The contribution of theory of mind, counterfactual reasoning, and executive function to pre-readers’ language comprehension and later reading awareness and comprehension in elementary school

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 144 (2016) 27–45

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The contribution of theory of mind, counterfactual reasoning, and executive function to pre-readers’ language comprehension and later reading awareness and comprehension in elementary school Nicole R. Guajardo ⇑, Kelly B. Cartwright Department of Psychology, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA 23606, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 30 May 2015 Revised 14 November 2015

Keywords: Executive function Counterfactual reasoning False belief Language comprehension Reading comprehension Metacognition

a b s t r a c t The current longitudinal study examined the roles of theory of mind, counterfactual reasoning, and executive function in children’s pre-reading skills, reading awareness, and reading comprehension. It is the first to examine this set of variables with preschool and school-aged children. A sample of 31 children completed language comprehension, working memory, cognitive flexibility, first-order false belief, and counterfactual reasoning measures when they were 3 to 5 years of age and completed second-order false belief, cognitive flexibility, reading comprehension, and reading awareness measures at 6 to 9 years of age. Results indicated that false belief understanding contributed to phrase and sentence comprehension and reading awareness, whereas cognitive flexibility and counterfactual reasoning accounted for unique variance in reading comprehension. Implications of the results for the development of reading skill are discussed. Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (N.R. Guajardo). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.11.004 0022-0965/Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Introduction Skilled reading comprehension requires awareness of one’s own reading processes (see Cartwright, 2009; Cartwright, 2010, and Pressley, 2002, for reviews) and the ability to generate inferences to support understanding (Elbro & Buch-Iversen, 2013; Oakhill & Cain, 2012). For successful comprehension, readers must consider both their own thinking and characters’ mental states, such as emotions, intentions, and beliefs, to make inferences about reasons for characters’ actions (Shanahan & Shanahan, 1997). Indeed, children with poor metacognitive skills exhibit lower reading comprehension (Paris & Jacobs, 1984), and elementary school students often struggle with understanding characters’ internal mental motivations and focus instead on characters’ actions without making inferences for why those actions occur (McConaughy, Fitzhenry-Coor, & Howell, 1983; Shannon, Kameenui, & Baumann, 1988). Not surprisingly, poor comprehenders are less adept at generating inferences from text to support reading comprehension (Cain & Oakhill, 1999; Laing & Kamhi, 2002; Rapp, van den Broek, McMaster, Kendeou, & Espin, 2007). These kinds of inferences often require levels of social cognition, such as theory of mind and counterfactual reasoning, that may vary in children. Theory of mind involves attributing mental states to others, understanding humans in terms of mental states, and being aware of one’s own and others’ thoughts (Astington, Harris, & Olson, 1988; Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2000). Thus, it is likely that theory of mind understanding would facilitate the development of reading comprehension. The primary purpose of the current study was to examine whether theory of mind, specifically false belief understanding, in preschool and middle childhood would predict preschool language comprehension and elementary school reading comprehension and metacognitive awareness of reading processes. We also examined whether counterfactual thinking, which involves comparing an actual outcome with possible alternative outcomes (Kahneman & Miller, 1986; Kahneman & Tversky, 1982), predicted later reading comprehension. Finally, we explored the role of these variables beyond executive function, a well-established contributor to reading comprehension (e.g., Borella, Carretti, & Pelegrina, 2010; Cartwright, 2012; Cartwright, 2015a; Locascio, Mahone, Eason, & Cutting, 2010).

Reading comprehension Work with early narrative comprehension has set a foundation for hypothesizing a relationship between theory of mind understanding and reading comprehension. Feldman, Bruner, Renderer, and Spitzer (1990) proposed two landscapes within a story: landscape of consciousness and landscape of action. Reading comprehension relies on one’s abilities to make inferences from a story regarding both landscapes. For full comprehension, readers must be able to understand the events in the story as well as the characters’ thoughts, perceptions, and motives that explain those events (Emery, 1996). Evidence for the importance of such mental state inferences is found even with pre-readers. As young as 4 years, the ability to infer character goals, actions that achieve those goals, and character mental states (including thoughts and perceptions) predicts story comprehension (Tompkins, Guo, & Justice, 2013). The importance of these inferences sets the foundation for a hypothesized role of theory of mind, particularly false belief understanding, in reading comprehension. Indeed, previous work has demonstrated a link between false belief understanding and comprehension of the landscape of consciousness within stories with pre-readers. Pelletier and Astington (2004) found that kindergarteners who understood false belief were more likely to integrate the landscapes of action and consciousness when they retold a story. They proposed that children must be able to infer mental states and their connections with behavior before they can understand the dual nature of stories and retell aspects of stories on both planes. Similarly, Riggio and Cassidy (2009) demonstrated that preschoolers’ false belief performance predicted their ability to explicitly articulate a false belief in a story. Children who failed false belief tasks focused only on the landscape of action. Thus, children who were able to attribute mental states to characters understood the story at a higher level (Riggio & Cassidy, 2009). Work with elementary school-aged readers also has shown the importance of being able to infer mental states for comprehension. Recognizing that even some elementary school-aged children

