The Specific Role of Inhibition in Reading Comprehension in Good and Poor Comprehenders

Difficulties in inhibitory processes have been shown to characterize the performance of poor comprehenders. However, the inhibitory inefficiency of poor comprehenders is most often assessed by their resistance to proactive interference, that is, the ability to suppress off-goal task information from working memory (WM). In two studies tasks assessing resistance to proactive interference (intrusion errors), response to distracters (Text With Distracters task) and prepotent response inhibition (Stroop and Hayling tests), along with WM measures, were administered to children aged 10 to 11, both good and poor comprehenders. The aim of the study was to specifically determine whether general or specific inhibitory factors affect poor comprehenders’ reading difficulties. Results showed that poor comprehenders, compared to good ones, are impaired in WM tasks and in inhibitory tasks that assess resistance to proactive interference. This suggests that reading comprehension difficulties of poor comprehenders are related to specific inhibitory problems.