Journal of Psycholinguistic Research

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-019-09669-4

The Contributions of Attentional Control Components,

Phonological Awareness, and Working Memory to Reading
Ability

Akbar Rezaei1   · Elnaz Mousanezhad Jeddi1,2

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019

Abstract
This study aimed to examine the relationship between the components of attentional
control, phonological awareness, and working memory with reading. 209 students (109
females and 150 males with the mean age of 9  years) completed Integrated Visual and
Auditory Continuous Performance Test, digit span subscale of WISC-IV, Reading Test,
and Phonological Awareness Test. Using path analysis, the components of focus, response
inhibition (prudence), vigilance, processing speed showed statistically direct effect on
reading. The direct effect of phonological awareness on reading was statistically signifi-
cant. Also, the effect of working memory on reading was not significant. The results could
help to understand the roles of attentional control components in predicting reading ability.

Keywords  Attentional control · Phonological awareness · Reading · Working memory

Introduction

Reading is a complex skill that requires the coordination of different cognitive processes
(Conners 2009). Appropriate reading skill is a result of an appropriate and effective pho-
nological processing. Phonological processing involves recalling, retention, analysis and
manipulation of phonological codes (Hecht et  al. 2001). The most important component
of phonological processing is phonological awareness which is a factor underlying read-
ing achievement (Ehri et  al. 2001). Various studies have shown that early phonological
awareness has been linked to subsequent reading achievement (e.g. Lonigan et  al. 2000;
Torgesen et al. 1994; Wagner et al. 1997).
Both in phonological processing and reading skill, working memory contributes to
the development of a coherent representation of the text. An individual’s performances
on many tasks such as reading are associated with working memory ability (Engle 2002;

* Akbar Rezaei
Akbar_rezaei@pnu.ac.ir
1
Department of Psychology, Payame Noor University (PNU), P.O. BOX 19395‑3697, Tehran, Iran
2
Department of Psychology, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

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 Journal of Psycholinguistic Research

Swanson 1999; Swanson et al. 2009). In reading, working memory is involved with reading
(Christopher et al. 2012; Swanson et al. 2009).

Attentional Control

Reading processes should be coordinated by some cognitive mechanisms such as atten-

tional control (Conners 2009; Walczyk et al. 2004). Conners (2009) stated that attentional
processes have an important role in reading and are as important as phonological awareness
in predicting reading competency. Attentional control includes the ability of obtaining and
maintaining vigilance state, focusing on relevant information for a long time, and inhibit-
ing inappropriate responses (Drigas and Karyotaki 2017). Attentional control during read-
ing is associated with attending to the written words, suppressing inappropriate sounds and
meanings of words, and shifting between this information (Arrington et al. 2014). Atten-
tional control processes are multimodal and exists as a family of functions. Arrington et al.
(2014) proposed response inhibition, sustained attention, and cognitive inhibition as three
potentially functions of attentional control. In the current study, we focused on response
inhibition and sustained attention as two main function of attentional control.
Response inhibition is the intentional or effortful, controlled suppression of dominant,
automatic, or prepotent responses to external stimuli (Arrington et al. 2014). Children with
reading problems and attention deficits show deficits in both response inhibition and work-
ing memory (de Jong et al. 2009; Purvis and Tannock 2000; van der Schoot et al. 2004;
Locascio et al. 2010). In contrast, a study showed that response inhibition was not uniquely
predictive of word reading, when also accounting for working memory, processing speed,
and naming speed (Christopher et  al. 2012). These conflicting findings suggest that the
relation between response inhibition, working memory, and reading is not well understood.
Sustained attention provides for the ability to maintain attention consistently directed
toward the intended task (Astle and Scerif 2011). Sustained attention is necessary for suf-
ficient reading for keeping an active representation of the text. Individuals with reading
problem have deficits in sustained attention, as compared to those with typically devel-
oping reading ability (Silva-Pereyra et  al. 2010). Bosse and Valdois (2009) reported that
sustained attention could predict reading in elementary school students, independent of
phonological skills.
There are different tasks to take the measure of attentional control components. In the
current study, we used Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA).
IVA is a computerized auditory and visual test that has been designed for the assessment of
attention and response control. The test takes 13 min, so it needs to sustain attention during
test. The participant should press the button when hearing or seeing “1”, and should not
press the button by hearing or seeing “2”. In some parts of test, “1” is presented frequently
in which continuous response is needed, then “2” is suddenly presented and the partici-
pant is needed to inhibit responding. It measures the error of commission or impulsivity.
In other parts of the test, the error of omission or inattention is measured, in which “2” is
presented frequently and the participant should not respond, then “1” is suddenly presented
and the participant is needed to respond (Sandford and Turner 2002).
IVA measures different components of attention including vigilance, focus, speed, pru-
dence, consistency, and stamina. Vigilance measures two errors of omission including inat-
tention and propensity and low score could reflect careless responding and ignoring. Focus
reflects general variability of mental processing speed for all correct responses. Low score in
focus could show unpredictable and unreliable attention function. Speed measures the average

