Text Comprehension in Chinese Children: Relative Contribution of Verbal Working Memory, Pseudoword Reading, Rapid Automatized Naming, and Onset-Rime Phonological Segmentation

The present study examined the role of verbal working memory (memory span, tongue twister), 2-character Chinese pseudoword reading, rapid automatized naming (letters, numbers), and phonological segmentation (deletion of rimes and onsets) in inferential text comprehension in Chinese in 518 Chinese children in Hong Kong in Grades 3 to 5. It was hypothesized that verbal working memory, together with a small contribution from the other constructs, would explain individual variation in the children's text comprehension. Structural equation modeling and hierarchical multiple regression analyses generally upheld the hypotheses. Though Chinese pseudoword reading did not play an important mediating role in the effect of verbal working memory on text comprehension, verbal working memory had strong effects on pseudoword reading and text comprehension. The findings on the Chinese language support current Western literature as well as display the differential role of the constructs in Chinese reading comprehension.