Learning and Individual Differences 35 (2014) 41–48

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Learning and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lindif

Executive processes, reading comprehension and academic achievement

in 3th grade primary students
J.A. García-Madruga a,⁎, J.O. Vila a, I. Gómez-Veiga a, G. Duque a, M.R. Elosúa b
a
Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, UNED, Madrid, Spain
b
Department of Basic Psychology, UNED, Madrid, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Reading comprehension skills have been linked to working memory's executive processes such as semantic
Received 22 May 2013 updating, connecting and integrating information, and inhibition. Different studies have demonstrated that chil-
Received in revised form 9 June 2014 dren who score poorly on working memory measures typically perform below expected standards across differ-
Accepted 18 July 2014
ent academic areas. The aim of this paper is focused on the relationship of executive functions of WM and fluid
Available online xxxx
intelligence with reading comprehension, and their common ability to predict academic achievement in a
Keywords:
group of 77 third-grade primary students. As predicted, there was a very clear pattern of positive and significant
Working memory correlations. Cognitive variables, such as WM's executive processes (particularly semantic updating) and fluid in-
Executive processes telligence, correlated with reading variables and two academic measures of language and mathematics. Regres-
Reading comprehension sion analyses showed that these higher cognitive variables predicted reading comprehension. Likewise,
Academic achievement executive processes and reading comprehension, contributed independently to explain a relevant amount of
Primary students the variance in academic achievement measures.
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Working memory (WM) capacity refers to the number of items that
can be recalled during a complex WM task. There are diverse theories
that emphasize different aspects of WM although they also show
some basic agreements (see Miyake & Shah, 1999). One of the most in-
fluential of these theories is the multiple-component model proposed
by Baddeley and Hitch (1974; Baddeley, 1986, 2000). According to
this theory, the WM system includes two domain-specific storage struc-
tures or slave systems (the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial
sketchpad), an episodic buffer that links these two components with
long-term memory, and a central executive. The central executive is
the main component of the WM system. It not only has to coordinate
the other components but is also in charge of the attentional control
of information.
Two related and influential models of WM are: Cowan's (1999)
embedded-processes model and Engle's (2001; Unsworth & Engle,
2007) general capacity model. In spite of their differences, Baddeley's,
Cowan's, and Engle's models all share the idea of a domain-general cen-
tral executive whose main functions are to focus and switch attention,
to activate and update representations, and to inhibit automatic pro-
cesses and discard irrelevant information (see Baddeley, 2007; Cowan,
⁎ Corresponding author at: Dpto. de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de
Psicología. UNED, Juan del Rosal, 10. 28040 Madrid, Spain.
E-mail address: jmadruga@psi.uned.es (J.A. García-Madruga).
2005; Engle, 2002; Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, & Howerter,
2000). The relationship of executive functions with reading comprehen-
sion, and their common ability to predict academic achievement are the
main aims of this paper.
Fluid intelligence—an individual's ability to reason with novel prob-
lems—and WM seem to be closely related (see Ackerman, Beier, & Boyle,
2005; Colom, Abad, Quiroga, Shih, & Flores-Mendoza, 2008; Cornoldi,
2006; Kane et al., 2004; Kyllonen & Christal, 1990; Oberauer, Schulze,
Wilhelm, & Süß, 2005). Engle and collaborators have claimed that the
crucial component in explaining the relationship between WM and
fluid intelligence is executive control functions (Engle, Tuholski,
Laughlin, & Conway, 1999; Unsworth & Engle, 2005). Diverse authors
have confirmed that executive functions predict fluid intelligence in
children and young adults, and they have also underscored the special
role of the WM updating processes (Belacchi, Carretti, & Cornoldi,
2010; Chen & Li, 2007; Friedman et al., 2006). The special relationship
between fluid intelligence and WM's executive processes is not unex-
pected. Fluid intelligence tests require the solution of novel reasoning
problems for which individuals have no routine actions available. That
is, these problems require conscious and voluntary control and planning
(see Fernández-Duque, Baird, & Posner, 2000). Hence, we consider that
people's ability to solve new reasoning problems is a result of the active
and conscious use of their cognitive resources, that is, the application of
people's WM's executive processes (see García-Madruga, Gutiérrez,
Carriedo, Luzón, & Vila, 2007). In other words, in this paper we claim
that fluid intelligence measures can be used as a kind of measure of
executive functions.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2014.07.013
1041-6080/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
42 J.A. García-Madruga et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 35 (2014) 41–48