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dismiss characters’ perspectives when retelling stories, researchers have developed character story mapping to encourage children to focus on and consider characters’ thoughts, motives, and reactions (Emery, 1996; Shanahan & Shanahan, 1997). Character mapping leads to improved story comprehension by requiring children to identify characters’ perspectives, including multiple views of one or more individuals (Emery, 1996; Shanahan & Shanahan, 1997). Children develop a more complex understanding of the story (Shanahan & Shanahan, 1997), including an appreciation for the fact that characters’ perceptions might differ from their own. Indeed, recent work by Widen, Pochedly, and Russell (2015) indicates that children learn mental state concepts better from stories than from facial expressions, a finding that these researchers called the story superiority effect. Counterfactual reasoning is another aspect of children’s developing social cognition that may be related to developing reading comprehension. Counterfactual reasoning, which involves inferring potential alternative outcomes to events (usually to improve on those outcomes), is related to reading comprehension in adulthood (Trabasso & Bartolone, 2003). This relation makes sense because reading comprehension requires that readers construct a mental model of text meaning that is different from their own reality and also consider alternative possible outcomes as they make sense of, and make their way through, a text. Although this connection has not been studied in pre-readers or early readers, it is plausible that early counterfactual reasoning lays an important foundation for considering causal links in a story and thinking about what did, what might, and what could have happened in narratives. A third factor related to reading comprehension is executive function. In fact, the importance of executive function, broadly speaking, for reading comprehension is well documented (Borella et al., 2010; Cain, 2006; Cartwright, 2012; Cartwright, 2015a; Cartwright & Guajardo, 2015; Locascio et al., 2010; Sesma, Mahone, Levine, Eason, & Cutting, 2009). For example, working memory (Cain, 2006) supports readers’ abilities to construct and modify mental models of text meaning while reading. In addition, cognitive flexibility, particularly the flexibility with which readers can manage the phonological and semantic aspects of printed words, contributes uniquely to reading comprehension beyond verbal ability and word decoding ability in early childhood (Cartwright, Marshall, Dandy, & Isaac, 2010), middle childhood (Cartwright, 2002), and adulthood (Cartwright, 2007). Furthermore, training cognitive flexibility (Cartwright, 2002) and working memory (Dahlin, 2011) produce improvements in reading comprehension. Taken together, these findings underscore the importance of executive functioning skills to reading comprehension. Interestingly, recent work has demonstrated relationships among theory of mind, counterfactual reasoning, and executive function (e.g., Drayton, Turley-Ames, & Guajardo, 2011; Zelazo & Carlson, 2012; Zelazo & Müller, 2002; Zelazo, Qu, & Müller, 2005). In fact, theory of mind understanding develops alongside executive functions, such as cognitive flexibility and working memory, and recruits frontal lobe regions adjacent to and overlapping with those recruited by traditional executive functions (see Cartwright, 2015a, for a review). Theory of mind and executive functions, such as working memory and cognitive flexibility, are related in early childhood (Carlson & Moses, 2001; Carlson, Moses, & Breton, 2002; Davis & Pratt, 1995; Devine & Hughes, 2014; Guajardo, Parker, & TurleyAmes, 2009; Moses, 2005). Furthermore, recent work has demonstrated relations between general and reading-specific cognitive flexibility and theory of mind assessed in elementary school using more complex inferential tasks, such as a social stories task, even when inhibition and working memory are controlled (Bock, Gallaway, & Hund, 2015). Theory of mind understanding is also associated with counterfactual reasoning in preschool (German & Nichols, 2003; Guajardo & Turley-Ames, 2004; Guajardo et al., 2009; Müller, Miller, Michalczyk, & Karapinka, 2007; Perner, Sprung, & Steinkogler, 2004). Moreover, executive function partially mediates the relationship between theory of mind and counterfactual reasoning (Drayton et al., 2011), which is consistent with other work showing that future-oriented thinking, as is characteristic of counterfactual reasoning, is associated with executive functions such as cognitive flexibility (Mahy & Munakata, 2015). The current study enabled an examination of the extent to which each of these variables, false belief understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and executive functioning, uniquely predicted reading comprehension.

