Working memory, reading performance and academic achievement in male monolingual and bilingual students

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship among working memory (WM), reading performance and academic achievement in male monolingual (ML) and bilingual (BL) students. Also, the second aim was presenting a well-fitted model for interpretation of these interrelationship, based on the theoretically recommended model. Participants consisted of 380 (188 BL Fars-Tork and 192 ML Fars) male primary students at grade five (12-13 years of age) who were matched on variables including age, sex and grade and were selected through multi-stage cluster sampling. To assess working memory (WM), we used Information Processing Index (IPI) and to assess reading performance we used tests for assessing the reading performance and dyslexia (NMA). Also, the students’ average scores on Math, Farsi and Science final exam were used as indexes of academic achievement. The impact of WM on reading performance and academic achievement, path coefficients and the fitness of suggested model on ML and BL students were investigated. The results showed that the direct effect of WM on endogenous variables of research (reading performance and academic achievement) and also the direct effect of reading performance and academic achievement as endogenous independent and dependent variables in both groups were positive and significant. However, path coefficients were higher for BL students. Also, the data were fitted with predicted model in both groups. The highest path coefficients were between WM and academic achievement for BL students, and between WM and reading performance for ML students. Also, for both groups of students, the lowest path coefficients were between reading performance and academic achievement. Furthermore, Analysis of variance demonstrated that the differences between the two groups in all components (variables) were significant except for phoneme deletion and reading high frequency words. It meant that BL students outperformed ML students in all components.