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The ubiquity of multitasking has led researchers to investigate its potential costs for reading and learning (Clinton‐Lisell, 2021). While some studies have not shown detrimental effects of multitasking for reading comprehension (Bowman et al., 2010; Cho et al., 2015; Pashler et al., 2013), one particular study has found a benefit of multitasking (Tran et al., 2013). These results, nevertheless, do not converge with the findings of recent meta-analyses, which have suggested both a negative effect of multitasking for reading comprehension (Clinton‐Lisell, 2021), as well as the disruptive effects of listening to lyrical music while reading for comprehension (Vasilev et al., 2018). Previous research seems to converge with the theories of how working memory copes with the complexity of reading as a process, since several subprocesses must be orchestrated so that the ultimate goal of reading – the construction of a mental representation – is fully achieved (Tomitch, 2020). In addition to that, no previous study has investigated reading as a multilevel construct in which both literal and inferential comprehension (Alptekin &amp; Erçetin, 2010; Kintsch, 1998) is assessed in a multitasking setting. With that in mind, we investigated whether working memory capacity, measured by the Self-Administrable Reading Span Test (Oliveira et al., 2021), predicts proficient bilinguals’ performance in literal and inferential comprehension, by means of comprehension questions (Pearson &amp; Johnson, 1978) and reading times, under a multitasking setting in two conditions – listening to lyrical music (experimental) as opposed to&nbsp;listening to non-lyrical music (control). Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that working memory capacity significantly predicted inferential, but not literal comprehension nor reading times, and only when participants were listening to lyrical music. Results are discussed both in terms of the effects of multitasking on reading comprehension as well as the role of working memory in language comprehension.

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Review Article

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Does Working Memory Capacity Predict Literal and Inferential Comprehension of Bilinguals’ Digital Reading in a Multitasking Setting?

Guest-editors: 
Zhisheng (Edward) Wen, PhD, College of Professional and Continuing Education, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China
Hassan Mohebbi, PhD, Independent Researcher, Turkey 


Special Issue: Rethinking Individual Differences in SLA: A Special Issue in Honour of Richard Sparks

Recent studies have emphasized the positive effects of early biliteracy on children’s linguistic and cognitive abilities. However, the extent to which one system affects the other is not totally understood (Finger &amp; Brentano, in press). With that in mind, this paper presents the results of a study that aimed to compare the levels of syntactic complexity and thought organization in written production in Portuguese and in English. We predicted that both variables would correlate in the two languages, showing no negative effects of early biliteracy. Sixty children (M = 10.7) enrolled in 5th and 6th grades in a bilingual curriculum school in the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, screened for proficiency, constituted the cohort of the study. The children’s home and community language is Portuguese, but they have been exposed to English at school for 10 hours a week for at least 5 years. Participants were asked to create a narrative based on a sequence of five images (Cambridge Assessment, 2018) one in English and one in Portuguese, in a counterbalanced order. The analysis of syntactic complexity involved the assessment of T-Units (Hunt, 1965) and thought organization was measured through the analysis of graph trajectories performed with the computational tool Speech Graphs (Mota et al., 2016, 2019). Preliminary results indicated a moderate positive correlation in the levels of syntactic complexity and in the attributes of thought connectivity in both languages, demonstrating that, as children advance in the development of more complex writing strategies in Portuguese, they progress in their written production in English to the same extent, confirming our initial predictions. These data reinforce the importance of teachers assessing students' written production in their two languages ​​from a bilingual perspective and from a conception that the languages ​​that make up the linguistic repertoire of the bilingual individual constitute a whole integrated system and not two independent systems that compete with each other (García, 2009).

The Effects of Early Biliteracy on Thought Organisation and Syntactic Complexity in Written Production by 11-Year-Old Children

Original Research 

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