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Metacognitive awareness of reading processes Another important aspect of skilled reading is metacognition, which provides another basis for the relevance of theory of mind understanding for reading. Readers who are metacognitively aware are actively engaged in reading, using task analysis, and reading strategically (Jacobs & Paris, 1987). Mental state understanding is an important aspect of metacognition (Lecce, Zocchi, Pagnin, Palladino, & Taumoepeau, 2010). Lecce et al. (2010) demonstrated a concurrent relationship between understanding of mental state language and reading comprehension as well as a longitudinal relationship between use of mental state terms and metaknowledge about reading with children between 9 and 12 years of age. Pelletier (2006) found a similar relationship among metacognitive factors (i.e., metacognitive language and second-order false belief), reading ability, and story comprehension. Lecce et al. (2010) suggested that children who passed theory of mind tasks understood strategies for comprehending text and had awareness of the author’s intent. It is also likely that these children were more aware of their own mental processes during reading and could monitor their level of comprehension. Even at the preschool level, recent longitudinal evidence indicates that language comprehension, assessed with vocabulary measures, is related longitudinally to the development of both metacognition and theory of mind (Ebert, 2015). All of these skills enhance a child’s ability to understand text. Thus, we were also interested in examining the contribution of false belief understanding to children’s metacognitive awareness of reading processes. The current study Previous work has established relationships between false belief understanding and emergent literacy skills, including use of mental state terms during a reading task (Symons, Peterson, Slaughter, Roche, & Doyle, 2005), letter knowledge (Blair & Razza, 2007), and rhyming (Farrar & Ashwell, 2012). Less is known, however, about the relation of false belief understanding to the development of reading comprehension and metacognitive awareness of reading processes in middle childhood. Thus, the primary purpose of the current study was to examine concurrent relations between false belief understanding and language comprehension in preschool as well as longitudinal and concurrent relations between false belief understanding and both reading awareness and reading comprehension in middle childhood. A secondary purpose was to examine longitudinal associations between counterfactual reasoning and reading comprehension, which have not been explored in childhood previously. We hypothesized that false belief performance in preschool would be related to preschoolers’ language comprehension, which is an important precursor to later reading comprehension (DeBruinParecki, Van Kleeck, & Gear, 2015); in addition, we expected preschool false belief understanding to predict metacognitive awareness of reading processes and reading comprehension in elementary school. We also hypothesized that concurrent false belief understanding would be related to these aspects of reading skill in elementary students. Given prior work with adults, we hypothesized that counterfactual reasoning in preschool would predict reading comprehension in elementary school. Finally, we expected executive function to contribute to language and reading comprehension, as has been found in previous work. Method Participants Participants were 31 children who were part of a sample of 92 children who participated in an initial larger study of executive function, theory of mind, and counterfactual reasoning in preschool (Guajardo et al., 2009). The larger study was not designed as a longitudinal study, yet parents of children who participated were contacted to see whether they were willing to have their children participate in a second study designed to examine reading skill and social cognition. They were told that they were being contacted because their children participated in a previous study and that the researchers were now interested in examining relationships between preschool and elementary

