Working memory, comprehension ability and the resolution of text anomaly

TLDR

The study investigates working memory deficits in 7–8‑year‑olds who read accurately but comprehend poorly, and examines how working memory relates to text comprehension via an anomaly‑resolution task. In Experiment 2, participants listened to stories with anomalous emotional responses, and the study varied the temporal distance and order of resolution information relative to the anomaly to manipulate working‑memory load. Poor comprehenders performed worse than good comprehenders on a non‑linguistic working‑memory test and on anomaly‑resolution tasks only when resolution information was separated from the anomaly, supporting the view that text processing is constrained by working‑memory demands and that comprehension depends on general working‑memory efficiency.

Abstract

This article examines possible working memory deficits in 7–8‐year‐olds who are accurate readers but relatively poor comprehenders. In Expt 1, poor comprehenders scored below good comprehenders on a non‐linguistic test of working memory (reading series of digits and recalling the last digit in each series) on the more taxing items. Experiment 2 examined the relationship between working memory and text comprehension using an anomaly resolution task. Good and poor comprehenders heard stories describing an adult's anomalous emotional response to a child's action, some of which contained information to resolve the anomaly. The load on working memory imposed by the need to integrate the resolution with the anomaly was varied in two ways: the resolution was presented immediately next to, or two sentences distant from, the anomaly, and appeared either before or after the anomaly. Poor comprehenders were worse than good ones at anomaly resolution only when the anomalous and resolving information were separated. The results support the hypothesis that text processing is influenced by working memory demands and suggest that children's comprehension is related to the efficiency of a general non‐linguistic working memory system.