What makes an excellent reader? Short-term memory contrasts between two groups of children

Abstract

Purpose
Research on the association of short-term memory (STM) and reading expertise are dominated by studies with typically developing children and children with reading impairment. Many studies confirmed the role of short-term memory in reading development and reading, especially in the case of verbal and phonological STM. The current study takes an unusual perspective by contrasting age-appropriate readers with excellent readers (reading performance with at least 1 SD above average) on three different short-term memory skills: phonological STM, verbal STM and visuospatial STM.

Methods
We identified and recruited six groups of children. Three groups performed at least one SD above average in two standardized reading tasks (excellent readers), the three control groups performed within the domain of ±0.5 SD on reading (age-appropriate readers). One group of excellent readers and one group of age-appropriate readers participated in a Phonological Short-Term Memory (STM) task, one pair of groups participated in a Verbal STM task, whereas the last pair participated in a Visuospatial STM task.

Results
Pairwise comparisons demonstrated that excellent readers outperformed age-appropriate readers in Visuospatial STM. Phonological STM only differed across the groups after controlling for age. No group difference was observed in Verbal STM.

Conclusion
Our results confirm the role of short-term memory in reading expertise. However, data highlights that visuospatial and phonological information becomes more relevant in above-average readers. Results are discussed along grain-size theory, and whether and how focused educational programs can build on visuospatial short-term memory training to achieve better reading.

Full text

Frontiers in Education 01 frontiersin.org
What makes an excellent reader?
Short-term memory contrasts
between two groups of children
FerencKemény
1,2*, GaborAranyi
2,3, OrsolyaPachner
2,
EszterP. Remete
2 and ClaudiaLaskay-Horváth
2,4, 5
1 Department of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria, 2 Institute of Education and Psychology
at Szombathely, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, 3 Faculty of Psychotherapy Science,
Sigmund Freud Private University, Vienna, Austria, 4 Doctoral School of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd
University, Budapest, Hungary, 5 Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
Purpose: Research on the association of short-term memory (STM) and reading
expertise are dominated by studies with typically developing children and
children with reading impairment. Many studies confirmed the role of short-
term memory in reading development and reading, especially in the case of
verbal and phonological STM. The current study takes an unusual perspective
by contrasting age-appropriate readers with excellent readers (reading
performance with at least 1 SD above average) on three dierent short-term
memory skills: phonological STM, verbal STM and visuospatial STM.
Methods: We identified and recruited six groups of children. Three groups
performed at least one SD above average in two standardized reading tasks
(excellent readers), the three control groups performed within the domain of
±0.5 SD on reading (age-appropriate readers). One group of excellent readers
and one group of age-appropriate readers participated in a Phonological Short-
Term Memory (STM) task, one pair of groups participated in a Verbal STM task,
whereas the last pair participated in a Visuospatial STM task.
Results: Pairwise comparisons demonstrated that excellent readers
outperformed age-appropriate readers in Visuospatial STM. Phonological STM
only diered across the groups after controlling for age. No group dierence
was observed in Verbal STM.
Conclusion: Our results confirm the role of short-term memory in reading
expertise. However, data highlights that visuospatial and phonological
information becomes more relevant in above-average readers. Results are
discussed along grain-size theory, and whether and how focused educational
programs can build on visuospatial short-term memory training to achieve
better reading.
KEYWORDS
word reading, pseudoword reading, excellent readers, phonological short-term
memory, verbal short-term memory, visuospatial short-term memory
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED BY
Jonathan Glazzard,
University of Hull, UnitedKingdom
REVIEWED BY
Nicolas Stefaniak,
Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne,
France
Aimee Quickfall,
Leeds Trinity University, UnitedKingdom
*CORRESPONDENCE
Ferenc Kemény
ferenc.kemeny@uni-graz.at
RECEIVED 20 October 2023
ACCEPTED 22 December 2023
PUBLISHED 09 January 2024
CITATION
Kemény F, Aranyi G, Pachner O,
P. Remete E and Laskay-Horváth C (2024)
What makes an excellent reader? Short-term
memory contrasts between two groups of
children.
