Physical activity (PA) benefits children's cognition, in particular executive functions (EF). Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Reading Difficulties (RD) and co-occurring ADHD/RD have low levels of PA and difficulties with EF. This study evaluated a PA programme to determine recruitment, attrition, feasibility (e.g.…

Nonverbal Learning Disability (NLD) has been the focus of four decades of neuropsychological research. However, it has yet to be included as a diagnostic category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (i.e., currently in its fifth edition, DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Many of the characteristics associated…

Purpose: Reading requires the ability to decode and comprehend. Impairments in working memory (WM) are often implicated in students who are poor decoders. It is unclear whether this is a domain-specific issue or a task-specific issue. Therefore, this study examined how auditory-verbal (AV) WM, visual-spatial (VS) WM, and cognitive load affected…

This study examined supraspan free recall in children with and without spelling impairment. A repeated free recall task involving overt rehearsal and three computer-based adaptive working memory tasks were administered to 54 eight-year-old children. Children without spelling impairments tended to recall more items than did those children with…

Based on the finding that children with mathematical learning difficulties (MLD) have deficits in working memory (WM), the question arises as to whether these children differ from typical learners only in the level or also in the developmental trajectories of WM functioning. To this end, the WM of 80 children with MLD and 71 typical learners was…

The current study investigated the cognitive deficit profiles among individuals with mathematics difficulties (MD) and potential moderators and mechanism for these profiles. Seventy-five cognitive profiling studies on MD were included, representing a total of 13,001 individuals and 126 independent samples. Results showed that compared with…

The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with insight into the clinical reasoning process involved in the assessment and intervention planning for a child with a reading disability. A Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theoretical/neuropsychological approach shall serve as the foundational theoretical framework for this case study, and…

The current study investigated the cause of the reported problems in working memory in children with reading difficulties. Verbal and visuospatial simple and complex span tasks, and digit span and reaction times tasks performed singly and in combination, were administered to 46 children with single word reading difficulties and 45 typically…

In transparent orthographies like German, isolated learning disabilities in either reading or spelling are common and occur as often as a combined reading and spelling disability. However, most issues surrounding the cognitive causes of these isolated or combined literacy difficulties are yet unresolved. Recently, working memory dysfunctions have…

Arithmetic and cognitive skills of children with mathematical difficulties (MD-only), with comorbid reading difficulties (MD-RD), with reading difficulties (RD-only), and normally achieving children were examined at 3 points from Grades 3-4 to Grades 5-6 (age range, 9-13 years). Both MD groups displayed severe weaknesses in 4 domain-specific…

Elementary school children with reading disabilities (RD; "n" = 17), mathematical disabilities (MD; "n" = 22), or combined reading and mathematical disabilities (RD+MD; "n" = 28) were compared to average achieving (AA; "n" = 45) peers on working memory measures. On all working memory components, 2 (RD vs. no…

Working memory, inhibition and naming speed was assessed in 22 children with mathematical learning disorders (MD), 17 children with a reading learning disorder (RD), and 45 children without any learning problems between 8 and 12 years old. All subjects with learning disorders performed poorly on working memory tasks, providing evidence that they…

This study investigated the prevalence and stability of latent classes at risk for reading disabilities (RD) in elementary-aged children whose first language is Spanish. To this end, children (N = 489) in Grades 1, 2, and 3 at Wave 1 were administered a battery of reading, vocabulary, and cognitive measures (short-term memory [STM], working memory…

It is well established that working memory is related to reading comprehension ability. However, its role in explaining specific reading comprehension difficulties is still under debate: the issue mainly concerns whether the contribution of working memory is dependent on task modality (verbal tasks being more predictive than visuo-spatial tasks)…

The nature of the comorbidity between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Reading Disability (RD) was examined using a double dissociation design. Children were between 8 and 12 years of age and entered into four groups: ADHD only (n = 24), ADHD+RD (n = 29), RD only (n = 41) and normal controls (n = 26). In total, 120 children…