The contribution of cognitive flexibility to children's reading comprehension – the case for Danish

Multiple cognitive skills support the acquisition of proficient reading skills. Higher order processing abilities allowing the engagement and integration of multiple ideas collectively referred to as executive functions may be particularly important in reading comprehension. In the present study, 39 Danish school age children completed executive function tasks tapping cognitive flexibility and working memory, as well as measures of reading comprehension, nonword reading, receptive language and nonverbal intelligence. Results revealed that unique variance in children's sentence reading comprehension was explained by their abilities in the cognitive flexibility tasks even after differences in age, decoding, naming speed, receptive language, working memory and nonverbal intelligence were taken into account. The results are discussed in relation to the generalisability of the relationship between cognitive flexibility and reading comprehension across different languages and future research investigating the potential of these findings for reading intervention. Highlights What is already known about this topic Literacy development is linked to executive functions. Cognitive flexibility has been shown to contribute to children and young adults's reading comprehension. Danish children, learning to read in a deep orthography, have a relatively slow literacy development compared with children reading in more transparent languages. What this paper adds Cognitive flexibility explains significant and unique variance in Danish children's sentence reading comprehension after controlling for age, receptive syntactic language, decoding, nonverbal intelligence and naming speed. Even when working memory is added as a control variable, cognitive flexibility remains a significant predictor of sentence reading comprehension. The study controls for receptive language, grammar and syntax, which are characteristics of language impairment. Implications for theory, policy or practice The findings contribute to our understanding of the cognitive basis of reading comprehension. The study points to the importance of controlling for receptive language in reading studies. The findings suggest that it may be beneficial to provide specific training in cognitive flexibility for weak readers in a Danish setting.