Front. Educ. 8:1325177.
doi: 10.3389/feduc.2023.1325177
COPYRIGHT
© 2024 Kemény, Aranyi, Pachner, P. Remete
and Laskay-Horváth. This is an open-access
article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License
(CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction
in other forums is permitted, provided the
original author(s) and the copyright owner(s)
are credited and that the original publication
in this journal is cited, in accordance with
accepted academic practice. No use,
distribution or reproduction is permitted
which does not comply with these terms.
TYPE Original Research
PUBLISHED 09 January 2024
DOI 10.3389/feduc.2023.1325177

Kemény et al. 10.3389/feduc.2023.1325177
Frontiers in Education 02 frontiersin.org
1 What makes an excellent reader?
Short-term memory contrasts
between two groups of children
Reading is among the most important academic skills. Especially
Western societies rely heavily on written information: all
agreements, all contracts must bedocumented in a written format,
so literacy is inevitable to navigate within the society. In accordance,
one of the major focuses of primary education is to support children
in literacy development. Primary education is not only an
opportunity, but most countries oblige their children to primary
education. Since reading is such an important skill, it is necessary to
understand how dierent cognitive factors support reading
development, and how these underlying cognitive factors may
beused to further enhance reading development. e current study
is aimed to understand how dierent types of short-term memory
underlie reading skills. While many previous studies have focused
on children with decient reading skills, our aim is to unravel how
exceptionally good readers dier from their peers with
age-appropriate skills. In accordance, the following study compares
the short-term memory performance of excellent readers (more
than 1 SD above average) and typical readers on three dierent
short-term memory (STM) paradigms: a verbal STM task, a
phonological STM task, and a visuospatial STM task.
e introduction below summarizes previous studies addressing
the association between reading and working memory from various
perspectives. On the one hand, research was aimed at identifying
whether and how individual dierences in reading are explained by
underlying memory skills. On the other hand, research addressed how
children with impaired reading skills dier from typical readers in
working memory abilities. Reading is a complex skill during which the
individual decodes visual stimuli into phonological information. us
reading can in principle beassociated with both visual and verbal
short term memory functions. is is especially true due to the
changing nature of reading throughout development.
In the earliest, pre-reading phase, children identify and recognize
certain words, like their own names. ese written words are not
analyzed though, rather stored as complex visual images (Frith, 1985;
Genisio and Bastien-Toniazzo, 2003). Next, children have to identify
that letters and speech sounds correspond (Seymour and Elder, 1986;
Morton, 1989; Froyen etal., 2009). is is the alphabetic principle,
which is a prerequisite of reading (Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley, 1989;
Liberman etal., 1989; Landerl etal., 2018). By the end of kindergarten
years, children learn more and more letters, but mainly associate them
with letter names (ompson, 2009). Only during the early stages of
primary education do children start to decode letters and combine the
underlying phonological representations (Seymour and Elder, 1986;
Ehri, 1991, 1997; Georgiou etal., 2020). Structured input helps them
systematically identify the letter-speech sound correspondences, ne-
tune their sensitivity to visual symbols appearing in their own
languages (Brem etal., 2010; Froyen etal., 2010). At this point,
children mainly decode the information sequentially. With practice,
children develop and store orthographic representations of larger
sublexical (Roembke etal., 2019) and lexical units (Goswami etal.,
1998), which opens way to sight-word reading, which is the most
optimal way of reading (Ehri, 2005, 2014). ere could becertain
dierences due to educational policies: for example, school starts in
England a year earlier than in Austria (Steiner etal., 2021).
Since reading is decoding visual symbols into phonological
content, phonological abilities are among the best predictors of
reading development (Castles etal., 2003; Farrar and Ashwell, 2008;
Landerl etal., 2018), and they also serve as one of the best clinical
markers of developmental dyslexia (Alexander etal., 1991; Ramus and
Szenkovits, 2008). During the process of reading development,
reading becomes a fairly automated skill (Froyen etal., 2009; Roembke
et al., 2019), which leads to a decreasing role of phonological
awareness. Children divert from sequential decoding and one-to-one
mapping of letters and speech sounds, and rely more on a more
holistic way of reading, that is word recognition (Ehri, 2014). Such an
advanced process rather loads on access to orthographic
representations and their associated phonological forms than
manipulation of speech sounds (Moll and Landerl, 2009). Empirical
studies indeed demonstrated that while the resolution of phonological
awareness increases with age (Goswami, 1999, 2002), its explanatory
power decreases with reading expertise (Hogan etal., 2005; Powell
and Atkinson, 2021).
