How executive functions contribute to reading comprehension

Abstract

Background. Executive functions have been proposed to account for individual variation in reading comprehension beyond the contributions of decoding skills and language skills. However, insight into the direct and indirect effects of multiple executive functions on fifthgrade reading comprehension, while accounting for decoding and language skills, is limited. Aim. The present study investigated the direct and indirect effects of fourth-grade executive functions (i.e., working memory, inhibition, and planning) on fifth-grade reading comprehension, after accounting for decoding and language skills. Sample. The sample included 113 fourth-grade children (including 65 boys and 48 girls; Age M = 9.89; SD = .44 years). Methods. The participants were tested on their executive functions (working memory, inhibition and planning), and their decoding skills, language skills (vocabulary and syntax knowledge) and reading comprehension, one year later. Results. Using structural equation modelling, the results indicated direct effects of working memory and planning on reading comprehension, as well as indirect effects of working memory and inhibition via decoding (v 2 = 2.46). Conclusions. The results of the present study highlight the importance of executive functions for reading comprehension after taking variance in decoding and language skills into account: Both working memory and planning uniquely contributed to reading comprehension. In addition, working memory and inhibition also supported decoding. As a practical implication, educational professionals should not only consider the decoding and language skills children bring into the classroom, but their executive functions as well. Becoming proficient in reading comprehension is an important goal of primary education. Reading comprehension, however, is a complex process, which requires several higher cognitive skills. As proposed by the 'Simple View of Reading' (Hoover & Gough, 1990) and consistently supported by other studies, reading comprehension is largely predicted by decoding and listening comprehension (i.e., the linguistic processes involved in the comprehension of oral language, which is commonly assessed with language skills such as This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

The Science of Reading Progresses: Communicating Advances Beyond the Simple View of Reading

“…Several EF skills contribute directly to reading: cognitive flexibility (also called shifting; Georgiou, & Das, 2018; Kieffer, Vukovic, & Berry, 2013), inhibitory control (Kieffer et al, 2013; Potocki, Sanchez, Ecalle, & Magnan, 2017), working memory (Nouwens, Groen, Kleemans, & Verhoeven, 2020; Potocki et al, 2017; Sesma, Mahone, Levine, Eason, & Cutting, 2009), planning (Nouwens et al, 2020; Sesma et al, 2009), and attentional control (Conners, 2009). These contributions make sense, given the complexity of reading processes that require the ability to direct attention to particular aspects of text (attentional control), build and maintain a model of text meaning while decoding the words in the text (working memory), suppress distracting information (inhibitory control), shift continuously between key processes (cognitive flexibility), and plan and manage one’s progression toward the goal of a reading task (planning).…”

Home activities and cognitive skills in relation to early literacy and numeracy: testing a multifactorial model in preschoolers

“…Turning, more specifically, on the relationship between EFs and early literacy skills, findings showed that EF tasks have domain-general predictive power for pre-academic abilities that are less automatic and require more effortful processing of information, such as word writing at preschool age (Schwarz & Shaul, 2018); in addition, it emerged that inhibition tasks that involve a verbal component are more tightly related to early reading skills compared to nonverbal inhibition tasks (Foy & Mann, 2013). However, literacy skills might be less related to EFs when considering more automatized skills (e.g., letter knowledge, word recognition) (Blair et al, 2015), but EFs turn out to be meaningful predictors of higher order linguistic skills such as reading comprehension (Nouwens et al, 2020). Phonological WM is highly related to reading skills (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993;Wagner & Torgesen, 1987), although it is an object of debate whether phonological WM has a causal role in literacy development or whether it involves, as reading skills do, access to representations that underlie phonological awareness tasks (Melby-Lervåg et al, 2012).…”

Cerebral blood flow and cognitive outcome after pediatric stroke in the middle cerebral artery

“…Cerebral blood flow imbalance of the MCA was negatively associated with working memory performance in children after pediatric AIS. Working memory is a crucial functional domain that underlies many higher-order cognitive functions such as reading, arithmetics and self-regulation processes [59]. Mean working memory performance was 0.55 standard deviations below the mean in the present patient sample and presents the most pronounced deficit among the cognitive functions measured.…”