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Updated: Jun 16, 2026
09:05
Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)
Published on: June 12, 2017
Narrative text comprehension: how good and poor reading comprehenders use general working memory and specific
Caterina Artuso1, Carmen Belacchi2
1University of Genova, Genova, Italy. caterina.artuso@unige.it.
Cognitive Processing
|June 15, 2026
Summary
Good reading comprehension relies on working memory (WM) attentional skills, especially backward span tasks. Semantic organization, particularly taxonomic associations, also plays a key role in reading skills for children.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Educational Psychology
Background:
- Reading comprehension is crucial for academic success.
- Working memory (WM) and semantic organization are hypothesized to influence reading skills.
- Understanding these factors can help identify and support struggling readers.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the distinct roles of verbal working memory and semantic organization in reading comprehension.
- To compare these cognitive resources in poor and good reading comprehenders.
- To determine if semantic resources contribute independently to reading comprehension.
Main Methods:
- Selected 20 poor and 18 good reading comprehenders (aged 7.5-11 years).
- Administered a range of verbal working memory tasks with varying attentional demands (e.g., backward span).
- Assessed semantic working memory using taxonomic and thematic organization tasks.
Main Results:
- Working memory attentional resources, particularly backward span performance, differentiated between reading skill levels.
- Both taxonomic and thematic semantic organization resources showed a specific contribution.
- Good comprehenders exhibited stronger taxonomic associations compared to poor comprehenders.
Conclusions:
- Working memory attentional capacity is vital for reading comprehension.
- Semantic memory resources, especially taxonomic organization, uniquely contribute to reading comprehension.
- Targeting both WM and semantic skills may enhance reading interventions for children.
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