Working memory, reading development and dyslexia

Short-term memory skills help us carry out tasks important in everyday life such as remembering a telephone number while we dial it or remembering what was in the fridge while we write a shopping list. These short-term memory skills are not only concerned with capacity – with the amount of information we can recall – but also with interactions between different kinds of information and representations from long-term memory. It is aspects of these skills which we suggest in this paper are compromised in children at risk of reading difficulties.