Effects of working memory intervention on students with reading comprehension difficulties

ABSTRACT Purpose: to investigate the effectiveness of a working memory-based intervention proposal for reading comprehension. Methods: 43 children divided into two groups according to their performance in a reading comprehension test - G1: children with reading comprehension difficulty; G2: children with no difficulties. All the children were evaluated regarding reading, writing, sentence reading comprehension, and phonological working memory - PWM (repetition of pseudo-words and digits). After this evaluation, children from G1 participated in an intervention program (15 meetings) that stimulated the PWM. Following the intervention, all the children were reevaluated. The results were compared intra- and intergroup, and pertinent statistical tests were applied, by adopting the significance level lower than 0.05%. Results: after the intervention program, the children of G1 showed a significant improvement in all tests. In the intergroup analysis, at the time of evaluation, G1 was different from G2 in reading, writing and reading comprehension. In the reevaluation, G1 equaled G2 in reading and got closer to G2 in writing and reading comprehension. Conclusion: PWM training brought benefits to children with academic difficulties. Thus, these strategies could be used in the classroom, aiming to promote learning.