A comparison of short-term memory tests as predictors of reading achievement for learning-disabled and educable mentally retarded students

Poor performance' on short-term memory (STM) tasks has been associated with reading difficulties. However, little research has been devoted to delineating the STM tests that best predict this relationship. To gain insight into the relative efficacy of different STM tests to predict reading achievement, nine measures of STM frequently used by school psychologists were examined with a group of learning-disabled (n = 48) and educable mentally retarded (n = 34) students. The factor structure underlying the STM tasks was also investigated. The results indicated that not all of the STM tasks were significant (p < .05) predictors of reading. Stepwise regression analyses indicated that a sentence memory task was the best predictor for the learning-disabled students, whereas a letter sequences task was the best predictor of reading for the educable students. Factor analysis indicated that a language factor (auditory/verbal) and a non-verbal factor (visual/spatial) were the major components underlying performance on the STM measures. These findings were discussed in the context of the prediction of reading as a function of diagnostic group and the task structure of the STM tests.