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Top1. Introduction
In the mainstream classrooms in the United Kingdom, any pupil who needs additional support compared to his peers to succeed is categorized as having special education needs (SEN) (Department for Education-UK, 2016). In the United Kingdom and the United States, between 14% and 30% of children at schools require extra support to learn (Department for Education-UK, 2018; McFarland et al., 2019). Children and young people with SEN often have learning difficulties (LDs) that hold them from learning compared to their peers. Learning difficulties do not affect general intellect, although they can cause a person to face problems in a traditional classroom setting (Mencap, 2021). Thus, children with LDs have normal intelligence, but this is not matched with their low learning potential or scholastic achievement (Chen et al., 2017).
Recently, WM deficit has been considered a significant contributing factor of LDs (Peng & Fuchs, 2016; Zhang et al., 2018). For instance, a meta-analysis of 29 studies revealed that all the groups with LDs (with reading difficulties, mathematics difficulties, or both) showed deficits either in verbal or numerical WM (Peng & Fuchs, 2016). In the current study, children with LDs refer to those children in the mainstream classrooms who have a poor WM capacity, which hinders their learning process, and as a result, they have lower academic achievements compared to their peers, irrespective of their normal intelligence.
Working memory (WM) is the capability of the brain to retain and manipulate some information for a short time. According to the integrated model of Baddeley and Hitch (Baddeley, 2000), WM consists of four sub-systems: the main system (the central executive) and three slaving systems: the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the episodic buffer. The central executive is an attentional control system responsible for allocating attention within the WM system via focusing, dividing, and switching attention; and three slaving systems: the phonological loop which is taking charge of holding and manipulating sounds and speech; the visuospatial system, which is performing a similar function with non-verbal materials; and the episodic buffer which is acting as a coordinator to link between the various WM components and long-term memory (Baddeley, 2000). Children with LDs often have a limited WM capacity, this means they fail to meet the required amount of information needed to be processed and held while learning new skills. As soon as those children are able to overcome their WM limits, they would be able to learn as effectively as others (Gupta & Sharma, 2017).
Research has suggested that WM capacity can be enhanced by intensive cognitive training because its underlying neural systems remain flexible throughout the lifespan (Klingberg et al., 2005; Mahncke et al., 2006). The cognitive training focuses on enhancing the trainee’s WM capacity mainly by expanding the extent of information that can be kept and manipulated in the WM components (Wong et al., 2014). It is recommended that WM training should take place for 20 days in a 4 to 7-week period with sessions of approximately 30 - 45 min per day (Wong et al., 2014).