Language skills, and not executive functions, predict the development of reading comprehension of early readers: evidence from an orthographically transparent language

Abstract

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 strong enough to clearly support or refute this hypothesis. In this short-term longitudinal study, we used latent variables to test whether executive functions have direct effects on the development of reading comprehension in 184 Romanian second graders, beyond fluent decoding and oral language skills. The results indicated that the initial stages of reading comprehension were associated with executive functions, but only the language skills could independently predict the development of reading comprehension. Our findings show that executive functions do not have a significant direct effect on the development of reading comprehension in early readers beyond fluent decoding and oral language skills in languages with transparent orthography. The results also suggest that once children learn to decode well, their language skills (and not their executive functions) have a strong effect on the development of reading comprehension. Therefore, reading interventions in elementary school should stress on the development of oral language skills.

The Primacy of Science in Communicating Advances in the Science of Reading

“…This conclusion is supported in some 150 studies, involving individuals ranging from beginning reader to expert, from child to adult, and across poverty level and minority status (Hoover & Tunmer, 2020a; Kilpatrick, 2020). This conclusion is also supported in studies conducted on reading in several different languages (Dolean, Lervåg, Visu‑Petra, & Melby‑Lervåg, 2021). In short, based on what we currently know, the SVR, through the weight of the evidence supporting it, is a valid account of reading capacity that must be accommodated in models of how that accomplishment is achieved.…”

“…But let us consider a recent example of a strong test of this view of EF skills as proximal factors, one that employed multiple measures for each of the critical constructs that were then used to derive latent indices of those constructs. Based on longitudinal data from 184 Romanian children spanning second grade, Dolean, Lervåg, Visu-Petra, and Melby-Lervåg (2021) reported that in their structural equation models, the latent variables of word recognition and language comprehension made significant contributions to reading comprehension, accounting for 92% of its variance, while that for latent EF skills made no additional contribution. They also reported that once word recognition was mastered (which is achieved relatively quickly in the transparent Romanian orthography), language comprehension showed a strong effect on reading comprehension while word recognition and EF skills did not.…”

A Different View on the Simple View of Reading

“…First, there be greater uniformity and agreement on the skills different tasks are actually assessing, and similar tasks with similar labels can be used across studies. Second, similarly labeled tasks may help better determine whether certain individual metalinguistic skills contribute to reading comprehension or whether the different metalinguistic skills represent a more general construct that helps explains reading comprehension performance (e.g., Dolean et al, 2021). A review of past investigations of the SVR model suggest this latter notion may be true.…”

A Different View on the Simple View of Reading

“…First, there will be greater uniformity and agreement on the skills different tasks are actually assessing, and similar tasks with similar labels can be used across studies. Second, similarly labeled tasks may help better determine whether certain individual metalinguistic skills contribute to reading comprehension or whether the different metalinguistic skills represent a more general construct that helps explains reading comprehension performance (e.g., Dolean et al, 2021). A review of past investigations of the SVR model suggest this latter notion may be true.…”