The AWMA is the first standardised tool for non-specialist assessors such as classroom teachers to screen their pupils for significant working memory problems quickly and effectively. To date, the AWMA has been used to screen over 4000 in schools in the UK (Alloway et al, in press-c).
Listed below are some key findings on the link between working memory and learning from studies that employed the AWMA:
1. In a large-scale screening study of over 4000 children, 10-15% of children in a mainstream classroom were identified with poor working memory.
Common failures for children with working memory impairments included forgetting lengthy instructions, place-keeping errors (for example, missing out letters or words in a sentence), and failure to cope with storing and manipulating information (Alloway et al., in press-c; Gathercole & Alloway, 2008).
2. In a large-scale study of over 4000 children identified with working memory deficits using the AWMA, only 2% of them achieved scores in the average range (>96) in standardised assessments of reading and maths (WORD and WOND; Wechsler, 1993; 1996). AWMA scores uniquely predicted scores in these tests even after IQ (WASI, Wechsler, 1999) was statistically accounted for.
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3. Working memory scores are significantly linked to Key Stage 3 outcomes in secondary school/high school in a group of 200 14-year olds (Alloway et al., 2008-c)
4. Poor working memory skills predict learning two years later in children with learning difficulties, independent of their IQ (Alloway, in press).
5. In a study using the Dutch translation of the AWMA in four-year olds, those with poor working memory scores had the lowest scores in language tests and were most at risk for failure in school (Lessman et al., 2008).
6. A recent study demonstrated that the association between trait anxiety and academic performance was significantly mediated by verbal working memory (accounted for 51%) as measured by the AWMA (Owens et al., 2008).
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