Individual differences in working memory and reading

According to the executive attention view, the attentional component primarily drives the predictive validity of working memory capacity measures.

“it is primarily the attentional component that drives the predictive validity of working memory capacity measures (e.g., Daneman & Carpenter, 1980;Engle et al., 1999).”

Working-memory abilities were assessed with Salthouse and Babcock's (1991) computation-span test, a variant of the reading-span test.

“Working-memory abilities were assessed with Salthouse and Babcock's (1991) computation-span test, which is a variant of the well-known reading-span test (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980).”

The Canadian working memory model emphasizes the trade-off between storage and processing, as evidenced by its operationalization, which measures working memory capacity as sentence span, where sentences have to be comprehended and evaluated for meaning while a verbal storage load (the last word of each sentence) steadily increases in magnitude.

“emphasizes the trade-off between storage and processing, as is evidenced by its operationalization, which measures working memory capacity as sentence span, where sentences have to be comprehended and evaluated for meaning while a verbal storage load ~the last word of each sentence!steadily increases in magnitude+”

Individual differences in sentence span relate to language learning aptitude: people with better sentence span are better language learners in both L1 and L2.

“People with better sentence span are better language learners, both in L1 ~Daneman & Carpenter, 1980;Daneman & Case, 1981;Daneman & Green, 1986;Daneman & Merikle, 1996;Engle, Tuholski, Laughlin, &Conway, 1999! andin L2 ~Harrington &Sawyer, 1992!+”

Individual differences in the capacity of the central executive are commonly assessed using complex memory paradigms requiring simultaneous storage and processing of information.

“Individual differences in the capacity of the central executive are commonly assessed using complex memory paradigms requiring simultaneous storage and processing of information.”