The Effectiveness of Cognitive Training on Information Processing Speed and Working Memory in Children with Learning Disabilities

The present study aims to investigate the effect of cognitive training on the working memory, and processing speed in children with learning disabilities. Besides working memory and processing speed, it is effect on academic performance was also examined. It was an experimental research with two groups and pretest-posttest. The research population in the present was all male and female students in the third, fourth and fifth grades of primary school. That referred to special learning centers of Tehran. Among these student, 20 students were selected randomly, 10 students were placed in each of experimental and control group. Then, the cognitive training was administered for experimental group in 10 one-hour sessions. The student assessed before and after the intervention, using digit span, coding, search symbols and visual memory. The pretest and post test data obtained were analyzed using covariance analysis. The results show that the effect of cognitive training, on the speed of information processing and verbal working memory and visual-spatial working memory has been significant. This training has not been considerably effective on academic performance of student with learning disabilities.