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Updated: Jun 10, 2025
Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)
Published on: June 12, 2017
Association between working memory performance and parent and teacher ratings of working memory in 11-year-old
Laura Haveri1,2, Petriina Munck2,3, Jukka M Leppänen1
1Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
Insights
Working memory difficulties in preterm children are linked to everyday challenges. Central executive functions best predict these real-world working memory issues, according to parent and teacher ratings.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Pediatrics
Background:
- Children born very preterm and/or very low birth weight (VPT/VLBW) often exhibit working memory (WM) deficits.
- Understanding the relationship between objective WM component measures and subjective ratings of everyday WM difficulties is crucial for this population.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between performance-based measures of phonological loop (PL), visuospatial sketchpad (VS), and central executive (CE) and parent/teacher-rated WM difficulties in 11-year-old VPT/VLBW children.
- To determine which WM component best reflects everyday WM challenges in this cohort.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C) and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth edition (WISC-IV) for performance-based WM component assessment.
- Administered the Behavioral Rating Inventory for Executive Functions (BRIEF) WM subscale to parents and teachers for rating everyday WM difficulties.
- Analyzed associations between performance measures and BRIEF scores in 165 VPT/VLBW children.
Main Results:
- Performance-based WM measures showed modest associations with parent- (18.9% variance) and teacher-rated (14.0%) everyday WM difficulties.
- The central executive (CE) component was most consistently linked to both parent and teacher ratings of everyday WM challenges.
- Both performance and rating-scale measures offered unique insights into WM skills.
Conclusions:
- Tasks assessing central executive (CE) functions may be most indicative of real-world working memory (WM) in VPT/VLBW children.
- Comprehensive assessment of WM skills in VPT/VLBW children requires integrating both performance-based tests and rating scales.
- Findings highlight the importance of targeting CE functions in interventions for VPT/VLBW children with WM deficits.
Abstract:
Working memory (WM) difficulties are often observed in children born preterm. We examined whether performance-based measures of WM components are associated with parent- and teacher-rated WM difficulties in the everyday life of children born very preterm and/or at very low birth weight (VPT/VLBW) at 11 years (n = 165). The WM components as defined in the original Baddeley's model - phonological loop (PL), visuospatial sketchpad (VS), and central executive (CE) - were assessed with tasks from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fourth edition (WISC-IV). Parents and teachers completed the WM subscale of the Behavioral Rating Inventory for Executive Functions (BRIEF). Measures of WM components were modestly associated with BRIEF scores, explaining 18.9% of the variance in parent-rated and 14.0% of teacher-rated WM difficulties. CE was the component most consistently associated with parent- and teacher-rated everyday WM. To conclude, our results suggest that tasks that utilize CE functions may best reflect WM outside of controlled test settings in the follow-up of VPT/VLBW children. However, performance and rating-scale measures provide unique information and are both needed to comprehensively assess WM skills.
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