CASE STUDY: Role of Working Memory and Cognitive Flexibility in Children’s Sentence Processing
Reading is a complex cognitive process involving multiple factors, including reader characteristics, text features, and contextual elements. A significant area of research in reading comprehension focuses on the role of executive functions (EF) in children’s reading development. While previous studies have established a positive association between children’s EF and reading comprehension, much of this research has relied on “offline” measures, such as questionnaires, which may not fully capture the dynamic cognitive processes occurring during real-time reading.
In their recent paper, “The role of executive functions in 9- to 12-year-old children’s sentence processing: An eye-movement study,” Cui, Wang, Luo, and Wu (2024) address this gap by investigating how individual differences in working memory (WM) and cognitive flexibility (CF) modulate children’s online sentence processing. Specifically, the study aimed to determine if sentence congruency and word association influence children’s real-time sentence processing, whether individual differences in WM or CF modulate this processing, and at which stage (early or late) these EF components exert their influence.
Eye Tracking to Understand Executive Functions While Reading
The authors used an EyeLink 1000 Plus to provide moment-to-moment insights into how individuals process linguistic material in a natural reading context. The study recruited 89 Chinese children aged 9-12 years and manipulated semantic congruency (whether words fit the sentence context) and the association between crucial words in sentences.
Various eye-movement parameters served as indicators of underlying cognitive processes. For example, the first fixation duration (FFD) and gaze duration (GD) on a word are thought to capture initial decoding and lexical access or incongruency detection. Conversely, second reading time (SRT) and regression probability (the likelihood of rereading a word or section) are indicators of more in-depth semantic coherence integration or assessment. By analyzing these measures, the researchers could distinguish between early detection and later evaluation stages of sentence processing, providing a more nuanced understanding of how WM and CF operate during reading.
Eye Tracker Data Reveals Interactions between Executive Functions and Text Processing
The eye-movement data allowed the researchers to observe distinct associations between reader- and text-related characteristics. For instance, the study found a significant incongruency effect, meaning children spent longer reading times on incongruent information, which highlights their capacity to discern such discrepancies.
Furthermore, the eye-tracking data enabled the researchers to pinpoint the specific stages at which WM and CF played their modulatory roles. The results indicated that WM primarily influenced later-stage processing (as evidenced by SRT), especially in integrating incongruent information within associated contexts for high-WM children. In contrast, CF was influential during the early processing period (reflected by GD), with high-CF children exhibiting longer early-stage reading times for incongruent words in associated contexts, suggesting a rapid detection of incongruencies.
The ability to monitor eye movements in real-time was instrumental in revealing these dynamic interactions between executive functions and text processing, offering valuable insights that offline methods may have missed.
For information regarding how eye tracking can help your research, check out our solutions and product pages or contact us. We are happy to help!