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LDXXXX10.1177/0022219415613080Journal of Learning DisabilitiesPotocki et al.

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Journal of Learning Disabilities

Linguistic and Cognitive Profiles of 8- to

2017, Vol. 50(2) 128142
Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0022219415613080

Reading Comprehension Difficulties: journaloflearningdisabilities.sagepub.com

The Role of Executive Functions

Anna Potocki1, Monique Sanchez2, Jean Ecalle3, and Annie Magnan3,4

Abstract
This article presents two studies investigating the role of executive functioning in written text comprehension in children
and adolescents. In a first study, the involvement of executive functions in reading comprehension performance was
examined in normally developing children in fifth grade. Two aspects of text comprehension were differentiated: literal
and inferential processes. The results demonstrated that while three aspects of executive functioning (working memory,
planning, and inhibition processes) were significantly predictive of the performance on the inferential questions of the
comprehension test, these factors did not predict the scores on the literal tasks of the test. In a second experiment, the
linguistic and cognitive profiles of children in third/fifth and seventh/ninth grades with a specific reading comprehension
deficit were examined. This analysis revealed that the deficits experienced by the less skilled comprehenders in both
the linguistic and the executive domains could evolve over time. As a result, linguistic factors do not make it possible to
distinguish between good and poor comprehenders among the group of older children, whereas the difficulties relating
to executive processing remain stable over development. These findings are discussed in the context of the need to take
account of the executive difficulties that characterize less skilled comprehenders of any age, especially for remediation
purposes.

Keywords
text comprehension, less skilled comprehenders, working memory, executive functions