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school variables. Children who participated at Time 2 and those who did not were similar in age, family income, maternal education, vocabulary, phrase and sentence comprehension, working memory, counterfactual reasoning, and false belief performance (all ps > .14). Children who participated only at Time 1 had higher cognitive flexibility scores, on average, than those who participated at Time 2, t(88) = 2.75, p < .001. Children in the current study participated at Time 1 when they were 3 to 5 years of age (12 boys and 19 girls; M = 4 years 4 months, range = 37–70 months; 32.3% minority students) and again at Time 2 when they were 6 to 9 years of age (M = 8 years 1 month, range = 75–116 months; mean time from Time 1 to Time 2 = 3 years 9 months). A total of 29 parents returned demographic forms. Children were primarily White (60%) and from middle- to upper-income homes (range = $10,000–$20,000 to above $100,000 with a mean annual income of $80,000–$90,000; income was reported for 87.1% of children). The majority of mothers had a bachelor’s degree (45.2%), and other mothers reported having a high school degree or GED (6.5%), vocational or technical school (6.5%), AA degree (3.2%), master’s or professional degree (19.4%), or PhD, MD, or JD (12.9%); maternal education was reported for 93.5% of children. Consistent with recent calls for stronger controls in executive skills research, we used maternal education to control for children’s socioeconomic status (SES; Jacob & Parkinson, 2015). Children lived in a small city in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Time 1 measures At Time 1, children’s false belief, counterfactual reasoning, vocabulary, language comprehension, general color–shape cognitive flexibility, and working memory were assessed. Parents also completed a short demographic survey. Each measure is described briefly below; for complete descriptions, see Guajardo and colleagues (2009). Vocabulary Children’s vocabulary was assessed with the Vocabulary subscale of the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language-III (TACL-3; Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999). The experimenter read a word and asked children to point to the picture that corresponded with the word stated. Children earned 1 point for each correct response for a total possible score ranging from 0 to 45. Phrase and sentence comprehension Because oral language comprehension is an important contributor to reading comprehension (DeBruin-Parecki et al., 2015; Nation & Snowling, 2004), we assessed preschool children’s auditory phrase and sentence comprehension with the Elaborated Phrases and Sentences subscale of the TACL-3 (Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999), which requires children to point to the picture that corresponds to the complex phrase or sentence uttered by the experimenter. This assessment includes examination of children’s comprehension of embedded sentences and partially and completely conjoined sentences. Children earned 1 point for each correct response for a total possible score ranging from 0 to 48. False belief Children completed five false belief tasks: unexpected change, unexpected contents/representational change, unexpected contents/explanation, and two deception tasks. Tasks were administered in a fixed order. Children received credit for test questions only if they answered the control questions correctly. Total false belief scores ranged from 0 to 5. The experimenter acted out each task story with props, and the sex of the story character matched that of the child. See Guajardo et al. (2009) for complete task descriptions. For the unexpected change task (Wimmer & Perner, 1983), children were told a story about Max. When Max and his mother returned from the grocery store, Max put the chocolate in the blue cabinet. While he was out playing, his mother moved the chocolate from the blue cabinet to the red cabinet. Children were asked three comprehension questions and one test question. They received 1 point for a correct response to the test question: ‘‘Where will Max first look for the chocolate when he comes back into the room?”

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The second task assessed children’s understanding of deception (see Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Children were told a story about Bruce, who moved candy from the candy box to the Band-Aid box to hide it from his brother. Children were asked where the candy was really and where Bruce would tell his brother it was. They received 1 point for a correct response of candy box to the test question. The third and fourth tasks were the unexpected contents/representational change and unexpected contents/explanation tasks (Bartsch & Wellman, 1989; Lewis & Osborn, 1990). Children were shown a crayon box and were asked what they thought was inside. Then they were shown that a toy car was inside. Children next were asked, ‘‘What did you think was in the box?” If they answered correctly, they received 1 point. Incorrect answers were followed with, ‘‘What did you think was in the box before I opened it?” Children earned 0.5 points for answering this question correctly. Finally, they were asked the control question, ‘‘Can you remember what’s really inside the box?” The explanation task involved the experimenter showing children the same crayon box and a similar plain box containing crayons. After showing children that crayons were in the plain box and the toy car was still inside the crayon box, they were introduced to John. John wanted a crayon, and he approached the crayon box. Children were asked to explain why John was looking in the crayon box. Children who did not mention John’s thoughts were asked a second question, ‘‘What does John think?” Children received 1 point for a correct response to the first question and 0.5 points for a response to the latter question. The experimenter also asked the memory question, ‘‘Are the crayons there really?” An active deception task (see Lalonde & Chandler, 1995) was administered last. Children were told that Bill knows there is candy in the green cabinet. After Bill leaves the room, children were encouraged to play a trick on Bill by moving the candy from the green cabinet to the orange cabinet. Children were asked three comprehension questions to ensure that they understood the story, and then they were asked where Bill would look for the candy when he returned. Children earned 1 point for correctly saying the green cabinet. Prior work indicated that all five false belief measures were intercorrelated (Guajardo et al., 2009), and the five-item scale had an internal consistency of .84. Thus, the scores for the tasks were totaled for a composite false belief score (range = 0–5). Counterfactual reasoning Children completed eight counterfactual reasoning tasks based on the work of Guajardo and Turley-Ames (2004). Four tasks focused on physical events (e.g., a child getting the floor dirty) and four involved social events (e.g., two friends playing and one popping a balloon). For example, children were told, ‘‘Imagine that you are playing outside in the muddy yard. You are thirsty, so you go inside to the kitchen to get a drink of juice. Because your shoes are muddy, you get dirt all over the floor.” Then they were prompted to generate counterfactuals: ‘‘What could you have done so that the kitchen floor would not have gotten dirty?” Children were encouraged to generate as many alternatives as possible. All responses were coded by two independent raters to determine whether they were counterfactuals (relevant statements that involved changing an antecedent to change the stated outcome; 97% agreement). Counterfactual scores equaled the number of counterfactuals generated across all eight scenarios. Cognitive flexibility Preschool cognitive flexibility was assessed with a general pictorial multiple classification task (Bigler & Liben, 1992; Cartwright, 2002). The experimenter presented children with a 2  2 matrix and a set of 12 cards that could be sorted according to two dimensions simultaneously: color and type of object (e.g., 3 red tools, 3 yellow tools, 3 red instruments, 3 yellow instruments). After the experimenter demonstrated a correct sort, children completed a practice trial and then four test trials, each with a different set of cards. The experimenter reminded children of the directions prior to each trial: ‘‘Remember, the cards need to be sorted according to both color and type of object.” Following each sort, children were asked to explain how they sorted the cards. If children sorted the cards incorrectly, the experimenter corrected the sort prior to asking for a justification. Children’s responses were scored for accuracy of both the sort and the justification with a possible range of 0 to 12: correct sort and justification = 3 points, incorrect sort and correct justification = 2 points, correct