Text comprehension is a highly demanding cognitive task that
involves the simultaneous process of extracting and constructing mean-
ing (Snow & Sweet, 2003). During reading people must store textual in-
formation recently decoded and apply complex processes of meaning
construction to arrive at an integrated representation or situational
model (e.g., Kintsch, 1998). The sequential process of reading and
comprehending a text involves the continuous manipulation and
updating of this model in working memory.
Learning to read comprehensively is a rather complicated skill that
takes a lot of time to acquire. It demands that the perception and iden-
tification of letters and words is automated in order that cognitive re-
sources are left free to be assigned to the construction of meaning and
the representation of the situation that the text describes. However,
even if the superficial tasks involved in reading are adequately automat-
ed, some difficulties may appear at higher levels of comprehension (see
Oakhill & Cain, 2007).
The relationship between WM span and reading comprehension has
been clearly established (see, e.g., Daneman & Merikle, 1996). Students
with high WM scores typically show good reading comprehension
skills. And conversely, students with poor WM scores tend to perform
below average on reading comprehension measures (see Cain, Oakhill,
& Bryant, 2004; Vukovic & Siegel, 2006).
The involvement of WM's executive processes in reading comprehen-
sion has been confirmed more recently by diverse authors, in particular
updating (Carretti, Cornoldi, De Beni, & Romanò, 2005), connecting
and integrating information from text and long-term memory
(Swanson, Howard, & Saez, 2006), and inhibiting and discarding in-
formation (Carretti, Borella, Cornoldi, & De Beni, 2009; Savage,
Cornish, Manly, & Hollis, 2006). The training of WM's executive pro-
cesses during reading has even been used as a basic procedure to im-
prove children's text comprehension abilities (García-Madruga et al.,
2013).
Working memory plays a central role in several other domains of cog-
nition, including writing, arithmetic, and problem solving (Gathercole,
Alloway, Willis, & Adams, 2006; Swanson, 2011; Swanson & Siegel,
2001; Yeniad, Malda, Mesman, van Ijzendoorn, & Pieper, 2013). Several
studies demonstrate that children who score poorly on working memory
measures associated with executive skills typically perform below
standard in national curriculum assessments of core areas such as
language (i.e., reading, writing, spelling and handwriting), mathematics
and science. This is true across both primary and secondary school
years (e.g., Berninger & Swanson, 1994; Gathercole & Alloway,
2008; St. Claire-Thompson & Gathercole, 2006). In order to identify
unique associations, several studies examined whether distinct
executive processes are uniquely linked to children's attainments in
school-based assessments of language, mathematics and science. Find-
ings indicate that inhibition is significantly associated with general
academic learning rather than the acquisition of skills and knowledge
in specific domains (St. Claire-Thompson & Gathercole, 2006). There is
evidence that updating and shifting may also be related to attainment
in language and mathematics (St. Claire-Thompson & Gathercole,
2006; Yeniad et al., 2013). As for the obvious relationship between in-
telligence and academic achievement, recent studies have demonstrat-
ed that IQ is strongly related to academic achievement (e.g., Mayes &
Calhoun, 2007; Watkins, Lei, & Canivez, 2007). Even so, in this respect,
an interesting finding is that working memory skills at the start
of formal education is a more powerful predictor of subsequent
academic success in literacy and numeracy than IQ (Alloway &
Alloway, 2010).
Finally, reading abilities and academic achievement are intimately
related: most learning activities across many diverse situations and sub-
jects require that students activate and apply their reading abilities.
Reading is very important in the context of learning mainly because
it is a powerful learning tool and a means of constructing meaning
and acquiring new knowledge (see Moje, Stockdill, Kim, & Kim, 2011;
Pretorius, 2002). In particular, in Mathematics, Kintsch and Greeno
(1985) have claimed that there is an interaction between reading com-
prehension abilities and mathematical knowledge in the process of un-
derstanding and building a representation of mathematical problems.
Diverse studies have also demonstrated the relationship between the
difficulty in building a correct representation of mathematical problems
and mathematical performance (see De Corte & Verschaffel, 1991;
Hegarty, Mayer, & Monk, 1995).
In this article, we highlight the close relationship between WM's ex-
ecutive processes and fluid intelligence, with reading comprehension
and academic achievement in primary school. The comprehension of
difficult texts such as those read by students at school requires readers
to apply the executive processes. Likewise, we believe that executive
processes are also involved in other diverse learning tasks students
commonly face at school. For instance, understanding teacher in-
structions and oral explanations of new concepts; connecting knowl-
edge from diverse sources in order to answer questions posed by
teachers; solving various kinds of problems in different subjects
such as mathematics; and facing diverse kinds of assessments and