It is now widely accepted that understanding written texts is
one of the most crucial abilities that children have to acquire
during their school years. Indeed, deficits in reading com-
prehension have detrimental consequences not only for
school attainment but also for future social and professional
integration. Unfortunately, many students, even at the end
of secondary school, have not fully acquired this ability (see
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,
2013). During the past few decades, researchers have
mostly assumed that reading comprehension failures are
largely determined by the inability to read single words
(e.g., Shankweiler etal., 1999; Stanovich, 2000). Indeed,
slow or inefficient word reading increases the demands
placed on attention and working memory resources, which
in turn leads to difficulties in understanding written texts
(e.g., Laberge & Samuels, 1974; Perfetti, 1985). As a result,
it is widely acknowledged that the difficulties young read-
ers experience understanding written texts are mainly due
to inadequately automated decoding processes (e.g.,
Roberts, Good, & Corcoran, 2005; Vellutino, Tunmer,
Jaccard, & Chen, 2007).
However, another line of research suggests that reading
comprehension deficits can arise for reasons other than
weaknesses in lower level processes such as word decoding
(e.g., Cain & Oakhill, 2004; Stothard & Hulme, 1992).
Indeed, researchers have been able to identify children who
experience specific reading comprehension deficits
(S-RCDs) despite possessing adequate decoding skills (e.g.,
Catts, Hogan, & Fey, 2003). It is estimated that between 3%
and possibly 10% of the school-age population exhibits this
type of profile (Aaron, Joshi, Gooden, & Bentum, 2008;
Leach, Scarborough, & Rescorla, 2003; Torppa etal.,
1
CeRCA (UMR 7295), University of Poitiers, France
2
Henry Gabrielle Hospital, Saint-Genis-Laval, France
3
EMC Laboratory (Etude des Mcanismes Cognitifs), Lyon 2 University,
LabEx Cortex ANR-11-LABX-0042 (Universit de Lyon), France
4
Institut Universitaire de France
Corresponding Author:
Anna Potocki, University of Poitiers, MSHS Bt. A5, 5 rue Thodore
Lefebvre, Poitiers, 86000, France.
Email: anna.potocki@univ-poitiers.fr
Potocki et al. 129
2007). This suggests that factors other than efficient word
reading are likely to make a substantial contribution to read-
ing comprehension. For instance, S-RCD children com-
monly display a range of impairments in language-related
(e.g., Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2000; Nation & Snowling,
2000; Snchal, Ouellette, & Rodney, 2006) or more gen-
eral cognitive activities (e.g., Cain, 1999; Cain, Oakhill, &
Bryant, 2004; Swanson, Howard, & Saez, 2006).
Even though a large body of literature has been devoted
to poor readers with certain specific decoding deficits, sig-
nificantly less research has focused on the precise profile
exhibited by children with S-RCD. More specifically, little
is known about their failures at the level of capabilities
related to more general executive functions (but see Cutting,
Materek, Cole, Levine, & Mahone, 2009; Locascio, Mahone,
Eason, & Cutting, 2010; Sesma, Mahone, Levine, Eason, &
Cutting, 2009). In addition, no study to date has investigated
this research question within a developmental framework.
The main aim of the two studies presented here is to fill this
gap in the literature by examining in much greater detail the
linguistic and cognitive profiles of children and adolescents
with S-RCD between the ages of 8 and 15 years to extend
our knowledge about reading comprehension failures.
Linguistic Skills and Reading
Comprehension
The construction of a coherent mental representation of the
situation described in a text (i.e., the construction of the
situation model) initially involves more basic processing
steps at the word and sentence level. To extract information
from any text, it is very important to be able to access the
meanings of words and to possess accurate knowledge
about how these words are organized in a sentence (e.g.,
Nation & Snowling, 2000). As a result, linguistic skills such
as knowledge about the lexical and syntactic aspects of lan-
guage have generally been considered to be important pre-
dictors of reading comprehension performance (Cain &
Oakhill, 2007).
As far as vocabulary is concerned, numerous studies
have demonstrated that the level of lexical knowledge that
children possess partly determines their text comprehension
level (e.g., Cain, Oakhill, & Lemmon, 2004; Oakhill &
Cain, 2012). Indeed, it seems that too many unknown words
in a text hinder its readers comprehension. Vocabulary is
therefore viewed as an important predictor of comprehen-
sion skills in children. Less skilled comprehenders also gen-
erally present limited vocabulary skills (Cain & Oakhill,
2006) or lower quality semantic representations of words
(Nation & Snowling, 1998). Furthermore, the relationship
between vocabulary and language comprehension seems to
be causal in nature. Indeed, this link has been observed in
longitudinal frameworks, and accordingly, it has been found
that vocabulary training generally leads to improvements in
childrens comprehension performance (Beck, Perfetti, &
McKeown, 1982). Nonetheless, even if knowledge about
words is necessary to construct a coherent textbase, it is by
no means sufficient (Stothard & Hulme, 1992). To under-
stand texts, children must also acquire knowledge about the
syntactic structure of their language; that is, they must know
how words are typically organized in a sentence. Syntactic
knowledge could indeed serve as a cue for the construction
of meaning by enabling the reader to make certain predic-
tions about sentence constructions (Cain & Oakhill, 2007).
As a result, syntactic knowledge is also a good predictor of
comprehension abilities (e.g., Oakhill, Cain, & Bryant,
2003; Tunmer & Bowey, 1984; Willows & Ryan, 1986). In
a longitudinal study, Demont and Gombert (1996), for
example, demonstrated that syntactic awareness skills in
kindergarten predict later reading comprehension perfor-
mance in second grade. More generally, sentence process-
ing could be considered an essential mediatory skill between
word recognition and text comprehension (Ecalle, Bouchafa,
Potocki, & Magnan, 2013).
Nevertheless, other authors have argued that the compre-
hension deficits experienced by less skilled comprehenders
are not necessarily constrained by impairments in lower
level skills such as word or sentence processing (Oakhill
etal., 2003). The way in which these factors are involved in
text comprehension may also evolve throughout develop-
ment (Cain & Oakhill, 2007; Snchal etal., 2006). The
role of lower level skills could indeed decrease as children
grow older, whereas higher level skills, such as executive
processes, could become predominant and make it possible
to distinguish between good and less skilled comprehenders
among older students (Vellutino etal., 2007).
Executive Functions and Reading
Comprehension
Executive functions are a set of higher order cognitive pro-
cesses that allow people to adopt contextually adapted
behaviors (Diamond, 2013; Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996).
These processes are also involved when people have to con-
front new situations for which they do not possess preexist-
ing schemes or strategies. It is a multidimensional construct
that has been conceptualized to include different processes
such as inhibition, planning, shifting, and working memory
(Brookshire Levin, Song, & Zhang, 2004; Friedman etal.,
2006; Miyake etal., 2000; Willcutt, Sonuga-Barke, Nigg, &
Sergeant, 2008). These different aspects of executive func-
tioning are likely to be involved in text comprehension
(Kendeou, van den Broek, Helder, & Karlsson, 2014).
First, numerous studies have investigated the role of
working memory in reading comprehension (e.g., Cain,
2006; Vellutino etal., 1996). Working memory is necessary
for the understanding of a text since the information read
has to be temporarily stored before being updated with the
130 Journal of Learning Disabilities 50(2)
incoming information (Baddeley, 2003; Swanson &
OConnor, 2009). Working memory capacities therefore
appear to be an important predictor of text comprehension
skills in both children and adults (e.g., Cain, Oakhill, &
Bryant, 2004; Hannon, 2012), and less skilled compre-
henders generally present poorer memory skills than their
skilled peers (Goff, Pratt, & Ong, 2005; Oakhill, 1994;
Swanson, 1999; Yuill, Oakhill, & Parkin, 1989). More spe-
cifically, update processing in working memory appears to
be particularly important for the understanding of a text
(Carretti, Cornoldi, De Beni, & Roman, 2005; Swanson
etal., 2006). Indeed, readers have to update the mental rep-
resentation of the text stored in working memory while the
text is being processed (Gathercole, Alloway, Willis, &
Adams, 2006).
In the same vein, authors have also explored the relation-
ships between reading comprehension and inhibition skills.
Kieffer, Vukovic, and Berry (2013), for instance, found that
inhibitory control demonstrated unique direct associations
with reading comprehension in a population of fourth grad-
ers. Similarly, other authors showed that weaknesses in cog-
nitive inhibition were characteristic of individuals with
poor reading comprehension. For example, in adult partici-
pants, Gernsbacher and Faust (1991) observed that less
skilled comprehenders exhibited impaired performance in
tasks requiring the suppression of inappropriate meanings
of ambiguous words or homophones. Studies conducted in
children (e.g., Barnes, Faulkner, Wilkinson, & Dennis,
2004; De Beni & Palladino, 2000) confirmed this idea.
Using a sentence-completion task, Cain (2006) found that
9- to 10-year-old poor comprehenders were less able than
their skilled peers to inhibit words that were no longer rel-