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sort and incorrect justification = 1 point, and incorrect sort and justification = 0 points (following Bigler & Liben, 1992; Cartwright, 2002). In addition, sorting speed (in seconds) was recorded for each sort, and composite scores of accuracy and speed were calculated by dividing accuracy scores by mean sorting speed, following prior work (Cartwright, 2002, 2007; Cartwright et al., 2010). Performance on this task is significantly correlated with performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort (Bock et al., 2015), a widely used measure of cognitive flexibility in children. Working memory Children completed a backward word span task (Carlson et al., 2002), a backward digit span task (Davis & Pratt, 1995), and a counting and labeling task (Gordon & Olson, 1998). Prior analyses indicated that the counting and labeling task did not assess the same construct as the backward word span and backward digit span tasks (Guajardo et al., 2009); thus, the counting and labeling task was not included in the current study. For the backward digit span and backward word span tasks, a puppet demonstrated the task. For example, children were told, ‘‘Freddie is being silly. Everything I say, he says backward like this: If I say the words ‘book, cup,’ Freddie says ‘cup, book.’ Now I want you to do exactly what Freddie did and say everything I say backward.” Children were administered five practice trials at the start of each task. Children proceeded only if they completed one sample task successfully. The experimenter then administered three trials at each level (three words, two words, etc.) until children could not complete two of three trials accurately. Scores equaled the highest number of words or digits children could repeat backward. These were combined for a total working memory score. Time 1 procedure Children completed the Time 1 tasks in three 15-min sessions at their preschool. Children worked with the same experimenter across all three sessions. Theory of mind and counterfactual reasoning tasks were administered in one session, the vocabulary and language comprehension measures were administered in a second session, and the working memory and cognitive flexibility measures were completed in a third session. The first and third sessions were counterbalanced around the second session, and measures were counterbalanced within sessions. The first and third sessions were separated by 1 to 23 days (M = 7.76 days). Time 2 measures The longitudinal study focused on associations between false belief and both reading awareness and reading comprehension. Thus, not all Time 1 variables were assessed at Time 2. Cognitive flexibility was the only aspect of executive function measured at Time 2 given that it contributes to reading comprehension beyond inhibitory control in elementary school (Altemeier, Abbott, & Berninger, 2008) and beyond inhibitory control and working memory in adulthood (Cartwright & DeWyngaert, 2014); in addition, cognitive flexibility is uniquely related to theory of mind understanding beyond inhibitory control and working memory in elementary school (Bock et al., 2015). False belief Children completed two measures of second-order false belief: ice cream truck and birthday puppy (Perner & Wimmer, 1985; Sullivan, Zaitchik, & Tager-Flusberg, 1994). Children were told a story and were asked a series of three or four probe questions to ensure comprehension. Within each task, children were asked a first-order false belief question (e.g., Does mom know that Peter saw the birthday puppy in the basement?) and a second-order false belief question (e.g., What does Mom say to Grandma when she asks Mom what Peter thinks she got him for his birthday?). Children also were asked to justify their answers. Justifications were coded as appropriate or inappropriate and then further categorized into type of response (e.g., explicit second-order reasoning, implicit second-order reasoning, communicated information, location/deception; see Sullivan et al., 1994, for a full description of the categories). Across stories, children earned 0 to 2 points for each first-order and second-order