evaluation tasks.
2. Experiment
In this experiment we evaluated WM's executive processes and fluid
intelligence in a sample of 3rd grade primary school students. We select-
ed this grade because this period of time is when a great majority of chil-
dren have begun to exhibit the acquisition of good reading abilities. We
used a global measure of WM's executive processes (Analogy test) and
a direct measure of a key executive process (Semantic Updating test). Al-
though, we didn't expect a clear relationship between visuo-spatial WM
and reading comprehension (see Goff, Pratt, & Ong, 2005) we also used a
visuo-spatial WM test because we expected it to nevertheless be related
to academic achievement measures. As mentioned before, one way of
thinking about fluid intelligence is that it functions as a measure of the re-
sult of applying WM's executive processes to new reasoning problems.
We also assessed students' reading comprehension abilities. Likewise,
we collected their academic scores in language (Spanish) and mathemat-
ics. The aim of the study was to evaluate the inter-relationships between
basic cognitive measures of WM's executive processes and intelligence
with reading comprehension, as well as their capacity to predict academ-
ic achievement in Language and Mathematics. Apart from the clear in-
volvement reading comprehension has on language, we predict that
executive processes will independently influence language ability. And
apart from the clear involvement executive processes have on mathe-
matics, we predict that reading comprehension will independently influ-
ence mathematics performance.
Our hypotheses were the following:
1. There will be significant positive correlations of Semantic Updating,
Analogy and fluid intelligence scores, with reading comprehension
measures. There will also be significant correlations between all
WM and intelligence measures, as well as reading scores with aca-
demic achievement (Language and Mathematics).
2. WM's executive processes (Analogy and Semantic Updating) and
fluid intelligence will predict participants' performance on the read-
ing comprehension measures.
3. Reading comprehension and WM's executive processes and fluid in-
telligence will predict academic achievement in Language. After con-
trolling for the effects of reading comprehension, executive variables
will still be able to independently predict academic achievement in
Language.
4. WM's executive processes, intelligence, and reading comprehen-
sion will predict academic achievement in Mathematics. After
controlling for the effects of executive variables, reading compre-
hension will still be able to independently predict academic
achievement in Mathematics.
 J.A. García-Madruga et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 35 (2014) 41–48
3. Method
3.1. Participants
Seventy-seven third-grade students (40 girls) from two middle-
class socio-economic schools in Alcobendas (Madrid) participated in
the experiment. The students attended two different classes in each
school. Children were 8.06 to 9.2 years of age at the time of the study
(M = 8.61; SD = .28).
3.2. Procedure
All participants completed three WM executive processing tasks and
a reading comprehension test. Participants were also tested on a fluid
intelligence test. Participants were tested in two independent sessions.
In the first session, participants carried out the reading comprehension
test in their classrooms, which took about 30 min. The second session
was carried out in a quiet room. Each student was individually present-
ed with the three WM tests and intelligence test. WM tasks were pre-
sented on a computer screen. This second session lasted about 70 min
with a short break between tasks. The order of administration of the
test in this session was randomized.
3.3. Measures
3.3.1. Working memory
-Analogy test. A new analogy test of working memory for primary school
children (Orjales & García-Madruga, 2010) based on the Analogy Rea-
soning Span task developed by Gutiérrez-Martínez, García-Madruga,
Carriedo, Vila, and Luzón (2005) was used to assess students' working
memory capacity. In this task, participants are asked to read out loud
and solve a series of verbal analogies and then to recall the word-
solution of each analogy in order. The verbal analogies are very simple
and easy to solve, for instance: “Teacher is to school as doctor is to: a)
medicine; b) hospital”. The structure of the task is very similar to RST
(Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). However, in this case participants, in-
stead of only reading out loud and automatically selecting the last
word of each sentence, have to solve a verbal analogy inference and
store and remember the correct word-solution. The task includes
diverse levels in which the number of verbal analogies to be resolved
by participants progressively increases from 2 to 5. There were 3 series
of verbal analogies at each level. As a scoring procedure, we gave a point
for each remembered word in a given series in which participants re-
membered the words in the correct order. When participants remem-
bered all the words of a series, but changed the order of some words,
the words out of order were scored as .5 points. The recall of correct
words when participants did not remember all the words of a series
was not considered.
-Semantic Updating test. Based on the work of Palladino, Cornoldi, De