evant for the purpose of the task. Pimperton and Nation
(2010) reached the same conclusion and additionally sug-
gested that the observed inhibition deficits were likely to be
specific to the verbal domain.
While the literature on the relationships between work-
ing memory and comprehensionand, to a lesser extent,
between inhibition and comprehensionis relatively exten-
sive, fewer studies have investigated the connection
between reading comprehension and other kinds of execu-
tive processing such as planning and shifting skills.
Nonetheless, all types of executive functions can be consid-
ered to be involved in text comprehension (Kendeou etal.,
2014). Indeed, understanding a text might, to some extent,
require predicting what happens next in a story (e.g., for-
ward inferencing), a process that could be linked to plan-
ning skills. As a function of the newly read information, it
might also be necessary to modify the situation model
(Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs, & Barnes, 2007), a process that may
be based on shifting skills. The results of the few studies
that have investigated this issue have therefore shown that
less skilled comprehenders tend to exhibit deficits in these
executive skills compared to both age-matched controls and
other types of poor readers (Cutting etal., 2009; Locascio
etal., 2010; Sesma etal., 2009). More precisely, S-RCD
children appear to be characterized by a specific planning
deficit (Cutting etal., 2009; Locascio etal., 2010). Thus, it
seems possible that each dimension of executive function-
ing makes a distinct contribution to reading comprehension
and that each of these specific contributions clearly needs to
be examined separately. Nonetheless, few studies (except
Locascio etal., 2010) have investigated all executive func-
tions at a time. The relationships between executive func-
tions and reading comprehension have also generally been
examined at one point in time only. The aim of the present
article is therefore to investigate this question within a
developmental framework by examining the unique contri-
bution of several executive skills (working memory, shift-
ing, planning, and inhibition) to reading comprehension
performance in typically developing readers in fifth grade
as well as in different subgroups of S-RCD children from
third to ninth grade.
In addition, previous research in the field of comprehen-
sion predictors has highlighted that the contribution of dif-
ferent predictors could vary depending on the measures
used to assess comprehension (e.g., Cutting & Scarborough,
2006). This phenomenon is also likely to occur when exam-
ining the contribution of executive functions in comprehen-
sion. For instance, Cutting etal. (2009) have shown that
executive functions are differentially involved in the vari-
ous tests they used to assess reading comprehension. Using
the fourth edition of the Gray Oral Reading Test (Wiederholt
& Bryant, 2000), these authors observed that executive
functioning explained a significant 7% of variance in com-
prehension, whereas the amount of variance contributed by
executive functions was not significant when using the pas-
sage comprehension subtest of the Woodcock Reading
Mastery Test, revised NU (Woodcock, 1998). This finding
led these authors to conclude that measures of comprehen-
sion might vary significantly in their executive demands. In
the same vein, Eason, Goldberg, Young, Geist, and Cutting
(2012) found a stronger link between planning and organiz-
ing skills and more complex texts (i.e., expository) and
comprehension questions (i.e., inferential) than between
these skills and simple texts (i.e., narrative) or comprehen-
sion questions (i.e., literal). Thus, the present study sought
to address this issue by examining the contribution of these
four aspects of executive functioning in different types of
tasks and the way they called on either literal or inferential
comprehension processes.
Aims of the Current Studies
The main objective of the two studies presented here was to
examine in much greater detail the involvement of execu-
tive functioning in reading comprehension, both in typi-
cally developing readers and in children with S-RCDs. In a
Potocki et al. 131
first study, we investigated the predictive power of execu-
tive functions in written text comprehension performance in
typical readers at the end of primary school, that is, when
children are supposed to have reached fluency in word
decoding (Verhoeven, van Leeuwe, & Vermeer, 2011), after
controlling for classical linguistic predictors of comprehen-
sion such as written word identification, vocabulary, and
syntactic skills. In this study, we also differentiated between
two types of processes involved when understanding a text,
namely, literal and inferential comprehension processes. It
was indeed hypothesized that executive functions would
make a greater contribution to the comprehension tasks tap-
ping inferential processes than those tapping literal pro-
cesses. In a second experiment, we report the results of a
cross-sectional study in S-RCD children in third/fifth and
seventh/ninth grades that allowed us to examine the devel-
opmental changes in the linguistic and cognitive profiles
exhibited by these children and adolescents. Although we
hypothesize that typical readers will outperform children
with S-RCDs on all the administered measures (at both the
linguistic and the cognitive levels), we expect these differ-
ences to evolve over development. Linguistic skills are
indeed likely to explain differences between good and less
skilled younger comprehenders, whereas other abilities
involving more general cognitive measures, such as execu-
tive functioning, are likely to make it possible to distinguish
between these two groups among older children.
Study 1
Method
Population.A total of 162 fifth graders took part in this
study. These children were attending different urban and
suburban schools located in the east of France. The mean
age of the participants was 131.5 months (SD = 3.68
months). Children who had a previous diagnosis of mental
retardation, cognitive impairments, behavioral problems,
attention disorders, or language difficulties were excluded
from the analyses. In addition, these participants did not
have any known neurological, visual, or hearing impair-
ment; were not receiving treatment for any psychiatric dis-
order; and were not attending speech therapy out of school.
Finally, all were native speakers of French.
Material
Reading comprehension.Reading comprehension skills
were measured using an experimental task inspired by the
French book La rdac (Reberg, 2003). In this task, children
first read a narrative to themselves (522 words) and then
performed a series of five tasks. These tasks could be dif-
ferentiated on the basis of the comprehension processes that
are required to perform them. As a result, three tasks (title-
choice, summary-choice, and statement-choice) needed
the comprehension of the text as a whole but required only
literal comprehension processes. On the other hand, two
tasks (multiple-choice and true/false questions) included
questions that required inferential processing (i.e., the inte-
gration of the readers background knowledge with textual
information) to be correctly answered. Two composite
scores had thus been calculated: The first one (comprising
the scores from the title-choice, summary-choice, and state-
ment-choice tasks) accounted for childrens literal compre-
hension abilities, and the second (comprising the scores
from the multiple-choice and the true/false questions)
accounted for their inferential competencies. The instruc-
tions for the tasks were read by the children and were also
explained orally by the experimenter. Reliability for these
two sets of tasks, assessed by calculating Cronbachs alpha
over items, were adequate at = .66 for the literal tasks and
= .65 for the inferential ones.
Word reading.A reading speed standardized test
(Khomsi, Pasquet, Nanty, & Parbeau-Guno, 2005) was
used to assess childrens word-reading abilities. This test
consists of 150 words divided into six tables of 25 words
each. The children had 2 min to read the words to them-
selves line by line as fast as possible and to cross out the
words that they thought were misspelled. There were three
types of items: correctly spelled words (e.g., demain [tomor-
row]), pseudo-words (e.g., tantour), and orthographically
incorrect homophones (e.g., demin [tomorow]). A compos-
ite score taking account of both the number of words read
and the number of items correctly identified as misspelled
was calculated.
Vocabulary. The French version of the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test (Dunn, Theriault-Whalen, & Dunn, 1993)
was used to measure childrens receptive vocabulary skills.
Ninety-five items adapted for use with 9- to 10-year-old
children were administered. In this task, the children had to
point to a picture representing a word spoken by the experi-
menter among four possible black-and-white drawings.
One point was awarded for each correct response.
Sentence comprehension.To measure this, we used a
standardized test of sentence comprehension (preuve de
Comprhension Syntaxico-Smantique; Lecocq, 1998)
designed for children ages 4 to 12 years. In this task, the
children had to choose, from a set of four possible pictures,
the one that represented a sentence read aloud once by the
experimenter. To give their answer, the children had to cir-
cle the number of the picture corresponding to the sentence
they had just heard on their own individual response sheet.
The sentences were of different syntactic complexity, rang-
ing from simple syntagms to more complex relative clauses.
Fifty-six items were administered. One point was awarded
for each correct response.
132 Journal of Learning Disabilities 50(2)

