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Lorem Ipsum Dolor Spring 2016
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Each trial consists of about 20 sounds. If a participant achieves accuracy rate over 60% for 2 out
of 3 successive trials, then the participant should move to a more difficult level in the next trial
(e.g., moving from 3-back to 4-back) .
An undergraduate student with blindness, a female Caucasian, 50 years old, participated
in our pilot study. She has been blind in both eyes for 6 years because of Cataract; usually uses
a computer program to convert words to sounds for reading and writing; and requires testing
accommodations provided by the university disability center. The participant worked on the N-
back program 3 sessions per week for 30 minutes per session. She started from 3-back during
the baseline assessment, and improved to 5-back after four training sessions (i.e., the participant
was able to recognize if the sixth sound was the same as the first sound, the seventh the same as
the second and so forth). Results suggested that the participant exhibited steady improvement in
auditory working memory capacity. Moreover, the participant also demonstrated significant
gains in the multi-step mathematics calculation test. The participant scored 20% (median)
correct during baseline for solving multiple step calculation problems, whereas she improved to
80% (median) correct during the posttest after four sessions of training. The participant also
demonstrated an improvement from baseline (raw score = 29) to posttest (raw score =36) on the
calculation subtest of Woodcock Johnson Test of Achievement (Woodcock, McGrew, &
Mather, 2001).
The limited data of this case study showed that the audio working memory training is
promising for students with VI. In addition to solving mathematic problems, individuals with VI
need strong auditory working memory capacity to remember and process audio information that
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