Beni, and Pazzaglia (2001), we developed the Semantic Updating test
for primary school children. This task assesses the recall of a variable
number of items following a specific semantic criterion in a list of
words. Participants are presented with nine lists that include eight con-
crete and highly familiar words that refer to objects or living entities
measurable by size. They are required to select and remember a limited
and predefined number of the biggest elements that were named in the
word list, while suppressing the rest of the elements. The nine lists are di-
vided into three levels of increasing trials, varying by the number of rele-
vant elements to be recalled (i.e., two, three, or four words). The lists are
presented in a fixed order. The words in the list (e.g., elephant, pea, light-
bulb, phone, glasses, train, tooth, pencil) are presented written on a com-
puter screen, at an approximate rate of 2 s per word, while they are also
named aloud by the experimenter. The end of the list is signaled graphi-
cally on the screen, and the participant is immediately required to report
43
on the two, three or four words in the task referring to the biggest objects
or animals following the order in which they were presented in the list.
The instructions emphasize that the participant will be presented with
lists that include eight nouns referring to animals or objects, the size
of which has to be considered in order to select at each moment the
predefined number of the biggest elements. Participants are not informed
about the range of positions within the list where the target items are
going to appear, such that they must pay attention to all positions. To
carry out the task successfully, participants have to change the content
of memory by updating old irrelevant items with relevant incoming
items (the biggest element). The task is preceded by three practice lists
of two-word strings participants must remember. Returning to the exam-
ple given in this section, the participants would have to recall “elephant–
train”. The scoring procedure was the same as in the previous Analogy
WM test.
-Visuo-spatial test. A new test of visuo-spatial WM was used for
assessing students' visuo-spatial WM capacity and the executive pro-
cesses related to the control of this kind of dual task. The visuo-spatial
test is a Spanish adaptation of the Visual Span Task developed by
Cornoldi et al. (2001). The test consists of a series of locations of several
black dots presented in 4 × 4 (16 cells) white matrices in which one of
the rows and one of the columns from the matrix randomly appears col-
ored in gray. The position of dots are randomly distributed in the cells'
matrix and held visible for 2 s on the screen. When the last dot of
each series is displayed, a bell rings to inform participants of the end
of each series. The task has three levels of difficulty. Each level consists
of three series of an increasing number of trials (i.e. positions of dots
in the matrix) ranging from two to four trials. Participants are asked to
do two tasks simultaneously: 1) to press the spacebar when the black
dot appears on a gray cell from the matrix (and not press it when the
dot appears on a white cell); and 2) to remember, at the end of each se-
ries, the positions of the last dots of each series in order of appearance
and to identify them on a new blank matrix. Thus, the positions of
dots participants have to remember are only those that appear in the
matrix when the bell rings: two dots at level two, three in level three
and four on the fourth level. The scoring procedure was the same as in
the Analogy and Semantic Updating test, except what counts is remem-
bering the dots in their positions, not words. Remembering correctly
placed dots in an incorrect order was also scored as .5 points.
3.3.2. Intelligence
We used the Matrices Subtest of the Kauffman Brief Intelligence test
(KBIT; Kaufman & Kaufman, 2000). This test evaluates non-verbal fluid
intelligence: it assesses a child's ability to solve new problems by per-
ceiving relationships and completing abstract analogies. For the Spanish
version of the Matrices subtest, the reliability coefficient in 8 year-old
children is .80.
3.3.3. Reading comprehension
To measure reading comprehension, we used the Spanish version
(EDICOLE; García-Madruga et al., 2010) of the Diagnostic Assessment
of Reading Comprehension (DARC; August, Francis, Hsu, & Snow,
2006; Francis et al., 2006). This new test is based on a theoretical anal-
ysis of reading comprehension and consists of four main components
(Hannon & Daneman, 2001). The task requires children to silently
read three short texts and answer 44 related comprehension questions.
Presented in narrative-style, the texts consist of four small paragraphs
that describe transitive relations among a set of real and artificial enti-
ties. For instance, “Maria likes to eat fruit. Most of all, she likes to eat
nuras. A nura is like an orange. But a nura is bigger than an orange”. Com-
bining the information in the text with world knowledge should, in
principle, allow for the construction of a five-entity-long linear ordering
along a dimension that is likely to be familiar to all children. Three of
the entities are unknown to all readers (artificial terms, e.g. “nura”)
and they are presented as nonsense words, whereas two of the entities
44 J.A. García-Madruga et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 35 (2014) 41–48

