Impaired short-term memory for order in adults with dyslexia.
Adults with dyslexia have a specific hiccup in remembering the correct order of information, separate from general language problems.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Trecy et al. (2013) tested adults with dyslexia on short-term memory tasks. They wanted to know if these adults struggle to remember the order of items, not just the items themselves.
The team used simple lists of sounds and pictures. Participants had to recall which item came first, second, and third.
What they found
Adults with dyslexia did worse than typical readers on order memory. They could remember what items appeared, but scrambled the sequence.
The deficit showed up even when the items were pictures, not words. This points to a core order problem, not just weak phonics.
How this fits with other research
Bogaerts et al. (2015) built on this result. They showed the same adults also fail at long-term order learning, like linking new word sounds to meaning over weeks.
Godfrey et al. (2023) found a parallel deficit in autistic adults: poor use of story order or 'gist.' Both studies flag selective memory organization trouble in neurodivergent adults.
Yamamoto et al. (2019) add another angle. Autistic adults struggle to monitor what they already said, while dyslexic adults struggle to monitor item order. Different diagnoses, similar self-monitoring gaps.
Why it matters
If you work with adult clients who have dyslexia, don't assume slow reading is their only issue. Check if they mix up multi-step instructions or forget the order of job tasks. Break chains into smaller chunks, add visual sequence cues, or let them repeat steps aloud. These simple supports can boost daily functioning more than extra phonics drills alone.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Verbal short-term memory (STM) deficits are consistently associated with dyslexia, but the nature of these deficits remains poorly understood. This study used the distinction between item and order retention processes to achieve a better understanding of STM deficits in adults with dyslexia. STM for item information has been shown to depend on the quality of underlying phonological representations, and hence should be impaired in dyslexia, which is characterized by poorly developed phonological representations. On the other hand, STM for order information is considered to reflect core STM processes, which are independent from language processing. Thirty adults with dyslexia and thirty control participants matched for age, education, vocabulary, and IQ were presented STM tasks, which distinguished item and order STM capacities. We observed not only impaired order STM in adults with dyslexia, but this impairment was independent of item STM impairment. This study shows that adults with dyslexia present a deficit in core verbal STM processes, a deficit which cannot be accounted for by the language processing difficulties that characterize dyslexia. Moreover, these results support recent theoretical accounts considering independent order STM and item STM processes, with a potentially causal involvement of order STM processes in reading acquisition.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2013 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.04.005