Elsevier

Intelligence

Volume 21, Issue 1, July–August 1995, Pages 83-108
Intelligence

The role of working memory in skilled and less skilled readers' comprehension

https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-2896(95)90040-3Get rights and content

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate (a) whether limitations in less skilled reader's comprehension are related to specific or general working memory (WM) deficiencies and (b) whether WM and short-term memory (STM) independently contribute to the reading comprehension deficits in less skilled readers. For Experiment 1, performance of less skilled readers with learning disabilities (LD), chronological-age (CA)-matched, and reading comprehension level-matched children was compared on verbal and visual- spatial WM measures. The results indicated that (a) less skilled readers' WM performance was comparable on visual-spatial WM measures but inferior to CA-matched children on verbal WM measures and (b) less skilled readers' performance on visual-spatial and verbal WM measures was superior to reading comprehension-matched counterparts, with and without reading recognition scores partialed out in the analysis. Experiment 2 compared children, subgrouped into high and low reading comprehension and high and low reading recognition on WM and phonological STM tasks. The results indicated that the comorbid group (low word recognition and low comprehension) had combined WM and STM deficits. The poor comprehension-only group had low WM but average phonological STM performance, whereas the opposite profile occurred for the poor reading recognition-only group. The results support the hypothesis that less skilled readers suffer WM deficits that contribute to comprehension problems, independent of their problems in phonological coding. The results also support the notion that constraints in an executive system may contribute to the reading comprehension deficits in less skilled readers.

References (49)

  • F. Vellutino et al.

    Bridging the gap between cognitive and neuropsychological conceptualizations of reading disability

    Learning and Individual Differences

    (1991)
  • J.E. Backman et al.

    Reading level design: Conceptual and methodological issues in reading research

    Psychological Bulletin

    (1984)
  • A.D. Baddeley

    Working-memory

    (1986)
  • J.A. Bowey et al.

    A reading level design study of phonological skills underlying fourth-grade children's word reading difficulties

    Child Development

    (1992)
  • J. Cantor et al.

    Working memory capacity as long-term memory activation: An individual-differences approach

    Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

    (1993)
  • R.A. Carlson et al.

    Acquisition of problem-solving skill: Levels of organization and use of working-memory

    Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

    (1990)
  • R. Case

    Intellectual development: Birth to adulthood

    (1985)
  • S. Crain et al.

    Syntatic complexity and reading acquisition

  • M. Daneman

    Reading and working-memory

  • M. Daneman et al.

    Individual differences in integrating information between and within sentences

    Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition

    (1983)
  • M. Daneman et al.

    Working-memory and reading skill reexamined

  • F.N. Dempster

    Short-term memory development in childhood and adolescence

  • P. Dixon et al.

    Word knowledge and working memory as predictors of reading skill

    Journal of Educational Psychology

    (1988)
  • L. Dunn et al.

    Peabody Individual Achievement Test

    (1970)
  • Cited by (161)

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    Study 1 was partially supported by Peloy endowment funds from the University of California at Riverside and an SSHRC grant from University of British Columbia to H. Lee Swanson. Study 2 was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awarded to Virginia Berninger (No. 25858-2).

    We appreciate the critical comments of Robert Greene and Randell Engle on an earlier version of this article.

    View full text