Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study investigated direct and indirect effects of executivefunctions (EF) on reading comprehension in 87 adolescents(mean age = 14.0 years, SD = 1.5). The operation span taskwas used to measure the updating aspect of working memory,the plus-minus task to measure task-switching, and thenumerical Stroop task to measure inhibitory control. Literacyskills tasks assessed nonword decoding, text recall/inference,and passage comprehension. Regression models indicated thatEF measures accounted for significant variance in literacyskills after controlling for age and fluid intelligence. Workingmemory was associated with passage comprehension, task-switching with nonword decoding, and inhibitory control withnonword decoding as well as text recall/inference. Parallelmediation models tested for indirect effects of EF constructsvia decoding and text recall/inference. Working memoryshowed direct and indirect effects on passage comprehension,the latter mediated by text recall/inference. Task-switchingwas associated with decoding, but its relation to passagecomprehension was not significant. Inhibitory control showedindirect effects on passage comprehension via decoding andtext recall/inference. Results indicate overlapping but distinctcontributions of EF to literacy skills.