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of reaction time to all correct responses and examines problems in attention processing related
to slow mental processing. Low score reflect participants’ mental slowness. Prudence is the
subscales of impulsivity and response inhibition and is calculated using three kinds of com-
mission errors. Low score in prudence reflects problems in response inhibition. Consistency
measures the validity and reliability of reaction times and the ability of staying on task. Low
score in consistency reflects distraction during task and problem in focused attention. Stamina
compares the average reaction time of correct responses in first 100 trails with last 100 trails.
Stamina is used for the identification of problems in sustained attention for a long time. The
scores of all subscales are presented in visual and auditory modalities (Sandford and Turner
2002).
As stated above, studies demonstrated that attentional control was an important compo-
nent of successful reading (Conners 2009; Ihnen et  al. 2013; Kamza 2017; Walczyk 2000;
Walczyk et al. 2004). For example, Ihnen et al. (2013) showed that subcomponents of atten-
tional control interacted with subcomponents of reading. Kamza (2017) suggested that effec-
tive attentional control, especially inhibition was necessary for acquiring reading and becom-
ing proficient on it. Arrington et  al. (2014) examined the relationship between attentional
control functions including sustained attention, response inhibition, and cognitive inhibition
with decoding and reading comprehension. The results showed that sustained attention and
cognitive inhibition were correlated with working memory and reading comprehension; and
response inhibition was associated with decoding ability.

Current Study

In the current study, we were interested in the use of IVA test as a measure of attentional con-
trol components and the unique contributions of attentional components to reading, when also
accounting for phonological awareness and working memory, in typically developing children.
Many studies have been conducted with children with reading or attention problems, which
may not generalize to typically developing individuals. Although working memory and the
attention control processes appear to be related to reading, several aspects of these relations
are not well understood. Using a path analysis, we tried to explore the effect of each compo-
nent of attentional control, phonological awareness and working memory on reading.

Methods

Participants

Participants were 259 students (109 female and 150 male students with the mean age of
9  years) that were selected using random cluster sampling method. Data were collected in
the academic year of 2016–2017 among the students attending elementary schools (2th to 4th
grades). Participants were healthy students who have no history of physical or psychological
disorder, such as epilepsy, motor problems, and so on.

Procedure

The purpose of study was explained to the school administrators and parents, and after
obtaining the written consent the students were entered into the study. At first, the

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procedure of each test was explained to the participants, and then they were individually
assessed using research instruments. Data collection tools were as follows respectively:
Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA), digit span subscale
of WISC-IV, Reading Test (RT) (Michaeli Manee 2005), and Phonological Awareness Test
(PHAT) (Michaeli Manee 2005).

Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA)

IVA is a computerized auditory and visual test that has been designed for the assessment of
attention and response control. The test takes 13 min, so it needs to sustain attention dur-
ing test. The participant should press the button when hearing or seeing “1”, and should
not press the button by hearing or seeing “2”. The subscales include vigilance, focus, and
speed, prudence, consistency, and stamina. Vigilance reflects inattention problems; focus
is related to individual’s concentration and exhibit deficits related to drifting off; speed
refers to the discriminatory processing speed during a task; prudence reflects impulsivity
and deficit in response inhibition; consistency is considered as a factor for keeping con-
tinuous effort; stamina is used to discover deficit in keeping mental processing speed. The
test–retest reliability correlations range from .37 to .75 on the various scales indicating
moderate to good stability over time (Sandford and Turner 2002).

Digit Span Subscale of WISC‑IV

Digit span subscale of WISC-IV was used for the assessment of working memory. This
subscale has been applied in previous studies as an index of working memory (Gathercole
et  al. 2004). The test had two parts of digit recall and backward digit recall. In the digit
recall, the participant was asked to listen to the list of numbers and then repeat them in
the same order. In the backward digit recall, the participant was asked to repeat the spo-
ken numbers in reverse order. The reliability coefficient has been reported higher than 0.95
(Jazayeri and Poorshahbaz 2003).

