A comparison of cognitive flexibility and metalinguistic skills in adult good and poor comprehenders

Good and poor comprehenders exhibit different profiles of cognitive abilities, despite comparable decoding skills. Recent work suggests that executive functions, particularly cognitive flexibility, may underlie poor comprehenders' difficulties in childhood and adulthood. However, metalinguistic skills that enable readers to reflect on various aspects of print may also contribute to poor comprehenders' difficulties. We examined metalinguistic abilities (graphophonemic and syntactic) and cognitive flexibility (graphophonological–semantic and syntactic–semantic) in 24 good and 24 poor adult comprehenders, matched on age‐appropriate non‐word decoding skill and general cognitive ability. Groups differed significantly on graphophonemic awareness, syntactic awareness, and both measures of cognitive flexibility after verbal ability and word identification were controlled. Differences in cognitive flexibility remained significant even when relevant metacognitive skills were controlled. These data demonstrate additional cognitive differences between good and poor comprehenders that can inform theory and practice. What is already known about this topic: Deficits in executive functions contribute to poor comprehenders' difficulties in childhood and adulthood. Child and adolescent poor comprehenders are also lower in metalinguistic skills. What this paper adds: Adult good and poor comprehenders, matched on general cognitive ability and age‐appropriate non‐word decoding, differed significantly on syntactic and graphophonemic awareness, even when verbal ability and word identification were controlled. Groups also differed significantly on cognitive flexibility, even when verbal ability and word identification were controlled. Good and poor comprehenders' differences in cognitive flexibility remained significant when metalinguistic awareness was controlled; however, differences in metalinguistic awareness were attenuated when cognitive flexibility was controlled. Implications for theory, policy, or practice: Findings underscore the importance of metalinguistic awareness and executive functions, particularly cognitive flexibility, to understanding adult poor comprehenders' difficulties. Findings suggest that models of reading comprehension, such as the simple view, should be adjusted to include variables, like cognitive flexibility, that contribute to comprehension beyond decoding and verbal ability. Findings may have clinical utility for identification of poor comprehende