Table 1 underlying reading comprehension. For the Spanish version of the

Descriptive statistics of measures: mean, minimum, maximum, and standard deviation. DARC, the coefficient of reliability for the total score was .87.
N = 77 Mean Min. Max. Std. Dev.

WM's executive processes

3.3.4. Academic achievement
Semantic Updating test 8.81 2.00 24.00 5.47 Participants' scholastic achievement measures were the final
Analogy test 5.31 0.00 16.00 3.54 scores obtained in the two basic subjects of Language (Spanish) and
Visuo-Spatial test 14.15 0.00 27.00 7.32 Mathematics. The score in Language was the mean of the scores in or-
Intelligence thography, grammar, reading comprehension and written expression.
KBIT 28.10 19.00 36.00 4.23 The Mathematics score was the mean of the scores in numeration, cal-
Reading comprehension
culus, geometry and problem solving. All the scores were measured on
DARC memory 9.58 3.00 12.00 1.83 a scale from 0 to 10.
DARC inferences 6.21 1.00 12.00 2.72
DARC integration 8.18 1.00 15.00 3.97 4. Results
DARC total 23.90 8.00 39.00 7.41

Academic achievement The descriptive statistics of the variables can be seen in Table 1. As
Language achievement 6.86 4.00 9.00 1.33 predicted, 96% of participants gave correct responses to 100% of the
Mathematics achievement 6.99 4.00 9.00 1.39
prior knowledge items. The overall DARC score was computed from
the other three DARC scores: memory, inference and integration.

referred to are likely to be known by all children (real terms, e.g. orange)
and differ strikingly on the critical dimension: cats and turtles in text 1
(speed), tennis balls and footballs in text 2 (size), and carrots and straw-
berries in text 3 (hardness). Participants were asked to make inferences
about the position of these entities along these linear dimensions.
After each text, readers are asked a series of sixteen “yes/no/I don't
know” questions. The comprehension questions are designed to assess
readers' performance on four central components of the comprehension
processes: (a) knowledge access, i.e., accessing relevant prior knowledge
from long-term memory (e.g., “An orange has a peel?”; two [2] items in
each text); (b) text memory, i.e., recalling from memory new informa-
tion presented in the text (e.g., “Maria likes to eat fruit?”; four [4]
items in each text); (c) inferences, i.e., making novel inferences based
on information provided in the text but without prior knowledge
(e.g., “A nura is smaller than an orange?”; four [4] items in each text);
and (d) integration, i.e., integrating accessed prior knowledge with
new text information (e.g., “Do you peel a nura to eat it?”; five [5]
items in each text). Participants are encouraged to read the text careful-
ly at their own pace and to answer the comprehension questions with-
out having the text in front of them. The task is preceded by a practice
text and some comprehension questions across each category. In
order to calculate the overall DARC measure we omitted the knowledge
access score because almost every participant responded correctly to
100% of the items. Therefore, the overall DARC score was computed
from the number of correct responses on the memory, inference and
integration categories, as these are related to the basic processes
4.1. Hypothesis 1
The inter-correlations of the variables—the three WM measures, the
K-BIT measure of intelligence, the three measures of DARC and the over-
all measure, and academic achievement in language and mathematics—
can be observed in Table 2. As predicted there was a clear pattern of pos-
itive correlations of working memory and intelligence with reading
comprehension, except for the unsurprising case of the visuo-spatial
measure. The Analogy test significantly correlated with memory and in-
ferences, and the Semantic Updating test correlated significantly with
memory, inferences and integration. K-BIT also reliably correlated
with the three component measures of DARC. As predicted, there was
a very clear pattern of positive and significant correlations of cognitive
variables. That is WM's executive processes (particularly Semantic
Updating) and intelligence, and the reading variables (particularly, In-
ference and overall DARC measure), correlated significantly with both
academic measures. Apart from DARC Total, the correlations between
DARC Inferences and Language and Mathematics were the highest
correlations found.
4.2. Hypothesis 2
In order to assess the capacity of WM's executive processes and fluid
intelligence to predict reading comprehension, we carried out four mul-
tiple regression analyses on the main variables: Memory, Inferences,
Integration and DARC Total. The independent variables were Semantic

Table 2
Pearson's correlations between measures.

