The role of executive function in reading comprehension among beginning readers

Abstract

Empirical evidence supports the importance of executive function (EF) in reading, but the underlying mechanism through which EF contributes to the reading process is unclear. The present study examined the direct and indirect effects of EF on reading comprehension through the indirect pathway of language and cognitive skills (i.e., syntactic awareness and text‐connecting inferencing) among the beginning readers. The sample included one hundred and sixty‐five 2nd and 3rd grade students. The participants were tested on working memory (visuospatial working memory and verbal working memory) and inhibition (prepotent response inhibition and cognitive inhibition), and their syntactic awareness, inference‐making, and reading comprehension. The unitary EF construct was obtained by means of confirmatory factor analysis based on the structure of EF in middle childhood suggested in developmental studies. Structural equation modelling was used to examine the direct and indirect effects of EF on the reading outcome. The findings indicated that EF has a direct effect on reading comprehension among the beginning readers. The indirect pathway showed that EF supports the ability to evaluate on grammatical structure of sentences (i.e., syntactic awareness) during reading. However, the indirect effect of EF on reading via inference‐making ability is insignificant. The findings highlight the contributions of EF to reading and provide empirical evidence to the hypothetical relation between EF and language skills suggested in DIER (Kim, 2020, Resarch Quarterly, 50, 459). It further extends our knowledge on the roles of EF in the reading process among the beginning readers. Future research directions are implicated as well.

The role of linguistic and cognitive skills in reading Chinese as a second language: A path analysis modeling approach

“…The mediating role of higher-order cognitive skills may be explained by the possibility that L2 Chinese readers need to consume more cognitive resources during inference making and monitoring to comprehend Chinese sentences. Hung's (2021) recent study also found the intertwined relationship between syntactic skills and cognitive skills and found an indirect effect of executive function (as measured by working memory tasks and inhibition tasks) on Chinese Grade 2 and 3 students' reading comprehension through syntactic awareness (as measured by a word order correction task). It should be noticed that executive function covered some aspects of working memory and monitoring.…”

“…However, whether syntactic knowledge may exert an impact on Chinese reading via cognitive skills has not been examined in depth. Hung’s (2021) recent study represents such an attempt to find the intertwined relationships between syntactic skills and cognitive skills. She found an indirect effect of executive function (as measured by working memory tasks and inhibition tasks) on Chinese Grade 2 and 3 students’ reading comprehension through syntactic awareness (as measured by a word order correction task).…”

“…Regarding the second question, based on previous research, language skills were intertwined with cognitive skills in reading comprehension, for example, the association between syntactic knowledge and executive function ( Hung, 2021 ), the relationship between vocabulary and inferencing ( Oakhill et al, 2015 ; Silva and Cain, 2015 ), and the relationship between vocabulary and monitoring ( Zargar et al, 2020 ). The higher-order cognitive skills may mediate the relationship between language skills and reading comprehension.…”

The Role of Executive Functions in Lexical Processing During Reading Comprehension

“…Follmer (2018), using meta‐analysis approach, found that EF as an integrated mechanism moderately correlates with reading comprehension ( r = .36), irrespective of the age groups and the measures used to assess reading comprehension and EF. Nevertheless, in addition to the direct effect of EF on reading, more researchers became interested in the indirect effects of EF on reading comprehension in an attempt to address the question, “Why does EF support reading?” For example, there is recent empirical evidence supporting that EF is associated with different reading processing skills, such as syntactic awareness (Hung, 2021), reading fluency (Cirino et al, 2019), and visual skills (Liu et al, 2019). In this connection, Kim (2017) proposed a more comprehensive theoretical model, direct and indirect effects model of reading (DIER), which hypothesized EF as the ultimate contributor to various reading processes such as inferencing, parsing, and other high‐order reading processes (e.g., theory of mind) and explained through them how EF contributed to the reading comprehension performance.…”

Esercizi di ricerca

“…Un ulteriore risultato mostra come le componenti esecutive di base, soprattutto le abilità di aggiornamento in memoria di lavoro, sono coinvolte in compiti di comprensione del testo sia nella modalità digitale che in quella cartacea. Il coinvolgimento delle FE in età scolare nella comprensione del testo cartaceo è un risultato consolidato da molti studi (Butterfuss e Kendeou 2018;Florit, Cain, e Mason 2020;Hung 2021), ma con il presente studio si dimostra che le FE sono coinvolte anche nella comprensione dei testi in modalità digitale.…”