THE ROLE OF WORKING-MEMORY IN SKILLED AND LESS SKILLED READERS COMPREHENSION

The purpose of this study was to investigate (a) whether limitations i n less skilled reader's comprehension are related to specific or gener al working memory (WM) deficiencies and (b) whether WM and short-term memory (STM) independently contribute to the reading comprehension def icits in less skilled readers. For Experiment 1, performance of less s killed readers with learning disabilities (LD), chronological-age (CA) -matched, and reading comprehension level-matched children was compare d on verbal and visual-spatial WM measures. The results indicated that (a) less skilled readers' WM performance was comparable on visual-spa tial WM measures but inferior to CA-matched children on verbal WM meas ures and (b) less skilled readers' performance on visual-spatial and v erbal WM measures was superior to reading comprehension-matched counte rparts, with and without reading recognition scores partialed out in t he analysis. Experiment 2 compared children, subgrouped into high and low reading comprehension and high and low reading recognition on WM a nd phonological STM tasks. The results indicated that the comorbid gro up (low word recognition and low comprehension) had combined WM and ST M deficits. The poor comprehension-only group had low WM but average p honological STM performance, whereas the opposite profile occurred for the poor reading recognition-only group. The results support the hypo thesis 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 ex ecutive system may contribute to the reading comprehension deficits in less skilled readers.