Contributions of cognitive flexibility to reading comprehension in chinese beginning readers

AbstractThe present study examined whether and how early cognitive flexibility, metalinguistic awareness, including phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA), Chinese word reading (CWR), and listening comprehension (LC) influenced Chinese children ’s later reading comprehension. In total, 153 Chinese children were recruited. Path analysis showed that cognitive flexibility measured when the children were in Grade 1 (Mage = 85.92 months,SD = 4.36) significantly explained the variance of later reading comprehension at Grade 3 (Mage = 103.03 months,SD = 3.80) and all concurrent domain-specific precursors of reading comprehension, except LC. Multiple mediation analyses further demonstrated that MA and CWR partially mediated the effect of cognitive flexibility on reading comprehension. Also, the effect of cognitive flexibility on reading compr ehension was mediated partially by two two-mediator paths, PA-LC and MA-CWR. These findings demonstrated that cognitive flexibility could be related to reading comprehension directly and indirectly through multiple pathways involving metalinguistic awareness, word reading, and language comprehension . These findings particularly highlighted the roles of MA and word reading in the association between Chinese readers’ cognitive flexibility and their reading comprehension.
Source: Reading and Writing - Category: Child Development Source Type: research