A cognitive perspective in the study of text comprehension

Abstract

Working memory and, particularly, the mechanism of inhibition have a crucial role in text comprehension. The aim of this research was to study the relation between the ability of reading comprehension and working memory (WM). We test the hypothesis that difficulty in inhibiting information can influence comprehension. In the first experiment, 153 children aged 9 and 12 years were evaluated with a test of reading comprehension and a WM task. In the second experiment 24 children were evaluated with the Hayling Test that asses the ability to inhibit verbal responses. The results evidence a correlation between WM and text comprehension ability. Children with difficulties in text comprehension obtained a significantly lower performance in memory and inhibition tests, suggesting that the relation between reading understanding and WM could depend on the skills to inhibit irrelevant information. Keywords: Comprehension; text; working memory; inhibition verbal.