Reading Test (RT)

RT was a standardized measure that was used for assessing reading performance. Par-
ticipants were asked to read the single words and short passages which were selected in
accordance with their academic grade, and reading errors were recorded by researchers.
Test–retest reliability was reported as 0.88 (Michaeli Manee 2005).

Phonological Awareness Test (PHAT)

This test was used for evaluating the phonological awareness and included subscales of
phoneme segmentation, phoneme and syllable combining, classification of first sound,
classification of last sound, phoneme deletion and naming. Test–retest reliability of sub-
scales has been reported as follows: phoneme segmentation (0.82), phoneme combining
(0.91), syllable combining (0.91), classification of first sound (0.94), classification of last
sound (0.91), phoneme deletion and naming (0.80), and whole test (0.89) (Michaeli Manee
2005). The overall phonological awareness score that was the sum of subscales scores was
used in analysis.

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Results

Relations of Attentional Control, Reading, Phonological Awareness, and Working

Memory

Correlations between the variables; the components of attentional control, reading,

phonological awareness, and working memory were evaluated by Pearson Correlation
Coefficient. The results showed that there was a negative significant correlation between
reading errors and phonological awareness ability (r = − 0.41, p < 0.01). There were
negative (r = − 0.35, p < 0.01) and positive (r = 0.49, p < 0.01) significant correlations
between reading errors and phonological awareness with working memory, respectively.
Subscales of attention had negative significant relationship with reading errors, except
for vigilance (auditory) and speed (auditory). There was positive significant correlation
between all subscales of attention with phonological awareness, except for prudence
(visual) and consistency (visual). Also, all subscales of attention had positive significant
relationship with working memory. Table 1 demonstrates the means, standard deviation,
and correlation coefficients.

Modeling the Attentional Control Predictors of Reading

A path analytic model was used to examine the direct effects of attentional control com-
ponents, phonological awareness, and working memory on reading. All analyses were
carried out using AMOS (Version 26).
As you see in Fig.  1, direct effects of focus (visual) (b = − 0.44, p < 0.05), phono-
logical awareness (b = − 0.28, p < 0.001), prudence (visual) (b = − 0.28, p < 0.05), vigi-
lance (visual) (b = − 0.21, p < 0.05), and speed (visual) (b = − 0.21, p < 0.05) on reading
was statistically significant. The direct effect of other attentional components including
prudence (auditory) (b = − 0.09, p = 0.33), consistency (auditory) (b = − 0.25, p = 0.11),
consistency (visual) (b = − 0.04, p = 0.82), stamina (auditory) (b = − 0.03, p = 0.68),
stamina (visual) (b = − 0.08, p = 0.43), vigilance (auditory) (b = − 0.03, p = 0.75), focus
(auditory) (b = − 0.44, p = 0.06), speed (auditory) (b = − 0.04, p = 0.61) on reading
was not statistically significant. In addition, the effect of working memory (b = − 0.11,
p = 0.09) on reading was not significant.

Discussion

The present study aimed to examine the effects of each component of attentional con-
trol, phonological awareness, and working memory to typically developing reading abil-
ity using IVA test. Results showed that subscales of visual focus, visual prudence, vis-
ual vigilance, and visual speed had significant direct effect on reading. Also, there was
significant direct effect of phonological awareness, but not working memory on reading.
The effect of working memory on reading was not statistically significant.
Among the attentional control components, focus had the strongest effect on read-
ing ability. In the reading task, participants were asked to read the words and texts and

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Table 1  Pearson’s correlation coefficients between the components of attentional control, reading, phonological awareness and working memory (N =259)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

1. PrudenceA –
2. PrudenceV .41** –
3. ConsistencyA .72** .32** –
4. ConsistencyV .39** .79** .35** –
5. StaminaA .47** .25** .48** .25** –
6. StaminaV .20** .70** .20** .71** .34** –
7. VigilanceA .24** .15* .38** .22** .15* .14* –
8. VigilanceV .25** .52** .25** .70** .17** .51** .50** –
9. FocusA .76** .39** .92** .38** .48** .20** .28** .29** –
10. FocusV .40** .77** .32** .93** .26** .74** .21** .70** .37** –
11. SpeedA .20** .13* .22** .099 .47** .28** .43** .18** .11 .15* –
12. SpeedV .18** .54** .16** .63** .25** .69** .36** .65** .12 .67** .48** –
13. Working memory .24** .29** .28** .30** .16* .38** .10 .34** .30** .31** .13* .36** –
14. phonological awareness .24** .05 .28** .12 .20** .21** .15* .21** .22** .14* .17** .31** .49** –
15. Reading errors − .17** − .15* − .21** − .26** − .14* − .28** − .08 − .20** − .23** − .30** − .10 − .31** − .35** − .41** –
Mean 89.19 90.23 80.63 89.06 93.68 94.46 64.16 79.17 85.84 90.20 93.76 79.79 5.70 3.87 51.14
Standard deviation 21.55 23.54 18.77 24.02 18.28 24.56 33.44 27.15 19.45 23.79 18.09 21.51 1.80 4 16.40

