Yew Chung College of Early Childhood Education, Hong Kong, China.
Br J Educ Psychol. 2021 Jun;91(2):600-616. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12382. Epub 2020 Oct 17.
Empirical evidence supports the importance of executive function (EF) in reading, but the underlying mechanism through which EF contributes to the reading process is unclear. The present study examined the direct and indirect effects of EF on reading comprehension through the indirect pathway of language and cognitive skills (i.e., syntactic awareness and text-connecting inferencing) among the beginning readers. The sample included one hundred and sixty-five 2 and 3 grade students. The participants were tested on working memory (visuospatial working memory and verbal working memory) and inhibition (prepotent response inhibition and cognitive inhibition), and their syntactic awareness, inference-making, and reading comprehension. The unitary EF construct was obtained by means of confirmatory factor analysis based on the structure of EF in middle childhood suggested in developmental studies. Structural equation modelling was used to examine the direct and indirect effects of EF on the reading outcome. The findings indicated that EF has a direct effect on reading comprehension among the beginning readers. The indirect pathway showed that EF supports the ability to evaluate on grammatical structure of sentences (i.e., syntactic awareness) during reading. However, the indirect effect of EF on reading via inference-making ability is insignificant. The findings highlight the contributions of EF to reading and provide empirical evidence to the hypothetical relation between EF and language skills suggested in DIER (Kim, 2020, Resarch Quarterly, 50, 459). It further extends our knowledge on the roles of EF in the reading process among the beginning readers. Future research directions are implicated as well.
实证证据支持执行功能（EF）在阅读中的重要性，但 EF 对阅读过程的贡献的潜在机制尚不清楚。本研究通过语言和认知技能（即句法意识和文本连接推理）的间接途径，考察了 EF 对初学者阅读理解的直接和间接影响。样本包括 165 名 2 年级和 3 年级学生。参与者接受了工作记忆（视空间工作记忆和言语工作记忆）和抑制（优势反应抑制和认知抑制）以及他们的句法意识、推理和阅读理解的测试。基于发展研究中提出的儿童中期 EF 结构的验证性因素分析，获得了单一的 EF 结构。结构方程模型用于检验 EF 对阅读结果的直接和间接影响。研究结果表明，EF 对初学者的阅读理解有直接影响。间接途径表明，EF 支持在阅读过程中评估句子的语法结构（即句法意识）的能力。然而，EF 通过推理能力对阅读的间接影响并不显著。研究结果强调了 EF 对阅读的贡献，并为 DIER（Kim，2020，研究季刊，50，459）中提出的 EF 与语言技能之间的假设关系提供了经验证据。它进一步扩展了我们对初学者阅读过程中 EF 作用的认识。还暗示了未来的研究方向。
