Working memory capacity and text comprehension in young children

The present study examined the effects of working memory (WM) capacity on t ext comprehension in preschoolers. Based on the results of a Listening Span Test, 41 children 5 to 6 years old were placed in a low or high working-me mory group. Sentence Verification Technique tests (SVT) were used to assess the children's comprehension of text. To investigate whether the responses to the distracter of the children with low working memory reflected word r ecognition or inference, the children were tested with 2 forms of the distr acter: Distracter-A with the word presented in the Sentence Verification Te chnique test, and Distractor-B, without it. Integration was assessed by loc al/global inference questions. The results were as follows : The children w ith low working memory replied to Distractor-A as incorrectly as they did t o Distractor-B. Furthermore, they failed to make correct responses to globa l inference questions. The findings implied that although children with low working memory constructed inferential representations during listening, t hey failed to grasp the gist of the text. Global inference was positively c orrelated with local inference, Distracter-A, and Distractor-B; working mem ory capacity was positively correlated with global inference, Distracter-A, and Distractor-B. The results suggest that global integration may be follo wed by grasping the gist of text, and that working memory capacity may stro ngly affect the comprehension of higher levels of text.