TY - ABST

T1 - Remembering sentences is not all about memory: The relationship between syntax, working memory, and reading comprehension

AU - Poulsen, Mads

AU - Nielsen, Jessie Leigh

AU - Christensen, Rikke Vang

PY - 2021/7/15

Y1 - 2021/7/15

N2 - Purpose: Recent studies have found correlations between measures of reading comprehension and syntactic skills, that is proficiency in using word order signals to establish semantic relations. However, the task demands of syntactic tests are not very well understood. The present study investigated the properties of two measures of syntactic skill. The questions were 1) to what extent the measures correlated with each other (convergent validity) vs how well they correlated with decoding, vocabulary, and working memory (discriminant validity), 2) to what extent variance in the syntactic tasks was explained by vocabulary and memory, 3) and to what extent shared or unique variance in syntax predicted reading comprehension?Method: Eighty-six grade 6 students completed tests of reading comprehension, decoding, vocabulary, working memory, and syntax. The syntax tasks were sentence comprehension and sentence repetition with easy vocabulary, but difficult syntactic structures.Results: The two syntax measures were more highly correlated with each other than with decoding, vocabulary, and working memory. Vocabulary and working memory explained some variance in syntax, but the syntax tasks also explained unique variance in reading comprehension. However, the results were slightly less clear for sentence repetition than for sentence comprehension. Conclusions: There is valid variance in grade 6 students’ proficiency with using word-order information in comprehending sentences. On the surface, sentence level tasks appear memory dependent, and they are correlated with working memory. But working memory has little to do with why sentence-level tasks are correlated with reading comprehension.

AB - Purpose: Recent studies have found correlations between measures of reading comprehension and syntactic skills, that is proficiency in using word order signals to establish semantic relations. However, the task demands of syntactic tests are not very well understood. The present study investigated the properties of two measures of syntactic skill. The questions were 1) to what extent the measures correlated with each other (convergent validity) vs how well they correlated with decoding, vocabulary, and working memory (discriminant validity), 2) to what extent variance in the syntactic tasks was explained by vocabulary and memory, 3) and to what extent shared or unique variance in syntax predicted reading comprehension?Method: Eighty-six grade 6 students completed tests of reading comprehension, decoding, vocabulary, working memory, and syntax. The syntax tasks were sentence comprehension and sentence repetition with easy vocabulary, but difficult syntactic structures.Results: The two syntax measures were more highly correlated with each other than with decoding, vocabulary, and working memory. Vocabulary and working memory explained some variance in syntax, but the syntax tasks also explained unique variance in reading comprehension. However, the results were slightly less clear for sentence repetition than for sentence comprehension. Conclusions: There is valid variance in grade 6 students’ proficiency with using word-order information in comprehending sentences. On the surface, sentence level tasks appear memory dependent, and they are correlated with working memory. But working memory has little to do with why sentence-level tasks are correlated with reading comprehension.

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

T2 - ​Twenty-Eighth Annual Meeting for the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading

Y2 - 12 July 2021 through 14 August 2021

ER -