This study discusses the relation between the working memory and the readers' performance on written texts comprehension tasks, aiming to investigate the relation between the working memory and reading comprehension by identifying the theoretical foundation that supports the hypothesis that the working memory, a component of the executive function of the brain, is associated to abilities of reading comprehension. The working memory resources seem to affect the individual ability to perform many of the processes associated to the construction of the text representation, such as the integration and inference processes. Failures in the processing variables and knowledge can lead to comprehension difficulties such as inefficient lexical processing, impaired ability of inference and the ability of comprehension monitoring besides working memory limitations.
Cognitive memory; Reading; Reading comprehension; Cognition
