For many years experiments with children aged 8-12 years have been done at eyelab. The working memory of children, some of whom with learning disorders, and its development is being explored. Empirical studies aim to show to what extend children with impairments of performance and dyslexia differ from those of children with average learning abilities to further understand learning disorders and possibly treatments to improve conditions.
Statistics read that 2.5% of German pupils attend special schools for educationally impaired children. Furthermore, 3% of students in German schools need to repeat grades, some of them several times, giving rise to a number of secondary disorders. This explains the importance of exploring the learning and achievement dysfunctions of children, in particular.
Of course, all of these studies take place with parental consent only.
In 2013 as part of the PIER-Study (study on intrapersonal developmental risks) the development of reading of primary-schoolers was examined. Up to this point, under the direction of Dr. Jochen Laubrock, Anja Sperlich and Johannes Meixnerhave tested about 130 children from first to sixth grade on three different times of (Messzeitpunkte) testing.
A longterm goal of this research is, besides the understanding of the factors and the processes of reading, to obtain a better ability to recognize and prevent problems and delays during the reading development.
Particularly interesting is the fact that the PIER-study is the first longitudinal project that examines reading in the german-speaking area. In doing so a large variety of variables and a unique method, the moving-window-paradigm, is used.