Working Memory, Processing Speed And Children Of Mild Mental Retardation

Working memory and processing speed are two elementary cognitive processing facets, which are most important issues in the field of cognition. Researchers have paid more and more attention to the effects of these two kinds of cognitive processing on intelligence. Children who are mild mental retardation are very different from the normal children on cognitive abilities. Hence, it is meaningful to carry out some studies related to working memory and processing speed of children of mild mental retardation.The current study chose 288 pupils from Shanghai and Yancheng as participantsand put them into three different groups-------children of mild mentalretardation(50120) ------according to their IQ scores in the test of R-III scale of Chinese edition.The latest ability tests of elementary cognitive processing facets are including working memory test and processing speed test. These two tests used by the current study were from the modified edition of Cognitive Ability Test (CAT) designed by Detterman(1987).All the participants took four kinds of tests, including working memory and processing speed tests, R-III test of Chinese edition, academic achievements tesst on Chinese and Math. The aim of the study was to explore the relationship between working memory and processing speed tests and academic achievements, the features of working memory and processing speed of children who were mild mental retardation, and the difference between children of mild mental retardation and normal children in these tasks. The results were as follow:1 .There was significant difference between children of mild mental retardation and normal children on working memory and processing speed tasks.2.There was individual difference between children of mild mental retardation. On one hand, their cognitive limitation on working memory steadily reflected their retardation on intelligence. On the other hand, some children's performance on processing speed was as good as normal children.3.Compared with processing speed tasks, working memory tasks had a better ability to predict children's academic achievements.