Nonverbal reasoning.The Raven Coloured Progressive Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for Study 1 Measures.
Matrices (Raven, 1998) were used to assess the childrens
Measure M SD Minimum Maximum
nonverbal reasoning skills. In this task, the children had to
correctly identify a missing element that completes a pat- Vocabulary 129.2 12.6 84 153
tern. The test consisted of 36 items. One point was awarded Nonverbal 32.4 2.5 24 36
for each correctly identified missing part. intelligence
Word reading 110.3 17.3 65 152
Working memory. An experimental n-back task was used Sentence 51.5 2.8 41 56
comprehension
in this experiment to assess childrens working memory
Planning 15.9 1.9 9 20
capabilities. In this task, the children had to decide whether
Shifting 48.0 24.8 5 192
a letter presented on a screen (rate of one letter every 2 s)
Inhibition 24.4 6.7 6 43
was identical to the letter presented two steps previously. Working memory 17.0 2.4 6 20
Two examples were presented first. One point was awarded Literal 7.2 2.3 2 11
per correct response. The maximum was 20. Reliability, comprehension
assessed by calculating Cronbachs alpha over items, was Inferential 14.6 2.6 8 21
adequate at = .68. comprehension

Planning. We used the Tower subtest from the Bilan neu-

ropsychologique de lenfant (NEPSY) neuropsychological
test battery (Korkman, Kirk, & Kemp, 2003) to measure
childrens planning skills. This test consisted of 20 trials.
On each trial, the children had to reproduce a given position
by moving three colored disks a specified number of moves
within a limited time. One point was awarded if the children
reproduced the correct position in the specified number of
moves. The task ended after four consecutive failures.
Inhibition.The Stroop test (Albaret & Migliore, 1999)
was used to investigate childrens inhibitory capabilities.
This version of the test was suitable for use with children
ages 7.6 to 15.5 years. This test was composed of four con-
ditions. In the first condition, the children had to name in a
limited time (45 s) color names (green, yellow, red, blue)
written in black uppercase. In the second condition, they
had to name in 45 s color names written in the correspond-
ing ink color (e.g., red written in red). In the third condition,
the children had a limited time to name the color of small
rectangles. Finally, in the last condition, they had to name in
45 s the ink color (green, yellow, red, blue) of color names
written in uppercase. Although the entire test was adminis-
tered, our analyses took account of only the last condition.
Shifting. To assess childrens shifting abilities, we admin-
istered the Trail Making Test (Reitan & Wolfson, 1993). In
the first two control conditions, the children had to connect
numbers from 1 to 25, then letters from A to Y. Although the
entire test was administered, we used only the third indica-
tor in the analyses. This indicator referred to the childrens
ability to switch between connecting numbers and letters in
a sequence (i.e., 1, A, 2, B, 3, C, etc.). The dependent vari-
able was the time taken to perform this third task after con-
sidering the time taken to complete the previous two tasks
in the test (which consisted solely of connecting the num-
bers in ascending order or the letters in alphabetical order).
Procedure. Several tasks were administered to the children
collectively in their usual classroom or in another room in
their school: The reading comprehension tasks, the written
word identification task, the sentence comprehension task,
and the nonverbal reasoning task. These tests were adminis-
tered during two sessions lasting approximately 30 min
each. The other measures (vocabulary, working memory,
shifting, inhibition, and planning) were administered indi-
vidually in sessions lasting approximately 45 min.
Results
Descriptive statistics for all the administered measures are
presented in Table 1. Table 2 presents the correlations
between all the measures. We observed significant correla-
tions between the inferential comprehension measure and
all the other tasks. It is worth noting that for this measure,
relatively strong correlations are observed with two specific
aspects of executive functioning, namely, working memory
(r = .45) and planning (r = .40). In comparison, the correla-
tions between the literal comprehension measure, the word-
reading task, and the measures of executive functioning
were lower (r = .24 between planning and word reading; r =
.28 between working memory and word reading) or even
nonsignificant (in the case of shifting and inhibition skills
for word reading; in the case of inhibition skills for literal
comprehension). Surprisingly, the correlations between the
four executive functions were quite low (and were even
nonsignificant with the inhibition task). This result, how-
ever, has already been reported in previous studies (see,
e.g., Kieffer etal., 2013; Miyake etal., 2000). These weak
associations across the executive function tasks make it
necessary to examine each executive function individually
as a potential predictor of reading comprehension.
To investigate the predictive role of the different factors
evaluated in this study in the two aspects of reading
Potocki et al. 133

Table 2. Correlations Between All Study 1 Measures.

Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1. Vocabulary
2. Word reading .16
3. Sentence comprehension .35 .10
4. Planning .35 .24 .17
5. Shifting .28 .09 .24 .25
6. Inhibition .19 .05 .04 .03 .15
7. Working memory .34 .28 .28 .45 .24 .03
8. Literal comprehension .38 .39 .30 .35 .18 .06 .40
9. Inferential comprehension .28 .45 .26 .40 .19 .16 .45 .45
10. Nonverbal intelligence .28 .30 .29 .34 .22 .09 .39 .33 .29

Note. Correlations in bold are significant at p < .05.

