Specific Mental Arithmetic Difficulties and General Arithmetic Learning Difficulties: The Role of Phonological Working Memory

The aim of this paper was to examine the role of phonological working memory in specific mental arithmetic difficulties and general arithmetic learning difficulties (ALD; difficulties presenting in both mental arithmetic and written arithmetic). In Study 1, we categorized 53 sixth graders into a control group, a group with specific mental arithmetic difficulties, and a group with general ALD. The findings indicated the group with specific mental arithmetic difficulties performed significantly worse on the task involving phonological working memory than did the control group. However, a significant difference was not found between the group with general ALD and the control group. In Study 2 involving 54 sixth graders, we decreased the load of phonological working memory by changing the format of the problems from horizontal (more reliance on phonological codes) to vertical (more reliance on visual resources). We found that the group with specific mental arithmetic difficulties performed comparably to the control group. In other words, when the working memory load is reduced, they no longer lag significantly behind on mental arithmetic. However, the group with general ALD still performed significantly worse than the control group when the problems were presented vertically, indicating that reduced phonological working memory load did not alleviate their arithmetic difficulties. The findings in both studies suggested that poor phonological working memory might contribute to the underlying mechanism for specific mental arithmetic difficulties but not as much for general ALD.