N = 77 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

WM's executive processes

1. Analogy test
2. Semantic Updating test .26⁎
3. Visuo-Spatial test .26⁎ .32⁎⁎

Intelligence
4. KBIT .31⁎⁎ .30⁎⁎ .03

Reading
5. DARC memory .40⁎⁎ .27⁎ .16 .34⁎⁎
6. DARC inferences .35⁎⁎ .48⁎⁎ .14 .35⁎⁎ .54⁎⁎
7. DARC integration .19⁎ .35⁎⁎ .08 .37⁎⁎ .47⁎⁎ .67⁎⁎
8. DARC total .33⁎⁎ .44⁎⁎ .13 .44⁎⁎ .71⁎⁎ .86⁎⁎ .91⁎⁎

Academic achievement
9. Language .30⁎⁎ .40⁎⁎ .31⁎⁎ .37⁎⁎ .40⁎⁎ .52⁎⁎ .44⁎⁎ .53⁎⁎
10. Mathematics .14 .42⁎⁎ .36⁎⁎ .42⁎⁎ .33⁎⁎ .46⁎⁎ .32⁎⁎ .43⁎⁎ .79⁎⁎
⁎ p b .05; one tailed.
⁎⁎ p b .01; one tailed.
 J.A. García-Madruga et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 35 (2014) 41–48 45

Updating, Analogy and KBIT. These variables explained 22% of the vari-
ance in the DARC Memory measure (F (3, 73) = 6.98; p b .000), Analo-
gy being the only significant variable (B = .155; β = .300; p = .008).
The three variables predicted 31% of variance of DARC Inferences
(F (3, 73) = 11.12; p b .000), Semantic Updating being the only signif-
icant variable (B = .186; β = .374; p = .001). As for DARC Integration,
the three variables explained 21% of the variance (F (3, 73) = 6.28;
p b .001), Semantic Updating (B = .187; β = .258; p = .023) and K-BIT
(B = .268; β = .286; p = .014) being significant. Finally, WM's executive
processes and fluid intelligence variables predicted 32% of the variance of
DARC Total (F (3, 73) = 11.41; p b .000), Semantic Updating (B = .420;
β = .310; p = .004) and K-BIT (B = .515; β = .294; p = .006) being
significant.
4.3. Hypotheses 3 and 4
Finally, two hierarchical regression analyses were carried out in
order to evaluate the predictive capacity of reading comprehension
(DARC Total) and WM's executive processes, including now Analogy,
Semantic Updating, Visuo-Spatial working memory and intelligence,
on academic achievement in Language and Mathematics (see Table 3).
The results show that 38% of the variance in Language is explained by
these variables (F (5, 71) = 8.72, p b .000). Likewise, the same variables
explained 38% of the variance in Mathematics (F (5, 71) = 8.87, p b .
000). As shown in Table 3, the hierarchical regression analysis for
Language included only the reading comprehension variable in Model
1, whereas Model 2 included both reading comprehension and execu-
tive variables. On the contrary, for Mathematics, Model 1 included the
four executive variables and in Model 2 the reading comprehension var-
iable was added. The results show that both kinds of variables, executive
ones and those of reading comprehension, contributed independently
to the variance explained in Language and Mathematics.
5. Discussion and conclusions
The three WM's tests—Semantic Updating, Analogy and Visuo-
Spatial tests—were used for the first time with students at this school
level. The distribution of the scores in each test was normal, although
the Analogy and Visuo-Spatial tests were a little more difficult: four
participants taking the Analogies test (5%) and eight taking the Visuo-
Spatial test (10%) obtained a score of zero. Participants' scores in intelli-
gence and reading comprehension were similar to those found in prior
studies with participants at the same school level (López-Escribano,
Elosúa, Gómez-Veiga, & García-Madruga, 2013).
The Analogy test is a double task measure of WM in which main
executive functions are involved: participants have to focus and switch
their attention in two different though directly connected tasks. The
first task—solving the analogies—requires participants to link textual in-
formation with long-term memory and select the correct word that
then must be stored in working memory; the second task requires par-
ticipants to keep the selected words in WM and remember all of them in
proper order. In the Semantic Updating test, participants have to select
from a list words that must be stored in working memory given their
long-term knowledge of the size of objects. The peculiarity of the Se-
mantic Updating test is that participants have to change and update
the content of their working memory, while suppressing and inhibiting
the rest of the elements. That is, besides the involvement of focusing and
switching attention, and connecting with long-term memory, this test
explicitly demands the application of both updating and inhibition op-
erations. The Visuo-Spatial test is also a double task. The first task, press-
ing the space bar when dots are in gray cells, is quite simple and not
directly connected with the second task, remembering the final position
of the dots. In other words, this task is related more to WM visuo-spatial
capacity than it is to the central executive. The involvement of executive
control varies between tasks, being highest for the Semantic Updating
test and lowest for the Visuo-Spatial test. Finally, as we claimed in the
Introduction, participants' performance in KBIT may be considered a
result of the application of WM's executive processes to novel reasoning
problems. That is, it is a measure of executive function. A similar as-
sumption is made when researchers implicate people's ability to solve
other novel and complex cognitive tasks as measures of executive func-
tion. For instance, the Tower of Hanoi is a problem—solving task that in-
volves a measure of planning, or, the Wisconsin Test involves abstract
and strategic concept formation abilities and is an informative measure
of people’s cognitive flexibility.
Our results confirmed our hypothesis about the inter-correlations be-
tween semantic updating, analogies and fluid intelligence with reading
comprehension measures. All three executive measures correlated signif-
icantly with the four reading comprehension measures. The highest
inter-correlation was between semantic updating and inferences. As for