comprehension performance (namely, literal and inferential Table 3. Results of the Multiple Regression Analyses With
comprehension), we conducted two successive multiple Two Types of Comprehension Tasks as the Dependent
regression analyses with, as the dependent variable, (a) the Variables.
scores for the literal tasks and (b) the scores for the inferen- Independent
tial tasks. All the other measures were considered indepen- variable t(153) p sr2
dent variables. The rationale here was to investigate the
a. Dependent variable: Literal tasks of the
predictive role of executive functioning in these two types
comprehension test
of task (literal vs. inferential) after taking into account the Written word .27 3.76 .000 .14
variance explained by other comprehension-related factors identification
such as written word identification, vocabulary, and sen- Vocabulary .22 2.73 .007 .02
tence comprehension. To examine whether the contribution b. Dependent variable: Inferential tasks of the
of executive functions was specific (or not) to the compre- comprehension test
hension component of reading, we also conducted a third Written word .34 4.90 .000 .09
regression analysis whose dependent variable was the score identification
on the word-reading task. Prior to these analyses, we first Working memory .23 2.99 .003 .04
screened the data for homogeneity of variance, homosce- Planning .17 2.22 .020 .02
dasticity, and linearity using standard approaches Inhibition .15 2.19 .020 .02
(Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). These preliminary analyses Note. sr2 = squared semipartial correlation.
revealed no significant problems in the data distributions.
For the literal tasks of the comprehension test, the final
model obtained, F(8, 153) = 9.66, p < .0001, was composed calculated (see Table 3, Panel b) to examine the unique vari-
of two significant predictors, namely, word reading and ance predicted by each of them. This analysis revealed that
vocabulary, and accounted for 30% of the total variance (see while word identification accounted for 9% of unique vari-
Table 3, Panel a). Squared semipartial correlations for each of ance, executive functioning tasks also a unique part of vari-
the significant predictors were then calculated (see Table 3, ance, namely, 4% for the working memory measure, and
Panel a) to examine the unique variance predicted by each 2% each for the planning and inhibition tasks.
independent variable after intercorrelations between the other Finally, the third regression analysis, whose dependent
independent variables in the regression had been taken into variable was performance on the word reading task, revealed
account. This analysis revealed that word identification that none of the executive tasks explained a significant part
accounted for 14% of unique variance and vocabulary 2%. of the variance in this task. Only the nonverbal reasoning
For the inferential tasks of the comprehension test, the task provided a significant explanation for 9% of the vari-
final model obtained, F(8, 153) = 11.86, p < .0001, was ance, F(8, 153) = 3.49, p < .01.
composed of four significant predictors and accounted for
35% of the total variance (see Table 3, Panel b). Except for
the word-reading task, these predictors were mainly com-
Discussion
posed of executive functioning tasks (i.e., planning, inhibi- This first experiment confirms that executive functions are
tion, and working memory). Squared semipartial involved in reading comprehension in normally developing
correlations for each of the significant predictors were then children. In line with recent research (e.g., Kieffer etal.,
134 Journal of Learning Disabilities 50(2)
2013; Sesma etal., 2009), the results obtained here revealed
that executive factors still explained a unique part of the
variance in narrative comprehension after controlling for
well-known linguistic predictors of reading comprehension
performance in children such as word reading skills, vocab-
ulary knowledge, and sentence comprehension abilities.
However, we also observed that not all types of comprehen-
sion tasks or comprehension questions lead to significant
involvement of executive functions. Consistent with the
results obtained by Eason etal. (2012), we indeed observed
that only the tasks implying higher level comprehension
processes (i.e., inferential questions) recruited executive
skills. In contrast, the tasks tapping more literal processing
of the text were predicted by linguistic factors only (i.e.,
word decoding and vocabulary). In line with previous
research in the field (e.g., Cain & Oakhill, 2014; Cutting
etal., 2009; Cutting & Scarborough, 2006), these results
highlight the necessity of differentiating between different
types of processes involved in comprehension when exam-
ining the role of different comprehension predictors.
In addition, the present results seem to suggest that not
all executive skills are involved to an equal extent in text
comprehension. Whereas working memory, planning, and
inhibition skills all explained a fairly similar unique part of
the variance in comprehension (between 2% and 4%), the
multiple regression analyses did not reveal any significant
involvement of shifting abilities. This result is not consis-
tent with those obtained by Kieffer etal. (2013). Indeed,
these latter researchers have demonstrated that shifting
(evaluated by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test) is directly
and indirectly (via aural language comprehension) related
to reading comprehension in typical fourth graders. It is
worth noting, however, that flexibility skills might be par-
ticularly closely associated with working memory capabili-
ties (and more specifically with updating skills as they have
been evaluated with the n-back task used in the present
study) and that this association might have partly masked
the involvement of flexibility in reading comprehension.
The role of shifting in comprehension therefore needs to be
further investigated, and it might be preferable for future
studies to employ a working memory task that does not
involve an updating process. This is exactly what we did in
Study 2. More generally, the question of the assessment of
executive functioning is of particular interest. Indeed, it is
often difficult to find a task that specifically evaluates one
type of executive processing. It might also be possible for
future research to use different tests to assess one specific
function and then construct latent variables to establish
relationships between them (Brocki & Bohlin, 2004;
Huizinga, Dolan, & van der Molen, 2006).
Taken together, these findings suggest that models of
reading comprehension should attempt to accommodate
more dimensions of executive functioning to account for
the component skills involved when understanding written
texts, especially when it comes to describing deeper com-
prehension processes such as inferencing. But it also
appears essential to look at the specific contribution of
executive functions to comprehension within a develop-
mental framework. Indeed, given that executive functions
continue to develop throughout childhood and adolescence
(Asato, Sweeney, & Luna, 2006; Brocki & Bohlin, 2004;
Gathercole, Pickering, Ambridge, & Wearing, 2004;
Yurgelun-Todd, 2007), it seems probable that their role will
evolve with age. For example, previous research has dem-
onstrated that the involvement of lower level skills in com-
prehension (e.g., decoding or vocabulary) decreases as
children get older, whereas the role of higher level skills
(e.g., working memory; see Seigneuric & Ehrlich, 2005)
becomes increasingly predominant (e.g., Oakhill etal.,
2003; Snchal etal., 2006; Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte,
Burgess, & Hecht, 1997; Vellutino etal., 2007). As a result,
executive functioning might become increasingly involved
in text comprehension over development and, more specifi-
cally, play an ever-greater role in reading activities. The
main objective of our second study, therefore, was to
address this issue in a specific population, namely, less