While children are expected to divert from the deployment of
phonological knowledge with increasing reading experience, the role
of verbal skills is not that obvious. While verbal short-term memory
has also been identied as a clinical marker of dyslexia (Mann and
Liberman, 1984; Brady, 1986), a causal relationship between reading
and verbal short-term memory has not been fully supported (Melby-
Lervåg, 2012; Melby-Lervåg and Hulme, 2013). at is, although
children with dyslexia seem to have a below average verbal short-term
memory capacity, individual dierences in verbal STM do not seem
to explain individual dierences in reading within the typically
developing domain. On the other hand, there can bean indirect eect,
as verbal STM explains variance of the development of vocabulary
(Gupta and Mac Whinney, 1997; Jarrold etal., 2004; Verhagen and
Leseman, 2016), which in turn could translate into lexical quality,
leading to better reading abilities (Perfetti, 2007).
e section above discussed why phonological and verbal skills
may contribute to the development of reading. Not only spoken skills
are relevant to reading, but also the processing of visual information.
Visual input is neither invariant, nor noise-free. Letters, letter-clusters,
words and scripts in general vary in numerous characteristics, like
font, size, color or contrast. Despite this variance, orthographic units
are still identied, at least when fonts are not dysuent (Astley etal.,
2023). e abstract letter units are assumed to bethe smallest units of
orthographic processing (Finkbeiner and Coltheart, 2009). ese are
common categories of letters with the same identity, regardless of their
real physical appearance (ompson, 2009; Carreiras etal., 2013). e
existence of these abstract units demonstrate that certain visual
features can beor are discounted when processing orthographic input.
Not only visual, but also spatial features can bedisregarded during
the process of reading. Individuals are able to activate the underlying
orthographic representations even when certain letters are substituted
with each other or with other letters. ese are mostly known as
transposed (Carreiras etal., 2007; Perea and Carreiras, 2008; Luke and
Christianson, 2012) and substituted letter eect (Lété and Fayol, 2013;
Varga etal., 2021; Hasenäcker and Schroeder, 2022). Research on
these phenomena demonstrate that noise in letter identity as well as
letter position can be disregarded during reading (exibility was
smaller in individuals with developmental dyslexia, e.g., Lété and
Fayol, 2013; Kirkby etal., 2022). Since letter transposition is easier to
overcome than letter substitution, it was proposed that certain

Kemény et al. 10.3389/feduc.2023.1325177
Frontiers in Education 03 frontiersin.org
sublexical orthographic units are stored and/or processed without an
internal spatial structure. Open bigrams are combinations of two
letters irrelevant of their order. e lack of spatial specication in these
open bigrams, however, supports quick recognition and overcoming
spelling errors, like the above-mentioned letter transposition
(Grainger and Whitney, 2004; Lupker etal., 2015).
In sum, the above review suggests that during typical reading
development, children should rely less and less on their phonological
and visual processing abilities, while it is not clear whether reading
experience qualies the association verbal short-term memory and
reading. Less is known about atypical readers, and even this knowledge
is rooted in studies with developmental dyslexia, documenting
decreased performance in all three domains, that is, phonological
(Tin-Richards etal., 2008; Franceschini and Bertoni, 2019), verbal
(Trecy etal., 2013; Majerus and Cowan, 2016), and visuospatial short-
term memory (Smith-Spark etal., 2003; Bacon etal., 2013).
In the current study wetake an unconventional perspective in
examining how the contribution of phonological, verbal and visual
short-term memory changes with reading expertise. Werecruited
excellent readers, that is, children who are at least 1 standard deviation
above the age-appropriate level of reading, and compared their
performance to children with age-appropriate reading skills (within
the domain of ±0.5 SD). Excellent readers and typical readers were
contrasted on their phonological, verbal and visuospatial short-term
memory performance. It is important to note that Baddeley’s working
memory model does not dierentiate between verbal and phonological
short-term memory, since both load on the phonological loop.
However, the two skills dier in their characteristics. Verbal STM is
the memorization of known words based on their meaning, while
Phonological STM requires an accurate coding of phonological input
in the absence of semantic scaolding, thus relying more on complex
phonological processes (e.g., Dillon and Pisoni, 2006).
