Early-Childhood
Hi Jo,
That is certainly very interesting reading. I hadn't come across the
Numicon system and I am keen to know some more about it.
I'll read the pdf more carefully before I comment on it and I am very
interested in your evaluation of it.
I am looking at typically developing children for the main part of the
research, but at some point I will also use the data to look at low
attainers versus high attainers. It would be nice to see some data in a
typical early school population.
On the notion of STM being involved in scholastic acheivement, the
psychological research is quite clear that what we term "working memory"
or immediate memory correlates strongly to educational attainments at
differing ages. Much of the research has been conducted with children
aged 7 and above and it is only in recent years that Prof Gathercole and
her colleagues in Durham have tried to apply the working memory theory to
younger children. It does appear that certain working memory tests do
have a predictive value, but how suitable these would be with a young
Downs population I couldn't say.
I am currently using an automated (beta) version of the Working Memory
Test Battery-Children (Pickering and Gathercole), and I am having some
difficulties administering some of the tests with the 4 yr olds as they
find it hard to understand the instructions. The unfortunate thing in
this, is that the tests that are the hardest to administer are also the
ones that I am most interested in.
Some of Angela Fawcett's (Sheffield Uni) motor tests in the DEST battery
seem to be predictive of scholastic acheivement and i am keen to check
these out too as they are simple to administer and would be suitable for a
wider population, possibly including children with Downs. I realise it is
designed specifically for diagnosis of dyslexia, but the fact that certain
motor skills items correlate interests me.
I am prone to go off at tangents and must apologise for that!
Thanks for the information.
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