Table 3
Hierarchical regression analyses of executive (WM executive processes and fluid intelligence) and reading comprehension (DARC Total) measures on academic achievement (Language
and Mathematics scores).

Dependent variable R2 R2 change F change B SE (B) β t Sr

I. Language scores
Model 1 DARC total .29 .29 29.98⁎⁎ .10 .02 .53 5.48⁎⁎ .53
Model 2 WM's (a) and Intelligence (b) .38 .09 2.72⁎
DARC total .07 .02 .38 3.33⁎⁎ .31
(a) Analogy test .02 .04 .04 .40 .04
(a) Semantic Updating test .03 .03 .11 .98 .09
(a) Visuo-Spatial test .04 .02 .21 2.09⁎ .20
(b) KBIT .05 .03 .16 1.45 .14

II. Mathematics scores

Model 1 WM's (a) and Intelligence (b) .34 .34 9.53⁎⁎
(a) Analogy test −.04 .04 −.11 −1.08 −.10
(a) Semantic Updating test .06 .03 .24 2.25⁎ .21
(a) Visuo-Spatial test .06 .02 .30 2.91⁎⁎ .28
(b) KBIT .12 .03 .37 3.56⁎⁎ .34
Model 2 DARC total .38 .04 4.40⁎
(a) Analogy test −.06 .04 −.15 −1.47 −.14
(a) Semantic Updating test .04 .03 .17 1.50 .14
(a) Visuo-Spatial test .06 .02 .31 3.02⁎⁎ .28
(b) KBIT .10 .04 .30 2.82⁎⁎ .26
DARC Total .04 .02 .24 2.10⁎ .20
⁎ p b .05.
⁎⁎ p b .01.
46 J.A. García-Madruga et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 35 (2014) 41–48
the correlations between WM, intelligence and reading measures with
academic achievement, the results clearly confirmed the hypothesis. All
the measures reliably correlated with academic achievement in language.
Likewise, all the measures (except for Analogy, which did not reach the
significant level) reliably correlated with achievement in mathematics.
5.1. Executive processes and reading comprehension
The regression analyses confirm our second hypothesis. It illustrates
the capacity these main executive measures of working memory and
fluid intelligence have in predicting the various components involved
in reading comprehension. The results show that different variables
are involved in predicting the three main components of reading com-
prehension. Thus, the variable particularly involved in predicting
DARC Memory was the Analogy test. This result clearly agrees with
our expectations regarding the mental work that underlies remember-
ing information from texts: this kind of work can be carried out from
the text-base representation.
Besides remembering textual information, the DARC Inferences and
Integration items require that participants construct and manipulate in
WM a situational model that represents the inter-relationships the five
elements each DARC text addresses (i.e., the size of each kind of ball in
text 2). The main difference between DARC Inference and DARC Integra-
tion items lies in the fact that answering Integration items requires
making a connection with prior knowledge. Regression results confirm
that for DARC Inferences the key variable was Semantic Updating,
whereas the variables that predicted participants' performance on the
DARC Integration were KBIT and Semantic Updating.
As we can see, our results show that three tests of executive process-
es (Analogy, Semantic Updating tests and KBIT) are closely related with
reading comprehension abilities. These results clearly confirm those
found by diverse authors that connect reading comprehension with
WM's updating (Carretti et al., 2005; Palladino et al., 2001), inhibition
(Carretti et al., 2009; De Beni & Palladino, 2000; Savage et al., 2006)
and connecting and integrating information from text and long-term
memory (Swanson et al., 2006).
5.2. Academic achievement in language and mathematics
Hierarchical regression analyses showed the capacity of reading
comprehension and executive processes to predict academic achieve-
ment in Language and Mathematics, confirming Hypotheses 3 and 4.
As for Language, Reading comprehension explained 29% of the variance;
WM's executive processes and intelligence independently explained a
significant further 9% of the variance. In Mathematics, WM's executive
processes and intelligence explained 3% of the variance and reading
comprehension independently explained a significant further 4% of the
variance. KBIT, the Visuo-Spatial and Semantic Updating tests, were the
measures that particularly contributed to the variance explained for
both academic variables.
These results clearly confirm prior evidence of the relationship be-
tween executive functioning and intelligence with academic perfor-