We hypothesized two possibilities. On the one hand, if reading
development requires relying less and less on phonological and
visuospatial processing, wewould expect no dierence in visuospatial
and phonological short-term memory between expert and
age-appropriate readers. Whereas if results from developmental
dyslexia are applicable on the other side of the spectrum, weshould
expect better performance of short-term memory in excellent readers
in all three domains.
2 Methods
2.1 Participants
e current study is a part of the standardization of the Hungarian
VOLT word and pseudoword reading test (Kemény etal., 2023).
Within the standardization process, children from grade 1 s semester
to grade 6 s semester were recruited. e aim was to collect age-norms
across these 11 times points. e standardization process included
data from 1952 children from various schools from western Hungary.
Along with the reading tests, children did one of three memory tasks
as well: the nonword repetition task measuring Phonological Short-
Term Memory, the digit recall task measuring Verbal Short Term
Memory, or the computerized version of the Corsi blocks task,
measuring Visuospatial Short-Term Memory. Each child completed
only one of the memory tasks. Out of the 1952 children, weltered
and report data of those children (1) who met the criterion of typical
readers’ or excellent readers’, and (2) who had a completed memory
task. Furthermore, each of the memory tasks had practice items.
Weonly included participants who succeeded on the practice items.
Altogether 319 children were included in the data analysis, one child
had data from all three tasks, whereas all others completed only one
of the memory paradigms. Since the dierent memory-tasks cannot
becompared with each other, wepresent the results separately across
the memory tasks.
Children were either typical readers or excellent readers.
Wedened the two groups based on reading performance. Typical
readers are readers who perform between −0.5 and 0.5 standard
deviations on both the word and pseudoword reading task of the
VOLT (Kemény etal., 2023). Excellent readers perform above 1 SD on
both subtasks. Descriptive data of participants are provided in Table1.
All children were Hungarian speakers. ey were recruited and tested
in their own primary schools. All schools were located in Western
Hungary, in and around the city of Szombathely. Parents of all children
provided a written informed consent in accordance with the
declaration of Helsinki and the stipulations of the institutional ethics
board. All children agreed to participate. e study received clearance
from the Ethics committee of the Faculty of Psychology and Education
of the Eötvös Loránd University.
2.1.1 Phonological STM group
ere were 72 typical readers (31 boys and 41 girls) with full
dataset. eir mean age was 9.89 years (Sd: 1.8, range: 7–13.08). ere
were 33 children among the excellent readers, with a mean age of 9.39
years (Sd: 1.813, range: 7.17–13.17). eir reading skills were on
average 1.59–1.75 standard deviations above age-appropriate
(considering a word and a pseudoword reading subtest).
2.1.2 Verbal STM group
Sixty-three children (32 boys and 31 girls) were included in the
group of typical readers. eir mean age was 9.66 years with a standard
deviation of 2.011. Typical readers’ reading performance was around
0 on standardized values. ere were 21 excellent readers (9 boys, 12
girls) with a mean age of 10.230 years (Sd: 2.128, range: 6.83–12.92).
e reading skills of excellent readers were on average 1.78–1.8
standard deviations above age-appropriate.
2.1.3 Visuospatial STM group
We had 92 typical readers (45 boys and 47 girls) with 10.026 years
of mean age (Sd: 1.9, range: 6.75–13.33). eir performance was
compared to that of 40 excellent readers (20 boys and 20 girls) with a
mean age of 10.05 years (Sd: 2.06, range: 6.92–13.17). Excellent
readers were on average 1.7–1.74 standard deviations above
age-appropriate reading level.
2.2 Methods
2.2.1 VOLT one-minute reading test
e VOLT is a standardized test for word- and pseudoword
reading. e word reading subtest is composed of a list of 180 words.
Children are asked to read the words one aer the other as quick as
possible within 60 s. e pseudoword reading subtest is identical
with 180 pseudowords as reading stimuli. e test has been

Kemény et al. 10.3389/feduc.2023.1325177
Frontiers in Education 04 frontiersin.org
standardized for children from grade 1 spring semester to grade 6
spring semester. Separate age-norms have been reported for every
semester. Data collection of all children of the current study took
place in the spring semester (between April and May). e test–retest
correlation of word- and pseudoword reading is 0.859–0.966
(varying across grades and subtasks). e correlation between word-
and pseudoword reading is 0.677–0.897 (Kemény etal., 2023). e
measure of reading was the number of words and pseudowords read
within 60 s.
