Listening and reading text comprehension in second graders: the role of vocabulary and of verbal working memory

The aim of the current study is twofold: a) to analyse the relationship between listening and reading text comprehension; b) to identify the relations between text comprehension and other linguistic and non-linguistic abilities, in particular verbal ability, assessed through the Vocabulary task of the WISC-R scale, and verbal working memory, assessed through direct and reverse word span tasks. The hypothesis is that listening and reading text comprehension are related in second grade children and they have the same relationship with verbal ability and verbal working memory. The study was conducted on second grade Italian children aged between 7;3 and 8;9 years. The results show a strong relation between listening and reading text comprehension, and between these and verbal ability. These correlations are coherent with existing results in literature (Cain, Oakhill 2006). No correlation was fund between text comprehension, both listening and reading, and verbal working memory This result is discussed in the light of the memory tasks employed.