Inhibition Mechanism Of Learning Difficulties In Children In A Working Memory Task

In China, the researches on Learning Disabilities originated from the late 1980s. The LD research is still a new domain. Our study aimed at exploring some cognitive processing mechanism of working memory of LD children which is an important aspect of cognitive proc~sses. It is widely agreed that the working memory is a system for the temporary storage and processing of information, and it is involved in the execution of a range of cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning and reading comprehension. Many foreign researches suggested that LD children generally suffer from working memory deficits, that is to say, the WM capacity of LD children is remarkably lower than NLD children. Whether working memory is task specific or whether it reflects a single domain ndependent ability has also been hotly debated by the foreign researchers and the latter opinion has received more support. The foreign researchers proposed many hypotheses and experimental models to explain what underlies the failure of LD children in the working memory tasks, hut to date, they hnven?t reached a consensus. The present research was to examine whether inhibitory processes are deficient in children with learning disabilities and to explain the working memory deficits of LD children. Theoretically the inhibitory mechanisms deficits may explain LD children s iower working memory capacity. A breakdown in the inhibitory system not only allows irrelevant information to enter working memory, but also allows such information to remain active for longer periods of time. When this occurs, working memory is cluttered with irrelevant information which consumes the limited cognitive processing resources of working memory that otherwise are used to process relevant information. Two experiments were devised in the present study. In experiment l,we employed reading span test to measure the WM capacity of LD children and to explore whether they suffer from VIM deficits. In experiment 2; ~ve employed repeated priming paradigm to explore whether children with leaning disabilities have difficulty inhibiting previously processed, yet no longer relevant ideas and to test the inhibitory mechanisms deficits model. We drew following results under present research condition: 1. LD children generally have WM deficits. 2. In WM tasks, LD children have inhibitory mechanism deficits. 3. Inhibitory mechanism deficits attribute to VIM deficits of LD children.