2.2.2 Phonological STM
We used the semi-computerized version of a standardized
Hungarian pseudoword repetition task (Racsmány et al., 2005).
rough headphones participants heard the pseudowords and had to
repeat them with precision. e repetition was evaluated by a student
assistant. Pseudowords increased in length, starting with monosyllabic
pseudowords. Each length had four pseudowords. If a child was able
to repeat at least two of the items, the task proceeded to the longer
sequences. e task continued until the exit criterion was reached, that
is, until the child was unable to repeat at least half of the pseudowords.
Phonological STM is characterized by the number of correctly
repeated pseudowords.
2.2.3 Verbal STM
Verbal STM was measured with the digit span task. Participants
heard digits one aer the other, and had to recall them when
prompted. Weused a computerized task programmed in E-prime
(Psychology Soware Tools Inc., 2016), in which digits were
presented auditorily through headphones, and children had to
enter the number sequence in an identical order using the
computer’s keyboard. Digits were recorded by a calm male voice.
e length of the digits varied between 549 and 862 milliseconds.
e recordings were stereo with 44.1 KHz sampling rate. Digits
followed each other with a xed 1,000 stimulus onset asynchrony.
Although the task was automatized, a student assistant was always
present to make sure the participant was not distracted and to assist
entering the data.
e task started with two practice items to make sure children
understood what they had to do. e practice trials were 2-digit
sequences. e real items followed, starting from 3-digit-long
sequences. ere were four items from each length. e exit criterion
was identical to the phonological STM task: children only proceeded
to the next length if they repeated at least half of the items correctly.
Verbal STM is characterized by the number of correctly
repeated sequences.
TABLE1 Descriptive statistics.
Panel A. Typical and excellent readers with data from verbal short-term memory task
Typical readers (N = 63, 32 boys, 31 girls) Excellent readers (N = 21, 9 boys, 12 girls)
Mean (SD) Range Mean (SD) Range
Age 9.657 (2.011) 6.75–13.25 10.23 (2.128) 6.833–12.917
Word readinga58.27 (26.614) 18–101 95.476 (34.046) 38–146
Word reading Zb0.016 (0.22) −0.425- 0.431 1.776 (0.604) 1.047–3.142
Pseudoword readinga33.857 (12.197) 14–57 56.286 (17.757) 31–91
Pseudoword reading Zb0.03 (0.28) −0.479- 0.494 1.801 (0.481) 1.072–3.087
Panel B. Typical and excellent readers with data from nonword repetition task
Typical readers (N= 72, 31 boys, 41 girls) Excellent readers (N= 33, 18 boys, 15 girls)
Mean (SD) Range Mean (SD) Range
Age 9.889 (1.796) 7–13.083 9.386 (1.813) 7.167–13.167
Word readinga61.042 (25.623) 18–103 80.758 (30.69) 35–136
Word reading Zb−0.009 (0.3) −0.474- 0.476 1.754 (0.58) 1.045–3.9
Pseudoword readinga35.278 (11.228) 15–53 47.273 (15.758) 26–85
Pseudoword reading Zb0.019 (0.267) −0.479- 0.494 1.589 (0.497) 1.009–2.711
Panel C. Typical and excellent readers with data from visual short-term memory task
Typical readers (N= 92, 45 boys, 47 girls) Excellent readers (N= 40, 20 boys, 20 girls)
Mean (SD) Range Mean (SD) Range
Age 10.026 (1.896) 6.75–13.333 10.046 (2.06) 6.917–13.167
Word readinga63.38 (26.379) 18–107 92.175 (30.878) 37–136
Word reading Zb−0.023 (0.292) −0.498- 0.497 1.738 (0.532) 1.014–3.9
Pseudoword readinga36.5 (11.657) 15–57 54 (16.51) 27–88
Pseudoword reading Zb0.029 (0.276) −0.468- 0.494 1.7 (0.559) 1.009–3.082
aWord and pseudoword reading scores are the number of words or pseudowords read within 60 s on the VOLT (Kemény etal., 2023) task, bnormative, age-appropriate scores of word- and
pseudoword reading. Panel A provides describes children with Verbal STM data, Panel B children with Nonword repetition data, Panel C children with Visuospatial STM data.

