Children's Narrative Comprehension: Effects of Working Memory and Sustained Attention

JESICA FORMOSO; ALEJANDRA CALERO; ANDREA ALVAREZ DREXLER; IRENE INJOQUE-RICLE; DEBORA BURÍN; JUAN PABLO BARREYRO

Praga

Congreso; 32nd International Congress of Psychology; 2021

Text comprehension involves the construction of a coherent mental representation. For children this is a cognitively demanding task. The purpose of this study is to analyze the role of working memory (WM) and sustained attention (SA) in the comprehension of narratives in 5- and 6-year-old children. For this, 100 children were administered two WM tasks and one of SA. To assess comprehension, they were asked 18 questions of literal and inferential content about three stories previously narrated by a professional storyteller. A correlation analysis showed that literal comprehension associated with forward digit span (Rho=0.37), backward digit span (Rho=0.37), and the SA task (Rho=-0.37). Inferences correlated with forward digit span (Rho=.36), backward digit span (Rho=0.46), and the SA task (Rho=-0.37). A comparison analysis indicated significant differences between 5- and 6-year-olds in SA (t(98)=3.08, SEM=5.41, p< .01), literal comprehension (t(98)=4.05, p