The paper presents an overview of research on working memory as a predictor of early school achievements. We contrast two main areas of research on the role of working memory in school achievements: the first concerns the structural model of working memory and the second focuses on executive functions. Then, we discuss the facet model of working memory as a promising approach merging the two research branches on working memory tasks as predictors of early school achievements. At the end we present exemplary results of the research conducted on a national sample of six- and seven-year-olds in Poland, which indicates strong relation of working memory functions with the measures of competences in mathematics, reading, and writing. Additionally, the mediation analyses, with parents’ education as a covariate, indicate that the influence of age on achievements in math, reading, and writing in six- and seven-year olds is mediated by working memory functions.

The aim of this paper is to give an insight into the reading process and working memory as factor that affects this process at early stages of its development. The basic assumption of the psycholinguistic view is that reading is a linguistic, metalinguistic and metacognitive activity that requires conscious control of cognitive processes involved. The study covered 1138 children from reception class as well as the 1 st grade. The subjects were examined using the Reading Tests Battery that offers a comprehensive evaluation of various aspects of reading: letter recognition and naming, isolated words decoding and pseudowords decoding. Executive functions were measured with the use of the Working Memory Test. Each task of the test corresponds to one of the working memory functions highlighted by Klaus Oberauer: simultaneous storage and processing, supervision and coordination. The main results confirm a significant relationship between general indicators of working memory and the results of reading tests. The highest correlations were obtained for the Letter Naming and Letter Recognition tests as well as all three working memory test measures. Monitoring function did not correlate with the reading measures, and the function of coordination featured a very low level of covariance.