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Frontiers in Education 05 frontiersin.org
2.2.4 Visuospatial STM
Visuospatial STM was assessed using a computerized task
analogous to the Corsi blocks, in which participants had to repeat a
visuospatial sequence. e task was programmed and run in E-prime
(Psychology Soware Tools Inc., 2016). A 4 × 4 black array of
rectangles appeared on a white screen. e screen resolution was set
to 1,024 × 768, the array had a size of 341 × 341 pixels. During the
items, one of the 16 rectangles turned red for 650 ms, then turned
blank again for 500 ms, then another rectangle turned red. e aim of
the participants was to remember the order of the rectangles turning
red. Aer the sequence they were prompted to repeat the sequence
using the mouse and clicking on the given rectangles.
ere were two practice trials in the beginning with sequences of
two locations. e real items started with three locations, and had four
sequences with each length. e same exit criterion was used as
before: the task only proceeded to the next length if at least half of the
sequences were correctly repeated. Although the task was fully
automated, a student assistant was always present to make sure the
children complied with the task requirements, and helped them as
required. Visuospatial STM is characterized by the number of
correctly repeated sequences.
2.3 Results
2.3.1 Phonological STM – nonword repetition
Data from the three STM tasks by group are presented in Figure1.
Weconducted an ANOVA with Nonword repetition as dependent and
Group (Typical readers vs. Excellent readers) as between subject
variable. e ANOVA revealed no signicant main eect of group,
F(1, 103) = 2.868, p = 0.093, ηp2 = 0.027. Controlling for age, however,
resulted in a signicant group dierence, F(1, 102) = 4.058, p = 0.047,
ηp2 = 0.038. Age was a signicant covariate, F(1, 102) = 5.354, p = 0.023,
ηp2 = 0.050.
2.3.2 Verbal STM – digit span
We conducted an ANOVA with Verbal STM as dependent and
Group (Typical readers vs. Excellent readers) as between subject
variable. e ANOVA revealed no signicant main eect of group,
F(1, 82) = 0.941, p = 0.335, η
p2
= 0.011. e groups did not dier even
aer controlling for age, F(1, 81) = 0.286, p = 0.594, η
p2
= 0.004, w hereas
Age was a signicant covariate, F(1, 81) = 18.547, p < 0.001, η
p2
= 0.186.
2.3.3 Visuospatial STM
We conducted an ANOVA with Visuospatial STM as dependent
and Group (Typical readers vs. Excellent readers) as between subject
variable. e ANOVA revealed a signicant main eect of group,
F(1, 130) = 6.902, p = 0.010, η
p2
= 0.050. is dierence remained
signicant even aer controlling for age, F(1, 129) = 9.774, p = 0.002,
η
p2
= 0.070. Age was a signicant covariate, F(1, 129) = 59.339,
p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.315.
3 Discussion
e aim of the current study was to unravel whether and how
excellent readers dier from age-appropriate readers in their short-
term memory abilities. In accordance, wehave contrasted the short-
term memory performance of excellent readers (reading performance
at least 1 SD above average) and typical readers (reading performance
within ±0.5 SD from average). e clearest eect was that excellent
readers were signicantly better in visuospatial STM than typical
readers. Apart from that, they also outperformed typical readers in
phonological STM, however, this was only observed aer controlling
for age. No dierence was observed in verbal STM on the digit
span task.
Results of the current study are not new in the sense that there is
ample evidence for the substantial role of short-term memory in
reading. It is a novelty though that the eect is not constraint to the
FIGURE1
STM performance by group in the three conditions. Each bar represents the average number of correctly repeated sequence. Error bars represent SEM.

Kemény et al. 10.3389/feduc.2023.1325177
Frontiers in Education 06 frontiersin.org
verbal/phonological domain, and not even strongest in this domain.
In the following section wewill discuss why dierent types of memory
processes may contribute to excellent reading, and what implications
it has to further psychological research and educational
development programs.
Several previous studies have identified the important role of
phonological awareness as well as phonological skills in reading
and developmental dyslexia (Alexander etal., 1991; Hogan etal.,
2005; Ramus and Szenkovits, 2008; Landerl etal., 2018; Powell
and Atkinson, 2021). Research has also documented that while
phonological skills are a prerequisite for reading, its scope
changes with age (Goswami, 2002), and its role decreases with
development (Hogan etal., 2005; Powell and Atkinson, 2021).
