The influence of working memory capacity on inference generation and reading comprehension

Abstract

This research aimed at investigating whether there is a relationship between Technical High School Brazilian students’ Working Memory Capacity (WMC), inference generation and reading comprehension in L2. A group of 36 students from the third year of the Technical High School Course at Instituto Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS), Campus Sertão, participated in this study. Participants were pre-intermediate speakers of English as an L2. The instruments used in this study comprised a Reading Span Test (RST); two texts, being one narrative and the other expository; a Pause Protocol and two sets of comprehension questions (one for each text). Data from participants’ Reading Span Test, the inferences they generated during reading (categorized in accordance with Narvaez; Broek; Ruiz’ (1999) Inference Categorization Model), as well as their answers in the reading comprehension questions were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, and the main results show that WMC positively correlates with reading comprehension, and also with explanatory inferences, which are strictly connected to reading comprehension.