Browsing by Subject "työmuisti"

Attention is an essential part of learning and academical performance. At the moment attention is being assessed mainly by subjective evaluations. Attention Concentration Test pursues to measure attention objectively on the basis of Inhibition Theory. The aim of this thesis was to examine the connection between success in Attention Concentration test and success in visuospatial working memory task. Previous studies imply that functions of attention and working memory are tightly connected. In this thesis, visuospatial working memory test worked as a reference meter to attention. The thesis is a part of a broader Helsinki University Centre for Educational Assessments study which examined ACT-tests usability and ability to identify pupils with significant attentional problems. The thesis studied also genders, mother tongue and receiving intensified and special supports connections with attention and working memory. In addition, the thesis researched what factors predict success in Attention Concentration Test. The study was attended by 159 third grade pupils from four different schools located in Helsinki region. The data was collected between November 2016 and January 2017 at the schools. The tests were completed by computer over one session. The data was analysed by quantitative methods examining correlations and using One-Way Analysis of Variance and Mann-Whitney tests on purpose of finding distinctions between different groups. Furthermore, it was endeavored to create a model that would explain success in Attention Concentration Test using Regression Analysis. Examining the whole material only a weak connection was found between success in Attention Concentration test and success in visuospatial working memory task. Examining the data by gender a medium connection was found with boys. With girls, a connection wasn't found. Girls were more accurate than boys in Attention Concentration Test, but boys were faster than girls in working memory task. Non-Finnish-speaking boys and students receiving intensified and special support succeeded more poorly than other students in both tests. Due to small correlations, a model explaining success in Attention Concentration Test could not be formed.

Introduction. Cognitive performance and school engagement have been shown to affect school performance from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Higher working memory performance and attentional skills can predict success in many different school subjects, such as math, English and science. Individual differences in executive attention have also been shown to predict the length of education from childhood to adulthood. Studies have also shown that motivational characteristics such as school engagement can predict school achievements and the years of schooling attained. Only a few studies have tried to investigate the joint effects that cognitive skills and motivational characteristics have on school performance. This study aims to examine how cognitive skills (working memory and attention) and school engagement jointly affect school performance in Finnish adolescent students. One aim was also to find out if school engagement mediates the connection between cognitive performance and school performance. Methods. The current study included 105 volunteering adolescents (53 females) who participated in the Mind the Gap (2012 – 2016) study that was funded by the Academy of Finland. The study included two age groups: 13–14 year olds (n=50) and 16–17 year olds (n=55). Participants performed tasks that measured working memory performance and executive attention and they filled out a questionnaire that included the school engagement inventory. School achievement was evaluated with both official grades and students self-assessed grades. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze the relationships between the examined variables. Results and conclusions. The study showed that both cognitive performance and school engagement predicted school performance. Especially the connections between self-assessed grades and cognitive performance and school engagement were more significant than connections with official grades. This study did not find a significant relationship between cognitive performance and school engagement, which means that there was no significant mediation between cognitive performance, school engagement and school performance. This study provides further scientific evidence that cognitive performance and school engagement both affect school performance. Even though cognitive skills and school engagement were not significantly related in this study, it would be important to conduct more research on this topic in the future.

Object: The object of this study is to examine whether children's proficiency in different aspects of reading after first grade can be predicted by a set of basic skills assessed before first grade and background attributes independently and jointly. Reading proficiency is examined as three separate skills: reading accuracy, reading speed and reading comprehension. The goal is to find out which skills and factors predict these different aspects of reading and whether they are the same for all three. This in turn will help in recognizing the children in need of early support. It will also help in selecting the focus of these early interventions. Previously, several different and partially conflicting theories about the causes of reading difficulties have been proposed. Examining reading from different angles might help solve this controversy. Methods: The participants were 152 native Finnish speaking children of whom 70 had a familial risk for dyslexia. At pre-school age (mean age: 6 years 5 months) the children were evaluated for their verbal IQ, phonological skills, rapid naming skills, working memory and letter naming. Information about background attributes, such as the socioeconomic status of the family, was gathered with questionnaires. Reading skills were assessed after first grade. Children were categorized into two groups in accordance with their performance in different reading skills. Using logistic regression analysis, the information about background and the basic skills assessed at pre-school age were used to predict who performed worse than average at a specific reading skill. Results and conclusions: The three aspects of reading were predicted to some extent by the same set of skills and attributes. Common predictors of all three aspects in unison were verbal IQ, rapid naming, phonological skills, letter naming and working memory. Familial risk of reading difficulty was included in predicting reading speed and accuracy, but for reading comprehension the length of the parents' education was more essential. Those who were younger and had poorer phonological and verbal reasoning skills had greater odds of reading less accurately. Those at familial risk of dyslexia, slow at naming and those with poorer phonological skills had greater odds of being slow readers. Those with poorer verbal reasoning skills, phonological skills and working memory skills and boys had greater odds of being poor at reading comprehension. These results agree in part with previous findings. They also bring new insights into the various skills and factors that are connected to different aspects of reading and can be directly applied into practice.

