Laskay-Horvath and colleagues (2025) investigated how different domains of working memory impacted on reading performance and how this association changed with age and reading expertise. The following provides an overview of their research.
Background:
- A wide array of previous research has shown that working memory is a predictor of reading ability for both typical and atypical developing readers.
- Both the storage and processing aspects of working memory contribute to decoding skills.
- There is a significant positive correlation between working memory and both word reading and reading comprehension.
- As students’ reading develops, verbal working memory has a stronger relationship to reading ability.
- Verbal working memory is also significantly related to reading difficulties.
- Above average readers have significantly greater phonological and visuospatial working memory capacity compared to typically developing peers.
- In poor readers, low phonological working memory is associated with low word recognition, while low visuospatial working memory is associated with low reading comprehension.
- Reading development is strongly related to vocabulary development.
Research:
- Laskay-Horvath et al. examined the relationship between visuospatial, verbal and phonological working memory and reading as well as how this relationship changed with reading experience.
- The study involved 800 children from 1st to 6th grade from Western Hungary.
- Students were assessed on two reading tasks and one of three working memory tasks – visuospatial, phonological or verbal.
Results:
- There was a significant effect of visuospatial working memory on both word reading and pseudoword reading. This effect decreased with age.
- There was a significant effect of verbal working memory on word reading and pseudoword reading. This effect decreased with age for word reading but not pseudoword reading.
- There was no significant effect of age on phonological working memory on either word reading or pseudoword reading.
Discussion:
- The association between visuospatial working memory and reading decreased with age, with a stronger positive association occurring in younger students suggesting that print sensitivity emerges during reading acquisition.
- The association between verbal working memory and reading decreased with reading expertise, with a stronger positive association occurring in beginning readers suggesting that verbal working memory supports reading acquisition.
- Although there was no significant interaction between age and phonological working memory and reading, the researchers suggest that phonological memory plays a different role at different stages of reading development. Phonology has an important role in beginning readers as they learn to decode. Once a significant bank of ‘sight’ words have been stored in long-term memory, phonological working memory plays a crucial role in supporting access to stored words or morphemes.
- It is important to keep in mind that this study investigated children who spoke Hungarian which is considered to have a transparent orthography (i.e., pronunciation consistently represented in writing), especially compared to English. The researchers suggest that this difference may explain why their results are not consistent with research using English speaking children.
Implications for reading instruction:
- These findings suggest that although the systematic, explicit teaching of letter-sound associations (i.e., phonics) is critical that perhaps the incorporation of visuo-spatial strategies (e.g., orthography) would also be beneficial in reading acquisition.
Reference
Laskay-Horvath, C., Aranyi, G., Pachner, O., Remete, E., & Kemeny, F. (2025). How is reading related to working memory? – A cross-sectional developmental perspective. Reading Research Quarterly,