An abundance of data has pointed to the human brain's plasticity and ability to adapt to change [30] [33]. Nevertheless, the persistence of reading deficits into adulthood despite the accumulation of experience in reading has been attributed in part to the closing of ‘critical’, early-life time windows of increased brain plasticity [62] [64] in which neuronal systems are particularly susceptible to shaping by experience. These findings led to the conclusion that remedial interventions would be less effective in adults [62]. However, evidence is accumulating in support of the notion that rather than having less effective skill-learning (‘how to’, procedural) or memory consolidation processes per se, adults may be more selective in terms of procedural memory consolidation compared to children (e.g., [37]). This was borne out in our study where both groups of adults showed an increase in the working memory capacity after training. This may account, in part, for the discrepancy between a simple notion of maturational windows of opportunity in the acquisition of skills on one hand, and the accumulating evidence for very effective skill-learning in adults on the
