The influence of cognitive ability in Chinese reading comprehension: can working memory updating change Chinese primary school students' reading comprehension performance?

Jiacheng Gao; Zimo Yang; Fengjuan Li; Bahtinsagul Yasen; Suxia Wen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1283781

The influence of cognitive ability in Chinese reading comprehension: can working memory updating change Chinese primary school students' reading comprehension performance?

Front Psychol. 2023 Sep 19:14:1283781. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1283781. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Jiacheng Gao^{1

2}, Zimo Yang¹, Fengjuan Li^{1

3}, Bahtinsagul Yasen¹, Suxia Wen¹

Affiliations

¹ Xinjiang Key Laboratory of Mental Development and Learning Science, College of Psychology, Xinjiang Normal University, Urumqi, China.
² Department of Psychology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
³ Department of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.

Abstract

With the development of educational cognitive neuroscience, language instruction is no longer perceived as mechanical teaching and learning. Individual cognitive proficiency has been found to play a crucial role in language acquisition, particularly in the realm of reading comprehension. The primary objective of this study was to investigate two key aspects: firstly, to assess the predictive effects of the central executive (CE) on the Chinese reading comprehension scores of Chinese primary school students, and secondly, to explore the influence of CE training on the Chinese reading comprehension performance of Chinese primary school students. Chinese primary school students were recruited as participants. Experiment 1 used a Chinese N-back task, a Chinese Stroop task, and a number-pinyin conversion task to investigate the predictive effect of the CE components on Chinese reading comprehension. Experiment 2, based on the results of Experiment 1, used the Chinese character N-back training to explore the influence of updating training on Chinese reading comprehension. The findings from Experiment 1 underscored that CE had a predictive effect on Chinese reading comprehension scores. And updating had a prominent role in it. Experiment 2 revealed that the experimental group exhibited an enhancement in their updating performance following N-back training. Although the reading comprehension performance of the two groups after training did not produce significant differences in total scores, the experimental group showed maintained and higher microscopic reading comprehension scores than the control group in the more difficult post-test. In summary, this study yields two primary conclusions: (1) CE was able to predict Chinese reading comprehension scores. Updating has an important role in prediction. (2) Updating training enhances students' updating performance and positively influences students' Chinese microscopic reading comprehension performance.

Keywords: Chinese reading comprehension; central executive; primary school; updating; working memory.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was funded by the Projects of the Humanities and Social Science on Young Fund of the Ministry of Education of China (22YJCZH033) and the Projects of Xinjiang Key Laboratory of Mental Development and Learning Science Fund (XJDX2003-2023-03).