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false belief performance. They also earned 1 point for each correct justification (range = 0–2; kappa = .94 for justifications). Graphophonological–semantic cognitive flexibility Reading-specific cognitive flexibility makes unique contributions to reading comprehension in children and adults; thus, we assessed graphophonological–semantic cognitive flexibility (GSF; Cartwright, 2002, 2007; Cartwright et al., 2010) in the same manner as we assessed general cognitive flexibility at Time 1, with two exceptions. First, children needed to sort each set of 12 printed word cards by sound (e.g., /b/ and /c/) and meaning (e.g., animals and foods) simultaneously into the 2  2 matrix. Second, given the older age of the children, the experimenter provided the directions for how to sort only prior to the first trial. Criteria for scoring and range of possible scores were identical. Performance on this task is significantly correlated with performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort (Bock et al., 2015), a widely used measure of cognitive flexibility in children. Nonword decoding and reading comprehension The Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised (WRMT-R; Woodcock, 1998) Word Attack subtest, Form G, required participants to read a series of nonwords aloud and was used to assess nonword decoding. Scores could range from 0 to 45 correct. The WRMT-R Passage Comprehension subtest, Form G, required participants to supply missing words for prose passages and was used to assess reading comprehension. Scores on this measure could range from 0 to 68. Reading awareness Jacobs and Paris’s (1987) Index of Reading Awareness (RA) includes 20 multiple-choice questions regarding thinking about reading habits and reading comprehension (e.g., How can you tell which sentences are the most important ones in a story?; If the teacher told you to read a story to remember the general meaning, what would you do?). The experimenter read each question and option aloud. Children selected the most appropriate response from three options, and the experimenter recorded their answers. Possible scores could range from 0 to 40. Time 2 procedure In elementary school, children were tested in one 45-min session in their homes or in a lab at the university, based on the parents’ choice of location. Tasks were presented in a counterbalanced order. Results Preliminary analyses There were no significant sex differences for any of the variables in the study, so sex was not included in further analyses. Descriptive statistics for all variables are reported in Table 1. Consistent with other work investigating cognitive flexibility across the lifespan (Bock et al., 2015; Cragg & Chevalier, 2012; Diamond & Kirkham, 2005; Yeniad, Malda, Mesman, van IJzendoorn, Emmen, & Prevoo, 2014), preschool children demonstrated variability in sorting accuracy, whereas older children demonstrated ceiling effects on sorting accuracy (in elementary school, 9.7% of students had a perfect sorting accuracy score, 42% scored 9/12 or above, and 48.5% scored 8/12 or above; in preschool, 0% of children had a perfect score, 9.7% scored 9/12 or above, and 12.9% scored 8/12 or above). In their metaanalytic evaluation of the development of cognitive flexibility performance, Yeniad and colleagues (2014) reported that sorting accuracy develops early in childhood, thereby serving as a strong indicator of cognitive flexibility performance early in development, whereas sorting time continues to develop across the lifespan. These findings are consistent with our data. Thus, as recommended by other scholars (Bock et al., 2015; Cragg & Chevalier, 2012; Yeniad et al., 2014), we used sorting speed to indicate cognitive flexibility performance in elementary school to eliminate ceiling effects (low scores indicate better performance) and used composites of sorting accu-

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N.R. Guajardo, K.B. Cartwright / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 144 (2016) 27–45 Table 1 Task means, standard deviations, and ranges of scores (N = 31). Task

Mean

Standard deviation

Range

52.16 21.41

10.46 8.63

37–70 7–39

2.58 5.84 3.26

1.72 3.51 2.22

0–5 1–16 2–14

General cognitive flexibility Accuracy Speed (s) Composite

1.71 50.00 2.67

3.42 18.50 5.12

0–11 23.08–109.56 0–19.61

Elementary school variables Reading comprehension Reading awareness Decoding ability Second-order false belief

