Reading and listening comprehension: shared or modality specific?
In this project we wanted to investigate which cognitive skills contribute to listening and reading comprehension. This would answer the question whether whether reading and listening comprehension are the same comprehension process, but with information presented in different modalities, or whether they are unique comprehension processes.
The project consisted of two studies . The first resulted in a master thesis, and the second in a published article .The project took place in 2015 - 2017 and was carried out together with Marloes Muijselaar, Marije Boon and Elise de Bree from the Child Development and Education Department at the University of Amsterdam.
Study 1: Cognitive skills contributing to listening comprehension
In this study we aimed to investigate the contribution to the foundational cognitive and language skills short term and working memory, inhibition and sustained attention, and vocabulary to listening comprehension in 2nd to 4th grade students. We found that only reading fluency and vocabulary were significant predictors of listening comprehension. None of the other memory and attention skills contributed to listening comprehension. These skills might only cover a small part of the whole process of listening comprehension, or contribute indirectly to listening comprehension.
This work was not published, but the (Dutch) bachelor thesis can be read here.
Study 2: Shared and specific cognitive contributors to reading and listening comprehension
In this study we wanted to understand whether reading and listening comprehension are the same comprehension process, but with information presented in different modalities, or are distinct comprehension processes. Our study showed that in 2nd and 3rd grade students, reading and listening comprehension partly overlap (34-40%) and that especially vocabulary contributes to both comprehension types. A substantial part of the two skills does not overlap, indicating room for modality-specific processes and components. The study could not determine which skills uniquely contributed to either reading or listening comprehension, and as such the modality-specific processes of reading and listening comprehension not yet fully understood. This work is published here.