Spoken sentence comprehension by good and poor readers: a study with the Token Test

Good and poor readers in the third grade (age nine years) were examined on a test of immediate memory for word strings and on a version of the Token Test (De Renzi and Faglioni, 1978) to assess sentence comprehension. The poor readers made more errors than the good readers in recall of word strings and on some Token Test items. Those Token Test items that impose the greatest burden on short-term memory were the most sensitive to reader group differences; syntactic complexity alone did not distinguish the groups. The findings support other indications that poor readers make less effective use of working memory in processing spoken sentences than good readers; they do not indicate a syntactic deficit on the part of the poor readers.