Why Does Memory Assessment Matter?

Learning is essential for human development. From kindergarten through college, students must learn and remember an incredible amount of knowledge and skills. Although learning extends beyond the school years, the amount and intensity of learning that children, adolescents, and young adults are exposed is never equaled later in life. Learning is critical to development. 

Yet many children struggle with learning and memory problems. This can be a concern when a child is referred for an assessment of learning problems. Cognitive difficulties can frequently be found in children diagnosed with: 

• specific language impairment; 
• autism spectrum disorder (ASD); 
• learning disabilities; 
• cognitive or intellectual disability; and/or 
• neurological and medical disorders affecting brain development or function.

Despite the importance of memory and learning, many clinicians use only IQ and achievement tests to determine the causes of learning problems. Although many IQ tests address working memory, working memory focuses on briefly stored information. Very few IQ tests are designed to address longer-term retention, which is a critical component to classroom learning and academic success. 

What can be done to address memory concerns in students?

Students who are not able to convert information from their working memory into long-term storage may be unable to learn in school and can have issues beyond the classroom socially, occupationally, and behaviorally. 

Pairing a memory test with achievement and IQ tests can help clinicians make more accurate diagnoses and create better recommendations and interventions. Memory assessment also can help to differentiate between conditions that are associated with memory problems (e.g., language impairment, learning disability, ASD) and those that are related to other domains, such as sustained attention or working memory (e.g., ADHD). 

Memory testing also helps identify individual cognitive profiles in conditions where memory problems may coexist with other cognitive problems, such as in developmental disorders, or with neurological disorders such as traumatic brain injury. 

Moreover, by identifying each child's unique profile of learning strengths and weaknesses, memory assessment provides critical pathways for establishing compensatory strategies and creating appropriate accommodations in the classroom and at home. For example, by determining if a child is a better visual or verbal learner, clinicians obtain valuable information on strengths and weaknesses in that child's learning. 

Rethinking the role of memory

Though people tend to think about memory in relation to its ability for encoding and recollection, ultimately, its role is to help individuals to accurately predict future events and make sound decisions for the future based on stored knowledge. When you think about memory using this perspective, assessing a child's current capacity for learning provides a way to measure future capacity for school and work performance. It is also an important way to identify areas where a student may benefit from remediation and support. 

How to choose the best test of memory for your school-age clients

If you are considering adding a memory test to your battery, here are some things to consider. 

A good memory test should: 

1. be able to assess a wide range of examinees referred for learning and academic problems, addressing the needs of school-aged children through young adults; 
2. be appropriate for use with both healthy examinees who may have minor learning delays as well as for those with multiple neurological and medical problems; 
3. offer portability and convenience for different settings; 
4. be suitable for both brief screenings and comprehensive psychoeducational and neuropsychological assessment; 
5. captivate the attention of distractible or very young examinees; 
6. offer relevancy to the daily lives of the children and young adults; 
7. include results that lead to recommendations across both home and school environments; 
8. accurately identify examinees whose low scores are due to behavioral, motivational, or emotional problems; and 
9. be usable with children who have motor or other impairments unrelated to memory. 

A good test of memory can do all these things and more. Thinking about adding a memory test to your battery? Learn more about the Child and Adolescent Memory Profile (ChAMP).