The Contribution of Working Memory to Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension Performance: Longitudinal Results

Abstract

Working memory, which is an important determinant of learning capacity, is a structure that affects the acquisition and development process of many academic skills, especially reading and writing. On the other hand, it is stated that the effect of working memory on these skills differs according to grade levels. The effect of the verbal and visual components of working memory creates different effects in different dimensions such as fluent reading and comprehension, and the orthographic characteristics of a language are an important determinant on the level of this effect. From this point of view, this study aims to examine longitudinally the prediction of first- and second-grade participants’ reading fluency and reading comprehension performances in terms of their verbal and visual working memory performances. These participants were evaluated in the kindergarten in a transparent orthography with an extremely high letter-sound relationship like Turkish. The research was carried out in schools that were randomly assigned from each stratum, representing the lower-middle and upper socioeconomic levels in the province of Ankara. The participants in the study consisted of 450 children (224 girls, 250 boys) who were aged five (Mean= 66.29 months, SD= 3.91) at the beginning of the study and who were not diagnosed with any cognitive and/or sensory disability. Measurements of the working memory performance of the participants in the kindergarten were conducted using the Working Memory Scale (WMS), and the measurements of the reading fluency and reading comprehension performances in the first and second grades were carried out using the Literacy Evaluation Battery (LAB). The results obtained from the study, in which working memory measurements were determined to predict reading fluency and reading comprehension skills, using the structural equation model, revealed that reading fluency and reading comprehension performances increased from the first grade to the second grade and from the fall semester to the spring semester at each grade level. The results also showed that the verbal and visual working memory performance in the kindergarten contributed to the reading fluency and reading comprehension success of the first and second grades in the fall and spring semesters at different levels.