skilled comprehenders from 8 to 15 years of age.
Study 2
Method
Population. A total of 259 children attending different school
grades took part in this study. Our initial sample consisted of
48 students in Grade 3, 40 students in Grade 5, 104 students in
Grade 7, and 67 students in Grade 9. Thirty-one S-RCD chil-
dren were then selected based on their performance on a read-
ing comprehension test and a word-decoding measure (see
below for a description of these two tasks). An analysis of
deviance was used as the basis for this selection with z-scores
less than 1.3 as a cutoff, which corresponds to the 10th per-
centile. The children who were selected were those presenting
a deficit in the reading comprehension test (as evidenced by a
deficit in their z scores) but who achieved average perfor-
mance on the word-reading task. These children had no
known diagnosis of other cognitive disorders such as mental
retardation, behavioral problems, or attentional difficulties.
They also did not present any visual or hearing impairments.
For the subsequent analyses, the selected children were then
divided into two groups: the younger poor comprehenders
(Grades 3 and 5 children; n = 13) and the older poor compre-
henders (Grades 7 and 9 children; n = 18).
Material. To compare the S-RCD childrens performance with
the norm for chronological agematched controls, we used
standardized tests in Study 2, except in the case of reading
comprehension, word recognition, and comprehension moni-
toring. To assess these skills, we used three experimental tasks
Potocki et al. 135
for which data have been previously collected in a large sam-
ple of typical readers of the same grade level as each of the
four experimental groups.
Reading comprehension. Two narratives were presented to
assess the childrens text comprehension skills (see Potocki,
Bouchafa, Magnan, & Ecalle, 2014, for the psychometric
properties of this test). This task was presented on a com-
puter screen. After having read the text to themselves, the
children answered a series of 12 multiple-choice questions.
For each question, three possible responses were presented,
and the children had to click on the response they thought
was correct. The questions included both literal and inferen-
tial processes. We distinguished between two types of infer-
ences (Cain & Oakhill, 1999; Potocki, Ecalle, & Magnan,
2013): those that make it possible to connect successive
textual statements to establish causal or referential relation-
ships (text-connecting inferences) and those that require the
inclusion of general knowledge about the world to construct
a coherent representation of the text as a whole (knowledge-
based inferences). The maximum score was 24.
Decoding. Decoding skills were measured using a com-
puterized task in which the children had to decide whether
a pair of written items (a word and a pseudo-word) could be
pronounced in the same way (e.g., cat, kat) or not (e.g., cat,
dat). The children had only 2 min to perform the task. The
dependent variable was the number of correct responses
given in 2 min. Reliability, assessed by calculating Cron-
bachs alpha over items, was high at = .93.
Vocabulary.Vocabulary knowledge was assessed using
a task extracted from a standardized French test (preuve
verbale daptitudes cognitives [EVAC]; Flessas & Lussier,
2003) in which children had to retrieve a word from its
given definition. They were also given the first letter of the
word as a clue to retrieve the expected word. For example,
the children had to find the word scissors from the defini-
tion s___ are a cutting instrument for paper, clothes, etc.
One point was awarded for each correct word. The maxi-
mum score was 16.
Syntactic knowledge. Syntactic knowledge was assessed
using a test taken from the French EVAC battery (Flessas
& Lussier, 2003). In this task, the children had to fill in a
missing word in a sentence, for example, ___ I were rich, I
would travel a lot. This word could be a pronoun, a prepo-
sition, a conjunction, or an adverb. Twelve sentences were
administered, and the children were awarded one point for
each correct response. The maximum score was 12.
Sentence comprehension.In this task (see Ecalle etal.,
2013), the children had to decide whether two orally pre-
sented sentences meant the same thing (e.g., The snail is
neither fast nor noisy, The snail is slow but not noisy)
or not the same thing at all (e.g., The rabbit eats the rat,
The rabbit is eaten by the rat). Forty-eight pairs of sen-
tences were administered. A weighted score representing
the difference between the correct responses (hits: response
expected yes/response obtained yes) and errors (false
alarms: response expected no/response obtained yes)
was calculated.
Comprehension monitoring. To determine whether the chil-
dren were able to monitor their own comprehension, we asked
them to judge their own comprehension of the texts they had
just read on a 5-point Likert-type scale (range from completely
understand the text to not understand the text at all).
Working memory. The Letter-Number Sequencing sub-
test from the fourth edition of the Wechsler Intelligence
Scale for Children (Wechsler, 2003) was used to assess
the childrens working memory capabilities. In this task,
the children heard randomized sequences of letters and
numbers together and were asked to repeat them, first in
numerical order and then in alphabetical order. The number
of items to be recalled in each list grew from trial to trial.
One point was awarded for each correct response. The test
stopped after three failed attempts on the same item.
Planning. The Clocks subtest from the NEPSY II (Kork-
man, Kirk, & Kemp, 2007) was used. This subtest is
designed to assess childrens planning and organization
skills. For each item, the children had to draw a picture of a
clock and afterward place the clock hands where the experi-
menter asked them to place them.
Shifting. The Animal Sorting subtest from the NEPSY II
(Korkman etal., 2007) was used to assess childrens abil-
ity to generate categories, to transfer those categories to
actions, and to shift from one category to another. In this
timed task, the experimenter first presented a set of eight
drawing cards representing animals in different contexts.
The cards could differ on several features such as color and
number of animals on a card. The children then had to sort
these cards into two groups of four cards each using their
own sorting criteria. The experimenter then asked the chil-
dren to apply a new classification to form two new four-
card categories. The children had 360 s to form as many
categories as they could. One point was awarded for each
correct (and unique) category.
Inhibition.The Inhibition subtest from the NEPSY II
(Korkman etal., 2007) was used to assess the childrens
inhibition skills. This timed subtest is designed to assess
childrens ability to inhibit automatic responses in favor of
novel responses. The children looked at a series of black-
and-white shapes or arrows and named either the shape or
136 Journal of Learning Disabilities 50(2)
Table 4. Means and Standard Deviations for the Two Groups of S-RCD Children in Study 2 for All Administered Measures.
Measure
Vocabulary
Syntactic knowledge
Sentence comprehension
Comprehension monitoring
Working memory
Planning
Shifting
Inhibition
Note. Significant differences from the norm as calculated using one-sample t tests are presented in bold. S-RCD = specific reading comprehension
deficit.
a
Grades 3 and 5, n = 13. bGrades 7 and 9, n = 18.
Significant difference: *p < .05. **p < .01.
the direction or an alternative response, depending on the
color of the shape or arrow. In the first task (denomina-
tion), the children had to name the shape/direction of the
arrow based on what they saw. In the second task (inhi-
bition), they had to name the shape/direction that was
the opposite of what they saw. Finally, in the third subtest
(change), they had to name the correct shape/direction
when the arrow was black and the opposite shape/direction
when it was white. The dependent variable was a composite