This is in accordance with reading development. Early readers
rely heavily on letter-speech sound associations as they have to
sequentially decode the observed written text. Later on, children
associate visual and phonological word forms, developing
orthographic representations in the individuals’ orthographic
lexicon (self-teaching, Share, 1995; Share and Shalev, 2004).
These representations make way to sight-word reading, a process
during which the reader recognizes visual word forms and
retrieves the accompanying spoken word effortless (Ehri,
1991, 2014).
Other frameworks suggested that this shift toward sight word
reading is not only supported by lexical representations (stored
word forms), but also by the increasing grain size of orthographic
information. That is, analytic levels start from letter-level, and
increase toward larger and more consistent units (Ziegler and
Goswami, 2005, 2006; Caravolas, 2006). Furthermore, Grainger
and Ziegler (2011) suggested that orthographic information is
processed along two parallel routes, the fine-grained route and
the coarse-grained route. The fine-grained route puts a special
emphasis on each individual unit, whereas the coarse-grained
route is an approximate activation of the underlying patterns.
During development, individuals rely less and less on fine-
grained analyses and use more coarse-grained activations. The
lack of focus on specific details makes individuals able to
overcome noise, like transposed letters (Varga etal., 2021). The
above models suggest that typical reading development involves
a shift from specified to less specified visuospatial orthographic
representations. This only seemingly contradicts the current
results. Excellent readers may also decrease their reliance on
visuospatial skills, however, their better visuospatial abilities may
contribute to (1) the formation of orthographic representations,
(2) access to orthographic representation.
e development of orthographic representations requires
children to sequentially decode yet unknown words, and associate the
observed visual forms with the produced phonological forms (Share,
1995; Share and Shalev, 2004). Sequential decoding is a slow and
laborious process. Children have to remember the parse the letter
sequence into decodable units, translate them into speech sounds and
merge the speech sounds together. While this is enough to sound out
the unknown word, children also have to store the new association,
which load on visuospatial short term memory processes. is is in
line with previous research suggesting that processing diculties
emerge with visual complexity, that is, visual complexity is a crucial
factor in orthographic learning (Abdelhadi etal., 2011; Hsu etal.,
2011; McBride-Chang etal., 2011).
e second possibility is that visuospatial skills aect access to
orthographic representation. at is, the central eect relies not on the
process of storing visual word forms, but on retrieving them. Better
visuospatial short-term memory in this case would provide a spatially
more precise cue for accessing the orthographic representation. is
would be in line with previous research (Rao and Singh, 2015)
highlighting the role of visual complexity in reading at the neural level.
But such a hypothesis could also beintegrated with the grain-size
theory, suggesting that while it is benecial to use larger grain-size,
more detailed cues could enhance the dual routes in parallel (Grainger
and Ziegler, 2011), leading to quicker phonological activation. is
latter assumption suggests that visuospatial STM could support word
recognition by making it more eective.
A similar pattern was observed in phonological short-term
memory. As discussed above, since the role of phonological
processing decreases with reading experience (Hogan etal., 2005;
Powell and Atkinson, 2021), that the advantage of excellent
readers is rather due to phonological skills being engaged in the
development of the orthographic lexicon. That is, children who
are better in their phonological STM will develop their
orthographic lexicon quicker and easier than children with
average phonological abilities. This hypothesis should, however,
beanalyzed in a longitudinal design. The lack of difference in
verbal STM suggests that while verbal skills are necessary for
typical reading (Trecy etal., 2013; Majerus and Cowan, 2016),
they may not differentiate within the non-impaired region.
3.1 Enhancing visuospatial skills to support
reading
While the current results show that excellent readers and typical
readers diered most reliably in visuospatial STM, the educational
challenge is whether one can integrate visuospatial trainings to
support the reading development of children. e rst question is
whether one can train visuospatial STM, the second is whether such
a training could betransferred to reading skills.