Objectives. The sentence span task is a complex working memory span task used for estimating total working memory capacity for both processing (sentence comprehension) and storage (remembering a set of words). Several traditional models of working memory suggest that performance on these tasks relies on phonological short-term storage. However, long-term memory effects as well as the effects of expertise and strategies have challenged this view. This study uses a working memory task that aids the creation of retrieval structures in the form of stories, which have been shown to form integrated structures in longterm memory. The research question is whether sentence and story contexts boost memory performance in a complex working memory task. The hypothesis is that storage of the words in the task takes place in long-term memory. Evidence of this would be better recall for words as parts of sentences than for separate words, and, particularly, a beneficial effect for words as part of an organized story. Methods. Twenty stories consisting of five sentences each were constructed, and the stimuli in all experimental conditions were based on these sentences and sentence-final words, reordered and recombined for the other conditions. Participants read aloud sets of five sentences that either formed a story or not. In one condition they had to report all the last words at the end of the set, in another, they memorised an additional separate word with each sentence. The sentences were presented on the screen one word at a time (500 ms). After the presentation of each sentence, the participant verified a statement about the sentence. After five sentences, the participant repeated back the words in correct positions. Experiment 1 (n=16) used immediate recall, experiment 2 (n=21) both immediate recall and recall after a distraction interval (the operation span task). In experiment 2 a distracting mental arithmetic task was presented instead of recall in half of the trials, and an individual word was added before each sentence in the two experimental conditions when the participants were to memorize the sentence final words. Subjects also performed a listening span task (in exp.1) or an operation span task (exp.2) to allow comparison of the estimated span and performance in the story task. Results were analysed using correlations, repeated measures ANOVA and a chi-square goodness of fit test on the distribution of errors. Results and discussion. Both the relatedness of the sentences (the story condition) and the inclusion of the words into sentences helped memory. An interaction showed that the story condition had a greater effect on last words than separate words. The beneficial effect of the story was shown in all serial positions. The effects remained in delayed recall. When the sentences formed stories, performance in verification of the statements about sentence context was better. This, as well as the differing distributions of errors in different experimental conditions, suggest different levels of representation are in use in the different conditions. In the story condition, the nature of these representations could be in the form of an organized memory structure, a situation model. The other working memory tasks had only few week correlations to the story task. This could indicate that different processes are in use in the tasks. The results do not support short-term phonological storage, but instead are compatible with the words being encoded to LTM during the task.

Objectives: According to previous observations, the magnitude of variation in the working memory-related electroencephalographic (EEG) alpha oscillations between different subjects is remarkable. The purpose of this study was (1) to find out whether the standard deviation in the oscillatory responses between subjects and within the subject is greater in the alpha band than in the lower or higher frequencies, (2) to examine individual oscillatory responses of subjects, and (3) to localize the neural sources of working memory encoding and retrieval related alpha synchronization and desynchronization and study the effects of different source localizations to the observed oscillatory responses during an auditory working memory task. Methods: Eighteen subjects performed a modified version of Sternberg's memory search paradigm in which they were auditorily presented memory sets consisting of five words. The subjects' task was to decide whether the probe word was included in the previously presented memory set. EEG was recorded during the task and the data was analyzed using the event-related synchronization/desynchronization (ERS/ERD), clustering, and beamforming methods. Both averaged and individual alpha band event-related spectral perturbations (ERSP), standard deviations of ERSP responses between and within the subjects, power spectra of the subjects, and source localization results of the ERSP responses were examined. Results and conclusions: ERSP responses averaged across the subjects support previous studies: Alpha-band ERS was perceived during the memory encoding and alpha-band ERD during the memory retrieval. Standard deviations of the ERSP responses both in the group and individual level were greater in the alpha band than in the lower or higher frequencies. The individual ERSP responses varied remarkably which is not observed in studies that examine only averaged ERSP responses. Calculating distances between individual and averaged ERSP responses and clustering the obtained values provided important information on the individual variation of these responses. Memory encoding -related alpha ERS and memory retrieval -related alpha ERD sources were localized in the occipital and parietal brain areas when these responses were similar to those obtained via averaging across the subjects. This finding, which is new in connection with auditorily presented stimuli, corresponds to the results of previously conducted visual working memory studies and reveals important general level knowledge of connections between working memory processes and oscillatory EEG responses.