N FACTORS RELATED TO POOR PERFORMANCE ON MEMORY TASKS IN READING

Abstract. This research tested the hypothesis that many reading disabled children's failure to apply effective strategies to rote-memory tasks is related to their general lack of reflective knowledge about memory and memory processes, as well as their gener-ally disorganized approach to cognitive tasks. Children identified as good readers, and poor readers with memory difficulties, were asked a variety of questions about memory and memory strategies. Significant differences were found between groups in knowledge of such strategies as rehearsal, ability to generate a variety of different solutions to memory problems, and in the planfulness with which children in the two groups approached real-world memory tasks. The results support the view that many children may fail to learn to read well because they do not manage their intact capabilities efficiently. Children who experience difficulty learn-ing to read have frequently been shown to perform poorly on tasks designed to measure short-term memory (Torgesen, 1975). Most often, the tasks used in this research have tested rote memory for nonmeaningful materials such as digits and letters in series, sequences of forms, and paired associates. The relationship between performance on memory tasks and reading proficiency can be conceptualized in at least two ways. First, it is possible to view memory tasks as fairly direct measures of basic memory capacities which are essential to either the initial stages of learning to read or to the attainment of fluent reading and comprehension. In research employing this conceptualization, the memory task is considered an experimental analogue of one of the basic processes in-volved in reading, and deficiencies in task performance are translated directly into "specific disabilities " which supposedly in-terfere with some portion of the reading proces