score of the last two tasks.
Procedure.As in Study 1, some of the tasks (i.e., reading
comprehension, decoding, and comprehension-monitoring
tasks) were administered collectively to all 259 children
taking part in this second experiment. These tasks required
the use of computer equipment, and the testing sessions
therefore took place in the schools computer rooms where
the children were divided into small groups of approxi-
mately 12 participants each. These sessions lasted between
25 and 35 min. Only the children identified as S-RCD (n =
31) were subsequently tested individually on all the other
measures (lexical and syntactic knowledge, sentence com-
prehension, working memory, planning, inhibition, and
shifting) in two sessions of approximately 35 min each.
Results
One-sample t tests were conducted to assess whether the two
groups of S-RCD childrens performances were signifi-
cantly different from the norm of age-matched children.
Data were first screened to make sure they meet the criteria
for using parametric tests. For each test yielding significant
results, effect sizes are reported by calculating Cohens d. In
the group of younger children (third and fifth grades), the
S-RCD children performed below the norm on the tasks
measuring vocabulary, t(12) = 3.63, p = .003, d = 1; syntactic
knowledge, t(12) = 6.88, p < .001, d = 1.9; and sentence
Young S-RCDa M (SD) Old S-RCDb M (SD)
4.1** (3.1) 10.7 (2.9)
3.6** (1.8) 9.4 (1.8)
5.6** (4.1) 14.5 (4.7)
2.8 (0.7) 3.3 (0.5)
3.9** (2.7) 5** (3.4)
6.8** (3.1) 7.6* (3.3)
7.1** (2.8) 8.7* (2.1)
5.5** (3.5) 6.8* (3.6)
comprehension, t(12) = 4.21, p = .001, d = 1. They also
achieved lower scores on all the measures of executive func-
tions: working memory, t(12) = 8.14, p < .001, d = 2.26;
planning, t(12) = 3.6, p = .003, d = 1; shifting, t(12) = 3.59,
p = .004, d = 1; and inhibition, t(12) = 4.61, p < .001, d =
1.28. Among the group of older students (seventh and ninth
grades), the performance of the S-RCD children did not dif-
fer significantly from the norm on any of the linguistic mea-
sures: vocabulary, t(17) = 1.53, ns; syntactic knowledge,
t(17) = .59, ns; and sentence comprehension, t(17) = .94, ns.
However, they were still below the norm on the tasks of
working memory, t(17) = 5.36, p < .001, d = 1.48; planning,
t(17) = 2.6, p = .02, d = .72; shifting, t(17) = 2.2, p = .04, d =
.62; and inhibition, t(17) = 3.12, p = .02, d = .87.
For independent groups t tests were then run to examine
whether the scores of the S-RCD children were different
from those of their skilled peers on the comprehension
monitoring measure. No significant differences compared
to the age-matched control children were observed for this
measure at any age. This indicates that the S-RCD children
felt that they understood the texts as well as their skilled
peers. The means and standard deviations of the two groups
of S-RCD childrens scores for all the measures adminis-
tered are presented in Table 4. In this table, the significant
differences from the norm as calculated using one-sample t
tests are presented in bold.
Discussion
This second experiment leads to the conclusion that the
comprehension difficulties experienced by children with
S-RCDs could be due to deficits in various skills in the lin-
guistic (vocabulary, syntax, sentence comprehension) and
cognitive (working memory, planning, shifting, inhibition)
domains. These results therefore confirm the existence of
an executive dysfunction profile in children with S-RCDs.
Indeed, the performances of the two groups of S-RCD
Potocki et al. 137
children at different ages were significantly poorer than
those of age-matched controls on measures assessing differ-
ent aspects of executive functioning: working memory,
planning, shifting, and inhibition. However, we observed
developmental changes in the underlying deficits experi-
enced by these children that could reflect the involvement
of linguistic and executive factors in text comprehension
difficulties. As far as linguistic skills are concerned, only
the younger S-RCD children in our experimental group
(Grades 3 and 5) exhibited impaired performance on the
lexical knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and sentence com-
prehension tasks. However, linguistic skills no longer seem
to account for text comprehension difficulties from the end
of primary school. Indeed, in seventh and ninth grades, the
performances of the S-RCD children did not differ signifi-
cantly from the norm on any of the linguistic measures. In
contrast, at the level of executive capabilities, the perfor-
mances of the children with S-RCD were significantly
lower than the norm at each age. This finding persisted over
time for the four measures of executive functioning admin-
istered: working memory, inhibition, shifting, and planning
skills. However, it is worth noting that in the shifting task,
although being significant, the effect size was medium only.
In line with the results from Study 1, maybe some of the
dimensions of executive functioning appear to be more
mobilized in reading comprehension, whereas others (i.e.,
shifting) do not appear to be as highly involved. But this
result still needs to be further explored in future experi-
ments, maybe by contrasting the involvement of different
types of shifting tasks.
In general, this study confirmed the presence of execu-
tive difficulties in children and adolescents with S-RCDs.
However, the results presented here do not allow conclu-
sions to be made as to whether these difficulties are due to a
true deficit in executive functioning or, instead, to a delay in
the development of executive processing. Indeed, each
executive function is likely to present its own particular
developmental trajectory (see Best & Miller, 2010; Jurado
& Rosselli, 2007). Consequently, while some executive
functions may mature quite early on in the developmental
process (e.g., inhibition skills; see Brocki & Bohlin, 2004;
Levin, Culhane, Hartmann, Evankovich, & Mattson, 1991;
Williams, Ponesse, Schachar, Logan, & Tannock, 1999),
others continue to develop throughout adolescence (e.g.,
shifting or planning skills; see, e.g., Asato etal., 2006;
DeLuca etal., 2003). Still others (e.g., working memory;
see, e.g., Hale, Bronik, & Fry, 1997; Luciana, Conklin,
Hooper, & Yarger, 2005; Luna, Garver, Urban, Lazar, &
Sweeney, 2004; Siegel, 1994) may continue to develop into
young adulthood. Further research including broader age
ranges of S-RCD individuals (and especially a comparison
with adult participants) is therefore needed to clarify this
issue. Longitudinal follow-up studies could also prove
helpful in examining this research question.
General Discussion
Taken together, the results of the two studies presented here
confirm the implication of executive functioning in text
comprehension. Indeed, several aspects of executive func-
tions (i.e., working memory, planning, and inhibition) were
found to be significant predictors of reading comprehension
skills in normally developing readers in fifth grade even
after typical linguistic predictors of reading comprehension
(decoding, vocabulary, and sentence comprehension) had
been controlled for. But our results also revealed that exe-
cuting functions are not equally involved in all types of
comprehension tasks. Indeed, we observe that while execu-
tive skills made a significant contribution to the inferential
tasks of the comprehension test administered (e.g., answer-
ing inferential questions), they did not make any significant
contribution in explaining the performance in more literal
tasks (e.g., choosing between different titles or summaries
to best represent the text). This result is consistent with the
results obtained by Eason etal. (2012) and highlights the
necessity in future research to insert tasks tapping different
aspects of text comprehension processing.
In a second study, we observed that the performances of
children with an S-RCD were significantly poorer on differ-
ent aspects of executive functioning than those of their
skilled peers. In line with previous research in this field (see
