Phonemic awareness (PA) refers to the ability to reflect on and manipulate phonemes. The development of the ability to become aware of and conduct mental operations on phonemes might involve higher-order cognitive processes, such as executive functions (EFs), which help modulate attention to goal-relevant information and support behavioral…

This study aimed to examine the unique longitudinal role of theory of mind (ToM) on reading comprehension among primary school children, while controlling for other influencing factors. It also examined how this impact varies by grade, text genre, and processing level. A sample of 430 Chinese children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 was observed over a…

This study examined whether the assessment of executive function (EF) added a unique contribution to second language (L2) reading comprehension in children in French immersion. Participants were 8- to 9-year old children who completed a collection of measures assessing French reading (i.e., word reading, decoding, and reading comprehension ) and…

This study aimed to investigate the meta-linguistic and executive function profile for different subtypes of reading difficulties (RD) among upper-elementary students. Based on 1,112 third- to fifth-grade Chinese-speaking children, we identified 72 with decoding difficulties (DD), 74 with comprehension difficulties (CD), and 29…

This research aims to evaluate the predicting role of executive functions, specially inhibition and flexibility, in reading comprehension. Participants were evaluated with inhibition and flexibility measures in first- grade, and later in third- grade their reading comprehension, oral and silent reading fluency, as well as their decoding skills…

The simple view of reading proposes that the development of reading comprehension in early elementary school is best predicted by children's fluent decoding and oral language skills. Recent studies challenge this view and suggest that executive functions should also be included in this theoretical model; however, the empirical evidence is not…

Research Findings: This study investigated the bidirectional relations among paired associate learning (PAL), language-specific skills and Chinese word reading in kindergarten children from second year (K2) to third year (K3). We tested 204 children on four mapping conditions of PAL (i.e., visual-verbal, verbal-verbal, visual-visual, and…

This study compared how lexical quality (vocabulary and decoding) and executive control (working memory and inhibition) predict reading comprehension directly as well as indirectly, via syntactic integration, in monolingual and bilingual fourth grade children. The participants were 76 monolingual and 102 bilingual children (mean age 10 years,…