The role of executive functions in 9- to 12-year-old children's sentence processing: An eye-movement study

IF 2 2区教育学 Q2 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Journal of Research in Reading Pub Date : 2024-04-10 DOI:10.1111/1467-9817.12449

Nannan Cui, Yang Wang, Jiefei Luo, Yan Wu

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Abstract

Background

Executive function (EF) plays a crucial role in children's reading. However, previous studies were based on offline products of reading comprehension. Online research is needed to reveal the core mechanisms underlying children's reading processing. By measuring children's working memory (WM) and cognitive flexibility (CF), we investigated whether individual differences in EF could modulate sentence processing and, if so, how they exert their roles.

Methods

The present study manipulated semantic congruency and the association between crucial words in a sentence. We recruited 89 Chinese children aged 9–12 years and monitored their eye movement.

Results

The study revealed distinct associations between reader- and text-related characteristics, as evidenced by eye-movement patterns during reading. A significant incongruency effect was observed in reading, underscoring the children's capacity to discern incongruent information. Children's WM and CF were found to modulate this process. Specifically, high-WM children showed more effective integration of incongruent information when the textual context was closely related during the later-stage processing. In contrast, low-WM children faced more challenges with incongruent words. Additionally, CF was influential during the early processing period. High-CF children exhibited longer early-stage reading times for incongruent words in associated contexts.

Conclusions

Individual differences in EF can modulate children's online sentence processing. However, different EF components may play different roles.

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执行功能在 9 至 12 岁儿童句子加工中的作用：眼动研究

执行功能（EF）在儿童阅读中起着至关重要的作用。然而，以往的研究都是基于阅读理解的离线产品。要揭示儿童阅读处理的核心机制，需要进行在线研究。通过测量儿童的工作记忆（WM）和认知灵活性（CF），我们研究了EF的个体差异是否会调节句子加工，如果会，它们是如何发挥作用的。我们招募了 89 名 9-12 岁的中国儿童，对他们的眼球运动进行了监测。研究发现，阅读过程中的眼球运动模式表明，读者和文本相关特征之间存在明显的关联。在阅读过程中观察到了明显的不一致性效应，凸显了儿童辨别不一致信息的能力。研究发现，儿童的 WM 和 CF 能够调节这一过程。具体来说，在后期处理过程中，当文本上下文密切相关时，高WM 儿童能更有效地整合不一致信息。相比之下，低记忆力儿童在处理不一致词语时面临更多挑战。此外，CF 在早期加工阶段也有影响。EF的个体差异可以调节儿童的在线句子加工。然而，不同的EF成分可能发挥不同的作用。

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来源期刊

Journal of Research in Reading Multiple-

CiteScore

4.50

自引率

0.00%

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期刊介绍： Journal of Research in Reading provides an international forum for researchers into literacy. It is a refereed journal, principally devoted to reports of empirical studies in reading and related fields, and to informed reviews of relevant literature. The journal welcomes papers researching issues related to the learning, teaching and use of literacy in a variety of contexts; papers on the history and development of literacy; papers about policy and strategy for literacy as related to children and adults. Journal of Research in Reading encourages papers within any research paradigm and from researchers in any relevant field such as anthropology, cultural studies, education, history of education, language and linguistics, philosophy, psychology and sociology.

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