Cutting etal., 2009; Locascio etal., 2010; Sesma etal.,
2009), specific deficits in reading comprehension (not
accompanied by any difficulties in word reading) seem to
be attributable to severe difficulties in executive function-
ing. Furthermore, the executive difficulties of children with
S-RCDs appear to be relatively stable throughout develop-
ment. However, given that some executive functions are
likely to continue to evolve until late adolescence or young
adulthood (e.g., Best & Miller, 2010; Jurado & Rosselli
2007), future research should investigate whether the exec-
utive difficulties experiences by S-RCD children and ado-
lescents are due to a true deficit or rather to a developmental
delay. Conversely, the difficulties S-RCD individuals might
experience at the level of linguistic skills seem to decrease
over time. No differences were indeed observed between
the older poor comprehenders of this study (Grades 7 and 9)
and the norm of age-matched peers in any of the linguistics
measures (i.e., vocabulary, sentence comprehension, and
syntactic knowledge). This finding is consistent with previ-
ous works that have demonstrated that the involvement of
lower level skills in text comprehension decreases as chil-
dren get older (and the increasing role of higher level skills;
e.g., Seigneuric & Ehrlich, 2005; Vellutino etal., 2007).
These results highlight the need to take account of the
particular profile of S-RCD children at the level of execu-
tive functioning, especially when designing interventions
intended to remediate their comprehension difficulties
(Kieffer et al., 2013). Indeed, the difficulties they
138 Journal of Learning Disabilities 50(2)
experience in the executive domain might constrain the
potential benefits they might gain from such interventions.
In a similar vein, Sesma etal. (2009) have also suggested
that children with S-RCDs might benefit from interventions
designed to promote the mobilization of more executive
skills in reading. It would also be interesting to discover
whether these children benefit from interventions that
directly foster executive skills and possibly to examine this
issue outside of the reading context (i.e., effects of the more
general training of executive skills; see Dowsett & Livesey,
2000; Thorell, Lindqvist, Bergman Nutley, Bohlin, &
Klingberg, 2009). Such an approach could be particularly
valuable when working with older S-RCD students for
whom interventions focusing on improving linguistic skills
might not be as beneficial as they could potentially be for
younger S-RCD children (e.g., Bianco etal., 2012; Potocki
etal., 2013).
In addition, the role of executive functions in reading
seems to be fairly specific to the comprehension component
of the Simple View of Reading model (Gough & Tunmer,
1986). Indeed, Locascio etal. (2010), for example, have
demonstrated that children with a specific deficit in word
recognition cease to exhibit deficits in executive functions
once phonological processing has been taken into account.
In contrast, children with S-RCDs continue to exhibit defi-
cits in planning tasks even after this factor has been con-
trolled for. Similarly, the regression analyses performed by
Sesma etal. (2009) revealed no significant involvement of
executive functions (working memory and planning) in
single-word reading. Arrington, Kulesz, Francis, Fletcher,
and Barnes (2014) reached the same conclusions. In the
present study, we also observed that none of the executive
measures explained a significant part of the variance in
word decoding performance. In general, executive func-
tions might therefore be more involved in high level pro-
cessing (such as reading comprehension) than in lower
level and more automatic processing (such as word recogni-
tion). This finding may well warrant other investigation in
future works.
It would also be interesting to further examine the role of
executive functioning in reading in terms of the actual tasks
used to assess reading and comprehension (Kendeou,
Papadopoulos, & Spanoudis, 2012). Previous research
(Cutting etal., 2009; Eason etal., 2012), along with our
own results, suggests that not all comprehension tasks call
upon the same amount of executive processing. In that vein,
one could also hypothesize that not all reading situations are
equally dependent on executive functioning (Mossa,
Schunn, Schneider, McNamara, & VanLehn, 2013). More
ecological reading situations, such as those requiring the
reader to search for specific information in expository texts
or in web-based environments (e.g., Hirsh, 2000; Rouet,
Ros, Goumi, Macedo-Rouet, & Dinet, 2011; Wallace,
Kupperman, Krajcik, & Soloway, 2000), might more
heavily call upon executive functioning (and, in particular,
working memory, planning, and inhibition skills) than more
classical reading comprehension situations, such as those
requiring the comprehender to read a narrative to answer
questions about it. Future research in this area could there-
fore investigate the differential involvement of executive
functioning in different types of reading situations.
Finally, certain limitations of the present work should
nevertheless be considered. First, the conclusions drawn
from Study 2 are based on relatively small samples of
S-RCD children. This is due in particular to the fact that
S-RCD children represent only a small proportion of the
total population (between 3% and 10%) and that it is dif-
ficult to findand even more so among young readers
pure profiles of children with adequate word decoding
skills but impaired reading comprehension. To include
only children with a specific deficit in reading compre-
hension (but without any other comorbid disorders), we
had to apply somewhat strict selection criteria, which led
us to exclude a certain number of children from our
experimental population. Further research should there-
fore be conducted to complement that presented here and
to replicate the results obtained. Working with larger sam-
ples of children would also make it possible to establish
more precise profiles of less skilled comprehenders whose
comprehension difficulties are due to impaired executive
functioning. Indeed, our results suggest that executive
functions were particularly necessary for inference pro-
cessing (see also Eason etal., 2012), but one could also
investigate the contribution of executive functions as a
function of the types of inference that have to be gener-
ated (e.g., text-connecting vs. gap-filling inferences; Cain
& Oakhill, 1999). Hence, the identification of more pre-
cise profiles of poor comprehenders based on the type of
inferencing difficulties they experience (see Potocki,
Ecalle, Magnan, 2015) and the examination of their exec-
utive capabilities could be of particular interest. Such a
differential analysis could indeed help researchers and
practitioners to gain a more thorough understanding of
reading comprehension failure and make it possible to
propose more appropriate remediation.
Another limitation of the present work relates to the lack
of a measure of the childrens attentional abilities. Indeed, it
has been argued (see, e.g., the description of the population
in Sesma etal.s [2009] study) that children with S-RCDs
might also exhibit attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders.
In addition, attentional capabilities might be involved in
both reading comprehension and executive function tasks
(Savage, Cornish, Manly, & Hollis, 2006). As a result,
future research in the field could include such a measure (as
in Sesma etal.s [2009] study) either to examine the impli-
cation of attentional skills in reading comprehension or to
investigate in much greater detail the existence of attention
disorders among children with S-RCDs.
Potocki et al. 139
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the speech therapists Camille
Bonneaud, Mlanie Broisin, Marion Fery, and Camille Varrey-
Fusco for their help in collecting the data.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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