35.06 26.42 29.23 2.74

8.46 4.40 9.91 1.12

16-54 19–33 0–42 0–4

Reading-specific cognitive flexibility Accuracy Speed (s) Composite

6.06 43.31 16.31

4.43 20.37 14.40

0–12 22.22–132.76 0–54.01

Preschool variables Age (months) Language comprehension Vocabulary False belief Counterfactual thinking Working memory

racy and speed in preschool (high scores indicate better performance). In addition to being consistent with recommendations in the literature, these choices provide stronger tests of our hypotheses because, of the three scoring options at each testing point (accuracy, speed, and composite of accuracy and speed), preschool composite cognitive flexibility scores were more highly correlated with age, vocabulary, theory of mind, and counterfactual thinking at Time 1 as well as reading comprehension at Time 2. Similarly, elementary school cognitive flexibility sorting speed was more highly correlated with age, vocabulary, theory of mind, and counterfactual thinking at Time 1 as well as reading com-

Table 2 Intercorrelations among language comprehension, reading comprehension, reading awareness, executive functions, and theory of mind (N = 31).

1. Phrase and sentence comprehension 2. Reading comprehension 3. Reading awareness Preschool variables 4. Age (months) 5. Vocabulary 6. False belief 7. Counterfactual reasoning 8. Working memory 9. General cognitive flexibility Elementary school variables 10. Decoding 11. Second-order false belief 12. Reading-specific cognitive flexibility * **

p < .05. p < .01.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

–

.50**

.49**

0.25

.41*

.59**

0.34

.37*

.13

.34

.43*

.03

–

.41* –

.46** .25

.49** .26

.31 .41*

.52** .29

.22 .35

.09 .20

.66** .18

.55** .54**

.27 .08

–

.83** –

.43* .55** –

.63** .56** .36* –

.45* .39* .30 .71** –

.42* .36* .39* .42* .62** –

.38* .39* .20 .15 .02 .08

.13 .21 .24 .35 .25 .04

.33 .17 .20 .14 .18 .18

–

.33 –

.01 .06 –

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prehension at Time 2. Our pattern of results held even when preschool cognitive flexibility sorting speed, rather than composite speed and accuracy, was used in the analyses described below. Bivariate correlations indicated significant concurrent relations between phrase and sentence comprehension in preschool and false belief, as predicted, as well as vocabulary and working memory (see Table 2). In addition, preschool counterfactual thinking was marginally significantly correlated with preschool phrase and sentence comprehension (p = .059). Longitudinal correlations indicated that preschool phrase and sentence comprehension was significantly, positively correlated with reading awareness, reading comprehension, and second-order false belief in elementary school. Elementary school reading comprehension was significantly related to preschool phrase and sentence comprehension, counterfactual thinking, age, and vocabulary and was marginally significantly related to preschool false belief (p = .085). Furthermore, significant concurrent correlations emerged between elementary school reading comprehension and decoding ability, reading awareness, and secondorder false belief, as predicted. All correlations are reported in Table 2. Regression analyses Predicting phrase and sentence comprehension A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to determine the contributions of social cognition and executive skills to preschoolers’ phrase and sentence comprehension. After controlling for age, mothers’ education, and vocabulary on Step 1, cognitive flexibility and working memory were entered on Step 2 and accounted for 9.8% of variance (p = .208) (see Table 3). First-order false belief and counterfactual thinking were entered on Step 3 to examine whether social cognition explained variance beyond executive function; these variables contributed 21.2% of additional variance to children’s phrase and sentence comprehension (p = .017). Squared semi-partial correlations indicated that false belief accounted for 21.1% of unique variance in phrase and sentence comprehension (p = .005), and cognitive flexibility accounted for 7.1% of unique variance in preschool phrase and sentence comprehension (p = .09). Given our small sample size, we conducted a power analysis with G*Power 3 software (Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner, & Lang, 2009; Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) to determine

Table 3 Hierarchical regression analysis predicting language comprehension with age, vocabulary, and maternal education as control variables (N = 31). Step

Inc. R2

F change

Step 1 Age (months) Vocabulary Maternal education

.244

2.691+

Step 2 Age (months) Vocabulary Maternal education Working memory Cognitive flexibility

.096

Step 3 Age (months) Vocabulary Maternal education Working memory Cognitive flexibility Counterfactual reasoning False belief

.212

b

t-Calue

sr2

.288 .690 .072

0.886 2.186* 0.398

.031 .144 .011

.419 .716 .139 .430 .254

1.275 2.300* 0.762 1.833+ 1.099

.047 .152 .017 .096 .035

.284 .324 .132 .376 .364 .054 .571

0.941 1.094 0.836 1.502 1.777+ 0.223 3.123**

.023 .026 .015 .048 .067 .001 .208

1.681

4.986*

Note: Inc. R2, increment in variance accounted for; b, standardized regression coefficient; sr2, squared semi-partial correlation. + p < .10. * p < .05. ** p < .01.