Several studies have recently addressed the eectiveness of
working memory trainings. Some of these studies reported strong
eects of training (Jaeggi etal., 2008; Morrison and Chein, 2011;
Schwarb etal., 2016), while others argue for modest or no benet aer
training (Melby-Lervåg and Hulme, 2013; Sala and Gobet, 2017;
Kassai etal., 2019). Studies on visual short-term memory are even
scarcer, but those that are available show a benecial eect in both
children (Caviola etal., 2009; Roberts etal., 2016) and older adults
(McAvinue etal., 2013). Such benecial eects, however, may bea
result of changes in the strategies employed throughout memory
processes (Gonthier, 2021). Whether or not a WM training leads to a
development in a wider domain of cognition is only tangentially
related to our theme, as wesuggest visuospatial STM to bedirectly
involved in the recognition of words and sublexical units.
e current study provides a plausible way to clarify
controversial research results in gaming-based literacy trainings,
suggesting that the benecial eect may be mediated by
visuospatial STM. A handful of studies provided evidence that
computerized tasks enhance reading. Methods dier in a great
range: some employing various games of executive functions
(Pasqualotto etal., 2022) or action video games (Franceschini

Kemény et al. 10.3389/feduc.2023.1325177
Frontiers in Education 07 frontiersin.org
etal., 2013; Antzaka etal., 2017; Peters etal., 2021). ese latter
studies also highlight the importance of visual attention and
executive functions. Analyzing the topic from a dierent
perspective, studies have also shown visuospatial working memory
and executive functions to becrucial in gaming (Hazarika and
Dasgupta, 2020; Valls-Serrano etal., 2022), and video game-based
visuospatial WM training to behighly eective – at least in older
adults (Toril etal., 2016). Overall, it is plausible to assume that
visuospatial working memory eects explain at least a part of the
benet by computerized EF training (Pasqualotto etal., 2022) and
action video gaming (Franceschini etal., 2013) to reading. Testing
such a hypothesis is, however, outside the scope of the current
paper though.
3.2 Limitations and future directions
e most important limitation of the study is rooted in the study
design. It would support interpretability if all children had data in all
domains of short-term memory. It would allow us to contrast the
eect of working memory measures on excellent reading. On the
other hand, a longitudinal design would allow to examine if memory
processes support the formation of orthographic representations or
access to them. e current study, however, was designed as a side
project of the standardization of a reading test, and was constraint to
such design. It is also important to note that while the current study
focused on short-term memory, short-term memory is also closely
associated to intelligence, which in turn is oen found to berelated
to reading and spelling (Peng etal., 2019; Zarić etal., 2021). us it
would beinteresting to explore whether and how dierences in
general cognitive abilities explain group dierences between
excellent and age-appropriate readers, and whether and how spelling
abilities may covariate. A further possibility to consider is that
although decoding and reading comprehension are highly correlated,
reading comprehension does not equal decoding uency (García and
Cain, 2014). Using reading comprehension measures could further
widen our knowledge on how STM is associated to reading skills.
Finally, it is important to address the limitations of the current
design. On the one hand, the quasi-experimental design does not
allow causal inferences to bedrawn, on the other hand, the small
number of participants in our current setting wewere only able to
detect large eects (delta = 0.847 for the verbal STM comparison).
Larger group sizes would allow a more ne-grained analyses of the
STM dierences.
3.3 Conclusion
In the current study we examined how excellent and
age-appropriate readers dier from each other in terms of short-term
memory. Wereported an advantage of excellent readers in visuospatial
and phonological short-term memory. Wesuggest that although the
development of typical reading requires a diversion from spatial and
phonological processes, the proper maintenance of these processes
can support students in becoming excellent readers. However, weare
yet to understand whether and how these processes could beutilized
and integrated to primary school curricula.
Data availability statement
e raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will
bemade available by the authors, without undue reservation.
Ethics statement
The studies involving humans were approved by Ethics board
of the Faculty of Education and Psychology, Eötvös Loránd
University. The studies were conducted in accordance with the
local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed
consent for participation in this study was provided by the
participants’ legal guardians/next of kin.
Author contributions
FK: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition,
Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources,
Soware, Writing – original dra. GA: Writing – review & editing.
OP: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing.
EPR: Writing – review & editing. CL-H: Data curation, Investigation,
Writing – review & editing.
Funding
e author(s) declare nancial support was received for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. e project
received support from the National Research, Development and
Innovation Oce of Hungary: Grant FK-22-142797 “How statistics
shape reading and spelling” (PI: FK). e authors acknowledge the
nancial support of the University of Graz.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for the help of Milla Mária Horváth and István
Taerner. Wewould like to thank the children for the participation,
their schools and parents for the support.
Conflict of interest
e authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or nancial relationships that could
beconstrued as a potential conict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors
and do not necessarily represent those of their aliated organizations,
or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product
that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its
manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Frontiers in Education 08 frontiersin.org
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