Difficulties in working memory updating in individuals with intellectual disability.
Updating working memory—not overall IQ—clearly separates adults with ID from younger peers of equal fluid intelligence.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers gave adults with intellectual disability the same working-memory games that younger neurotypical adults had already passed.
Both groups had the same fluid IQ scores, so any gap would point to a special memory problem, not low intelligence.
The games asked people to hold numbers in mind and then swap in new ones—called updating—or to remember longer lists.
What they found
The ID group failed the updating game far more often than their IQ-matched peers.
Long-list memory was also weaker, but the updating gap was the clearest.
Equal IQ did not protect the ID group from the updating deficit.
How this fits with other research
Facon (2008) saw flat IQ curves in adults with ID and thought aging minds travel similar paths.
Bailey et al. (2010) disagree: even when IQ lines up, updating memory still lags.
The clash fades once you see Bruno tracked broad IQ scores, while B et al. zoomed in on moment-to-moment memory control.
Lancioni et al. (2011) later showed that men with ID who offend actually score higher on moral-reasoning tests than non-offenders with ID.
Together the three papers warn us not to treat "IQ matched" as "cognitively identical." Different tests expose different cracks.
Why it matters
If a client can repeat a rule but keeps "forgetting" the new step you just added, suspect an updating problem, not defiance.
Break tasks into tiny swaps: give one new piece, pause, then ask for the swap.
Track accuracy on these mini-updates; when it improves, longer chains and self-instruction are safer bets.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Despite the critical role attributed to working memory (WM) updating for executive functions and fluid intelligence, no research has yet been carried out on its specific role in the vital case of fluid intelligence weakness, represented by individuals with intellectual disability (ID). Furthermore, the relationship between updating and other WM functions has not been considered in depth. METHOD: The current study examines these areas by proposing a battery of WM tasks (varying in degree of active attentional control requested) and one updating task to groups of ID individuals and typically developing children, matched for fluid intelligence performance. RESULTS: Comparison between the group of ID individuals and a group of children showed that, despite being matched on the Raven test, the updating measure significantly differentiated the groups as well as the WM complex span. Furthermore, updating proved to be the task with the greatest power in discriminating between groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our results confirm the importance of the demand for active attentional control in explaining the role of WM in fluid intelligence performance, and in particular show that updating information in WM plays an important role in the distinction between typically developing children and ID individuals.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2010 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2010.01267.x