results reported in Mascarello (2016) show that the training exerted positive effects on children’s WMC and on their reading skills. The purpose of the present study is to detail which specific reading skills showed the most significant improvements in Mascarello (2016). The analysis carried out for the purposes of this undergraduate paper showed that, after WMC training, participants of the experimental group improved their ability to read homophones by 47.74 %, besides also showing better performance in reading six other kinds of words.