engleski

Working memory in blind and partially sighted Croatian adolescents

Cognitive abilities of blind and partially sighted children have been understudied in Croatia, and there is very little research on it. Since working memory plays quite an important role in cognitive functioning, the goal of this research was to explore the status of working memory in blind and partially sighted Croatian adolescents. To do so, 195 adolescents ages 12 to 16 completed the Wechsler Intelligent Scale for Children-IV (WISC-IV) at the Center for Education and Rehabilitation (CER) Vinko Bek. 75% of the participants were partially sighted, whereas the remaining 25% were blind. Males and females were represented in almost equal proportion. Participants’ scores on the Working Memory Index (WMI) were analyzed and compared to other factors including the age of the onset of the visual impairment, additional developmental difficulties, and professional help. Our findings showed a significant low negative correlation between WMI and age of the onset of the visual impairment, suggesting that later onset is related to lower WMI score. Moreover, there were significant differences in WMI between groups with and without additional developmental difficulties. Professional help appears to have low positive effect on the WMI performance. These scores included performances on the following WISC-IV subtests: Digit Span, Letter Number Sequencing and Arithmetic. Results showed that there were no significant differences in working memory performances in between blind and partially sighted adolescents.

Blind and partially sighted children ; Working memory ; Cognitive abilities ; WISC-IV

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