2003 Volume 21 Issue 2 Pages 131-136
The present study examined the relationship between reading comprehension and two processes of the inhibitory mechanism. Forty-six participants performed reading comprehension test and three conditions of the reading span test (RST): distractor, interference, and control conditions. In the RST, participants were instructed to read sentences aloud while holding target words in each sentence. The distractor and interference conditions required the ability to inhibit distractor information in the context, and to suppress no-longer-relevant information within working memory, respectively. The results showed that performance was lower in the distractor and interference conditions than in the control condition, and that reading comprehension score was significantly correlated only with performance in the interference condition, with neither the distractor nor control condition. We conclude that the suppression of no-longer-relevant information contributes to the correlation between the RST and reading comprehension, while two inhibitory abilities play an important role in the RST performance.