mance in children (e.g., St. Claire-Thompson & Gathercole, 2006;
Watkins et al., 2007). The role of updating and inhibition is enhanced
in our results since, as we have analyzed, Semantic Updating loads espe-
cially on updating and inhibiting processes. As a relatively new result,
we have also found that visuo-spatial WM capacity is already involved
in predicting Mathematics in 8–9 year old children (see Meyer,
Salimpoor, Wu, Geary, & Menon, 2010), and also Language. Finally, the
capacity of KBIT to predict a relevant amount of variance in Language
and Mathematics underscores the importance of fluid intelligence as a
measure of the higher cognitive processes in young children. Our results
confirm that in this age period WM measures on the whole may be a
more powerful predictor of academic success in Language and Mathe-
matics than fluid intelligence, even though fluid intelligence also plays a
relevant role (see Alloway & Alloway, 2010).
Our results also confirm the role of reading comprehension
in explaining academic achievement, not only in Language but also in
Mathematics. As we mentioned in the Introduction, reading compre-
hension is a cognitive ability that underlies the correct understanding
of mathematical concepts and the comprehension and solving of math-
ematical problems. In a study, Vilenius-Tuohimaa, Aunola, and Nurmi
(2008) found a strong relationship between reading comprehension
and performance on math word problems with primary students one-
year older than our participants (fourth graders). The high correlation
between DARC Inferences and Mathematics found in our work corrobo-
rates the main conclusion of these authors: there are likely some basic
reasoning abilities that underlie both Mathematics and reading compre-
hension. There are some clear limitations of our paper that also suggest
future work. First of all, our work has the obvious limitation in the mea-
sures we have used. The DARC test has provided a reliable method of
scoring children in their reading comprehension abilities in English
and Spanish (August et al., 2006; Elosúa et al., 2012; Francis et al.,
2006; García-Madruga et al., 2013; López-Escribano et al., 2013). How-
ever, the use of a different measure of reading comprehension would be
a clear improvement in future work. Even more necessary might be the
use of more specific tests of diverse WM executive processes. By doing
so, for instance, we might try to distinguish the differential role of
updating and inhibition. Likewise, having a wider variety of academic
and learning scores would be required as well as some independent ex-
perimental measures of students' performance in diverse fields.
This paper is an introductory study on the relationship between cog-
nition and academic achievement with third-grade Spanish students.
Our results confirm the capacity of reading abilities in predicting aca-
demic achievement, not only in Language but also in Mathematics. It
thus underscores the role of literacy in general, and reading comprehen-
sion in particular, in the development of cognition and mind. Likewise,
our results highlight the important role of WM's executive processes
in learning and academic achievement and its special relationship
with reading comprehension. However, in order to draw some more
precise conclusions that allow for various improvements in education,
wider experimental work with students across a diversity of age and
school levels, including primary and secondary education, is clearly nec-
essary. Finally, our focus on students' executive processes reveals our
fundamental interest in how students actively use their cognitive re-
sources while participating in learning activities at school. An indepen-
dent measure of students' active participation in learning situations
would also be required in future work.
Acknowledgments
This research was conducted with the financial support of the
research projects: DGICYT PSI2008-00754 and Consolider-Ingenio
2010, CSD2008-00048, both from the Ministry of Science and Innova-
tion of Spain. We thank students who voluntarily participated in this
research as well as the Spanish state schools “Emilio Casado” and
“Valdepalitos” of Alcobendas (Comunidad de Madrid).
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