Abstract

Two studies investigated the relation between reading and listening comprehension in Italian third and fifth graders. The first study examined the relationship between reading and listening comprehension and decoding in 74 children aged between 8 and 11.6 years and showed the existence of a correlation between listening and reading comprehension which is strengthened as schooling progresses and parallel to the improvement in decoding skills. Result confirm the "Simple View of Reading" proposed by Gough, Hoover e Peterson (1996). The second study examined the role of the components of working memory in determining differences in reading and listening text comprehension in 114 children aged between 8.3 and 11.2 years. The results demonstrate a clear relationship between working memory and text comprehension but a different involvement of storage on one hand, and processing, on the other hand.