Differential Associations of Executive-Function Components with Initial Status and Change in Chinese Character Reading During Preschool

Executive functions may contribute differently to early literacy, but it remains unclear whether their component-specific associations differ with respect to children’s existing reading knowledge and subsequent growth. This question is particularly relevant in character-based writing systems, where learning to read requires children to establish and retrieve associations between visually complex written forms and their pronunciations. This one-year longitudinal study followed 131 kindergarten children across three timepoints and examined whether baseline working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive-flexibility task performance was associated with initial status and subsequent change in Chinese character reading. A latent growth model was estimated with age, gender, nonverbal intelligence, and socioeconomic status as covariates. Verbal working-memory performance was consistently and positively associated with initial reading status but not with subsequent change. No statistically significant unique associations were found for inhibitory-control performance. Cognitive-flexibility performance was not consistently associated with initial status but was negatively associated with subsequent reading change; exploratory analyses suggested that this association was stronger among younger kindergarten children. Overall, the findings indicate that different executive-function components may relate differently to existing reading knowledge and subsequent reading growth during the preschool period. They also highlight the importance of considering developmental stage, task characteristics, and measurement constraints when examining executive function and reading relations across writing systems.