COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC FACTORS PREDICTING DIFFERENT READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS IN THIRD AND FOURTH GRADE STUDENTS

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which linguistic skills-such as vocabulary and morphological awareness-and cognitive skills-such as planning and attention-predict performance in different reading comprehension tasks, after controlling for the effects of age and reading fluency.Eighty-four Grade 3 to 4 Greek speaking children were assessed on measures of receptive vocabulary, morphological awareness, planning, attention, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension.The results of multiple hierarchical regression analyses indicated that: (a) morphological awareness was the only factor that predicted performance in reading comprehension tasks requiring different levels of comprehension, after controlling for the effects of age, reading fluency, vocabulary and cognitive skills, and (b) vocabulary and attention significantly predicted performance exclusively in the reading comprehension task that required a relatively higher level of comprehension.Taken together, these findings suggest that the extent to which specific linguistic and cognitive factors predict performance in reading comprehension tasks may vary depending on the type of task.