How does Verbal Working Memory Contribute to Reading Comprehension? Examining the Mediation of Reading Comprehension Components

Although an association between working memory and reading comprehension has been shown, how working memory contributes to reading comprehension remains unclear. This study explored whether verbal working memory directly and indirectly predicts reading comprehension via the mediation of the component skills and knowledge of reading comprehension. The participants were 245 Chinese Cantonese-speaking Grade 1 primary school students with the mean age of around 7 years old. They were tested on a series of tasks measuring their working memory, language and reading skills, and topic knowledge. The results of structural equation modeling showed that working memory predicted reading comprehension primarily through the mediation of word decoding, syntactic and text structure knowledge, and topic knowledge, while it still had a small direct effect on reading comprehension. The implications for theories and practice were discussed.