The effectiveness of working memory on academic performance of students with specific learning disorder: A meta-analysis study

Specific Learning Disorder is one of the neurocognitive disorders that has received increasing attention in recent years. Previous studies have shown that the working memory of students with a specific learning disorder has deficiencies. So far, several studies on working memory have been conducted to improve the performance of students with special learning disabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to integrate the results of previous studies in this field that a total of 15 related studies involving 429 subjects were conducted. The findings showed that the effect size of working memory training on learning disorder was 0.863. This effect size in dyslexia was 1.24, in dyscalculia was 0.793 and in dysgraphia was 0.708. The aforementioned effect size in dyslexia has been more than the two other disorders. Furthermore, the results obtained from the analysis of the moderator variable of the number of sessions, indicates the lack of effect of this variable on performance improvement in specific learning disorder. According to the research results, it is suggested that working memory training in order to improve the performance of students with dyslexic disorder should receive more attention. Other results were discussed, too.