Working memory and cognitive abilities in children with specific difficulties in arithmetic word problem solving

The relations between short-term memory, workingmemory, inhibitory control, and arithmeticwordproblem solution were studied in children who were poor in arithmeticproblemsolving (n = 23). The children were compared with a group of good problem solvers (n = 26), matched for vocabulary, age, and gender. The results corroborate the hypothesis of poor problem solvers' general deficit in inhibitory processes. They had lower scores and made more intrusion errors in a series of workingmemory tasks requiring inhibition of irrelevant information. The results showed that problemsolving performance is related to the ability of reducing the accessibility of nontarget and irrelevant information in memory. Span tasks that imply passive storage of information showed that poor problem solvers were impaired when they have to retain numerical information, but they did not differ from children who did not have difficulty with mathematics when the material included words.