Attentional control and the Simple View of reading

Attentional control was investigated as a possible third component of reading comprehension, along with decoding and language comprehension, within the Simple View of reading (Gough & Tunmer RASE: Remedial and Special Education 7:6-10, 1986; Hoover & Gough Reading and Writing 2:127-160, 1990). Attentional control is the ability to suppress irrelevant prepotent responses and activate relevant responses. This ability may help coordinate decoding and language comprehension during reading. In an unselected sample of 67 eight-year-olds, attentional control contributed significant variance to reading comprehension after controlling for decoding and language comprehension. Further, attentional control was similar to language comprehension in the amount of unique variance accounted for. Five contrast measures were examined (performance IQ, print exposure, articulation speed, phonemic awareness, and verbal short-term memory), but none was as good a candidate for a third component of reading comprehension as attentional control.