Background: Executive functions have been proposed to account for individual variation in reading comprehension beyond the contributions of decoding skills and language skills. However, insight into the direct and indirect effects of multiple executive functions on fifth‐grade reading comprehension, while accounting for decoding and language skills, is limited. Aim: The present study investigated the direct and indirect effects of fourth‐grade executive functions (i.e., working memory, inhibition, and planning) on fifth‐grade reading comprehension, after accounting for decoding and language skills. Sample: The sample included 113 fourth‐grade children (including 65 boys and 48 girls; Age M = 9.89; SD = .44 years). Methods: The participants were tested on their executive functions (working memory, inhibition and planning), and their decoding skills, language skills (vocabulary and syntax knowledge) and reading comprehension, one year later. Results: Using structural equation modelling, the results indicated direct effects of working memory and planning on reading comprehension, as well as indirect effects of working memory and inhibition via decoding (χ ² = 2.46). Conclusions: The results of the present study highlight the importance of executive functions for reading comprehension after taking variance in decoding and language skills into account: Both working memory and planning uniquely contributed to reading comprehension. In addition, working memory and inhibition also supported decoding. As a practical implication, educational professionals should not only consider the decoding and language skills children bring into the classroom, but their executive functions as well.

In the majority of people, language production is lateralized to the left cerebral hemisphere and visuospatial skills to the right. However, questions remain as to when, how, and why humans arrive at this division of labor. In this study, we assessed cerebral lateralization for language production and for visuospatial memory using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound in a group of 60 typically developing children between the ages of six and 16 years. The typical pattern of left‐lateralized activation for language production and right‐lateralized activation for visuospatial memory was found in the majority of the children (58%). No age‐related change in direction or strength of lateralization was found for language production. In contrast, the strength of lateralization (independent of direction) for visuospatial memory function continued to increase with age. In addition, boys showed a trend for stronger right‐hemisphere lateralization for visuospatial memory than girls, but there was no gender effect on language laterality. We tested whether having language and visuospatial functions in the same hemisphere was associated with poor cognitive performance and found no evidence for this “functional crowding” hypothesis. We did, however, find that children with left‐lateralized language production had higher vocabulary and nonword reading age‐adjusted standard scores than other children, regardless of the laterality of visuospatial memory. Thus, a link between language function and left‐hemisphere lateralization exists, and cannot be explained in terms of maturational change.

In general, both consciously and unconsciously perceived stimuli facilitate responses to following similar stimuli. However, masked arrows delay responses to following arrows. This inverse priming has been ascribed to inhibition of premature motor activation, more recently even to special processing of nonconsciously perceived material. Here, inverse priming depended on particular masks, was insensitive to contextual requirements for increased inhibition, and was constant across response speeds. Putative signs of motor inhibition in the electroencephalogram may as well reflect activation of the opposite response. Consequently, rather than profiting from inhibition of primed responses, the alternative response is directly primed by perceptual interactions of primes and masks. Thus there is no need to assume separate pathways for nonconscious and conscious processing.

Previous research on the relationship between students’ home and school Information and Communication Technology (ICT) resources and academic performance has shown ambiguous results. The availability of ICT resources at school has been found to be unrelated or negatively related to academic performance, whereas the availability of ICT resources at home has been found to be both positively and negatively related to academic performance. In addition, the frequency of use of ICT is related to students’ academic achievement. This relationship has been found to be negative for ICT use at school, however, for ICT use at home the literature on the relationship with academic performance is again ambiguous. In addition to ICT availability and ICT use, students’ attitudes towards ICT have also been found to play a role in student performance. In the present study, we examine how availability of ICT resources, students’ use of those resources (at school, outside school for schoolwork, outside school for leisure), and students’ attitudes toward ICT (interest in ICT, perceived ICT competence, perceived ICT autonomy) relate to individual differences in performance on a digital assessment of reading in one comprehensive model using the Dutch PISA 2015 sample of 5183 15-year-olds (49.2% male). Student gender and students’ economic, social, and cultural status accounted for a substantial part of the variation in digitally assessed reading performance. Controlling for these relationships, results indicated that students with moderate access to ICT resources, moderate use of ICT at school or outside school for schoolwork, and moderate interest in ICT had the highest digitally assessed reading performance. In contrast, students who reported moderate competence in ICT had the lowest digitally assessed reading performance. In addition, frequent use of ICT outside school for leisure was negatively related to digitally assessed reading performance, whereas perceived autonomy was positively related. Taken together, the findings suggest that excessive access to ICT resources, excessive use of ICT, and excessive interest in ICT is associated with lower digitally assessed reading performance.

Working memory is considered a well-established predictor of individual variation in reading comprehension in children and adults. However, how storage and processing capacities of working memory in both the phonological and semantic domain relate to reading comprehension is still unclear. In the current study, we investigated the contribution of phonological and semantic storage, and phonological and semantic processing to reading comprehension in 123 Dutch children in fifth grade. We conducted regression and mediation analyses to find out to what extent variation in reading comprehension could be explained by storage and processing capacities in both the phonological and the semantic domain, while controlling for children’s decoding and vocabulary. The analyses included tasks that reflect storage only, and working memory tasks that assess processing in addition to storage. Regression analysis including only storage tasks as predictor measures, revealed semantic storage to be a better predictor of reading comprehension than phonological storage. Adding phonological and semantic working memory tasks as additional predictors to the model showed that semantic working memory explained individual variation in reading comprehension over and above all other memory measures. Additional mediation analysis made it clear that semantic storage contributed indirectly to reading comprehension via semantic working memory, indicating that semantic storage tapped by working memory, in addition to processing capacities, explains individual variation in reading comprehension. It can thus be concluded that semantic storage plays a more important role in children’s reading comprehension than previously thought.