**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level

*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research

-.09

-.28*

-.25

-.04

-.03

-.08

-.03

-.21*

-.31

-.44*

-.04

-.21*

-.28**

-.11

Fig. 1  Path model representing attentional control components, phonological awareness, and working mem-
ory as predictors of reading errors. Note A auditory, V visual; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.001

visual focus was needed for successful performance. Poor reading ability may be the
result of an inability to focus attention on the text during reading.
Prudence as a component of attentional control and phonological awareness had the
same weights in the model. It indicated that prudence was as important as phonologi-
cal awareness in predicting reading competency. This result is in contrast with the study
reported by Locascio et  al. (2010) that response inhibition was no longer a significant
predictor of reading ability after accounting for phonological processing. We found that
response inhibition and phonological awareness both had direct effects on reading. The
result was consistent with the studies that had reported the importance of response inhi-
bition in reading skills (e.g. Kamza 2017; Van der Schoot et  al. 2004; Walczyk 2000;
Walczyk et  al. 2004). Arrington et  al. (2014) stated that the response inhibition could
significantly predict word reading. Similarly, Walczyk (2000) and Walczyk et  al. (2004)
emphasized on the role of inhibition in reading ability. They discussed that response inhibi-
tion during reading could be associated with inhibiting orthographically similar words that
might be temporarily activated during reading, so sufficient inhibiting was required before
they entered into working memory for additional processing.
Speed was another component of reading that had significant effect on reading. Speed
measured mental processing speed and the discriminatory processing speed was neces-
sary for a better performance in reading. Purvis and Tannock (2000) suggested that the

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significant relation between reading and response inhibition may lie in the shared vari-
ance between response inhibition and processing speed. Christopher et al. (2012) found
that processing speed accounted for unique variance in word reading, after accounting
for working memory and response inhibition. Further research should study the relation
of processing speed and response inhibition and their relation to reading.
Vigilance as another effective component is related to inattention problems. Individ-
uals with high vigilance are watchful, alert and attentive that attribute to good perfor-
mance in reading tasks. Being vigilant during reading cause to classify each syllable,
letter, and word and then make the appropriate response.
The present study indicates no direct effect of working memory on reading. Previous
studies showed that the contribution of attentional control components to reading could
account for differences in reading ability, independent of working memory skills (Tighe
and Schatschneider 2014; Henderson et al. 2013; Palladino and Ferrari 2013; Pimperton
and Nation 2010). Results of the current study support this hypothesis that although
working memory is a major cognitive correlate of reading, it is not as important as
attentional factors in predicting reading ability considering the type of working memory
task used in present study. We used digit span subscale of WISC-IV for assessing work-
ing memory that measures mainly storage component of working memory. Using other
tasks may conduce to different results.
In sum, focus, response inhibition (prudence), vigilance, processing speed, and pho-
nological awareness were significantly related to reading, suggesting that the ability to
focus on text; inhibit or suppress contextually irrelevant information during reading;
be vigilant; and do all of these by proper speed is important for reading. The results
could help to understand the roles of attentional control components in predicting read-
ing ability. According to these results, it could be suggested that deficiency in allocating
appropriate resources for some components of attentional control could impact reading
skill. Furthermore, the results could be used in designing future interventions, espe-
cially for children with reading disorders and attentional problems.
Limitations of the present study included the use of one task for the assessment of
different attentional functions. It would be better to use different tasks for assessing each
function in future studies, so that more reliable results could be obtained. Besides, addi-
tional researches would be helpful to clarify the results and develop the understanding
of the relationship between the components of attentional control with reading. Relat-
edly, further research is needed to use different types of working memory tasks. Meas-
ures such as digit span, used in this study, contain the storage component of working
memory that may account for the no relation observed between working memory and
reading.

Compliance with Ethical Standards 

Conflict of interest  The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval  All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with
the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki dec-
laration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent  Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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