The relationship between working memory and reading comprehension in primary school 2nd and 3rd grade students

Reading is one of the most important skills in children's daily life and academic learning. Reading comprehension skill is seen as the ultimate goal of reading activity. Because an important part of learning at school is based on reading comprehension skills. Reading comprehension requires some cognitive skills as well as linguistic skills. One of the main differences in children's reading comprehension skills is executive functions. When the literature is examined, working memory is known as one of the most important sub-components of executive functions. The main purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between working memory performance and reading comprehension skills of primary school 2nd and 3rd grade students. Relational design, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in this study. The study group of the research consists of 214 students studying in public schools affiliated to MEB in the Nusaybin district of Mardin province in the 2020-2021 academic year. As a data collection tool, two measurement tools were used for reading comprehension. The first of these is the Reading Comprehension Test, which consists of multiple choice questions developed by the author. The second is the reading comprehension test, which consists of open-ended questions based on narrative and informative texts in the work called "Informal Reading Inventory" created by Karasu, Girgin and Uzuner (2013). The Working Memory Scale developed by Özgür-Yılmaz (2016) was used to measure working memory. The data obtained were analyzed using the SPSS statistical package program. Descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Moments Coefficient, independent groups t-Test and multiple regression analyzes were used in the analysis of the data. As a result of the research, it was revealed that there is a positive and moderately significant relationship between the verbal working memory performances of the 2nd and 3rd grade students and their reading comprehension skills. However, as a result of the regression analysis, it was revealed that the verbal working memory total score of the students predicted both reading comprehension scores. Based on the findings, suggestions were made for practice and future research.