ABSTRACT

Comprehension involves the capacity to select relevant information from the text and to connect related propositions, even if these are separated by context and, in the same time, to inhibit irrelevant information. All these processes are closely linked to working memory. In our research we have explored the role of working memory in reading comprehension, comparing groups of children of poor and good comprehenders on a verbal and visual-spatial working memory tasks. In the tasks used both storage and processing has been varied systematically. Our hyphothesis was that less developed skilled comprehenders have less functional working memory capacity than their same age counterparts, and this phenomenon should be more strongly associated to combined functions of storage and processing than storage alone. We have also found differences between groups on the mean number of intrusion errors. Poor comprehenders made more intrusion errors, suggesting the presence of a problem in the inhibition processes. In contrast, good recall implies the capacity to maintain a high level of activation and at the same time to inhibit the activation of those words, that are irrelevant to demanded tasks.

KEYWORDS: text comprehension, working memory capacity, inhibition