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our achieved power in this regression with seven predictor variables. The achieved power was .95, which exceeds the recommended minimum value of .80 recommended by Cohen (1992). Predicting reading awareness A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to determine whether preschool and elementary school false belief contributed unique variance to students’ reading awareness in elementary school, as predicted (see Table 4). As in the previous analysis, we controlled for age, maternal education, and vocabulary on Step 1. Then preschool variables, including cognitive flexibility, counterfactual thinking, working memory, and false belief, were entered on Step 2 and accounted for 15.6% of variance in reading awareness (p = .056). Second-order false belief and reading-specific cognitive flexibility (middle childhood variables) were entered on Step 3 and accounted for 13.3% of additional variance in reading awareness (p = .011). Squared semi-partial correlations indicated that second-order false belief in elementary school accounted for 16.4% of significant, unique variance in reading awareness (p = .021). The power analysis with G*Power 3 software (Faul et al., 2007, 2009) for this regression with nine predictor variables indicated that the achieved power was .91, exceeding the recommended minimum value of .80 recommended by Cohen (1992). Predicting reading comprehension Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to determine the contributions of social cognition and executive skills to reading comprehension in elementary school (see Table 5). As in prior analyses, age, maternal education, and vocabulary were controlled, as were language comprehension and decoding ability. Language comprehension and decoding were added as control variables in this analysis because of their known roles in reading comprehension (García & Cain, 2014; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Nation & Snowling, 2004). These control variables accounted for 57.3% of the variance in elementary school reading comprehension (p = .001). Preschool skills (cognitive flexibility, working memory, counterfactual thinking, and false belief) accounted for an additional 15.6% of variance in reading comprehension (p = .001), and middle childhood skills (reading-specific cognitive

Table 4 Hierarchical regression analysis predicting reading awareness with age, vocabulary, and maternal education as control variables (N = 31). Step

Inc. R2

F change

Step 1 Age (months) Vocabulary Maternal education

.136

1.313

Step 2 Age (months) Vocabulary Maternal education Working memory Counterfactual reasoning Cognitive flexibility False belief

.178

Step 3 Age (months) Vocabulary Maternal education Working memory Counterfactual reasoning Cognitive flexibility False belief Second-order false belief Reading-specific cognitive flexibility

.164

b

t-Value

sr2

.029 .284 .221

0.084 0.834 1.139

.000 .024 .045

.070 .047 .270 .412 .011 .259 .363

0.187 0.128 1.384 1.330 0.038 1.020 1.604

.001 .001 .063 .058 .000 .034 .084

.175 .053 .236 .415 .256 .146 .192 .486 .184

0.491 0.161 1.333 1.485 0.897 0.633 0.856 2.616* 0.356

.006 .001 .056 .058 .021 .010 .019 .180 .023

1.362

6.268*

Note: Inc. R2, increment in variance accounted for; b, standardized regression coefficient; sr2, squared semi-partial correlation. * p < .05.

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Table 5 Hierarchical regression analysis predicting reading comprehension with age, vocabulary, maternal education, language comprehension, and decoding skill as control variables (N = 31). Step

Inc. R2

Step 1 Age (months) Vocabulary Maternal education Phrase and sentence comprehension Decoding skill

.573

Step 2 Age (months) Vocabulary Maternal education Phrase and sentence comprehension Decoding skill Working memory Counterfactual reasoning Cognitive flexibility False belief

.156

Step 3 Age (months) Vocabulary Maternal education Phrase and sentence comprehension Decoding skill Working memory Counterfactual reasoning Cognitive flexibility False belief Second-order false belief Reading-specific cognitive flexibility Reading awareness

.133

F change 6.170

b

t-Value

sr2

.195 .056 .015 .335 .493

0.741 0.204 0.101 2.077* 3.164**

.010 .001 .002 .080 .186

.054 .046 .114 .231 .498 .034 .501 .302 .015

0.205 0.185 0.850 1.233 3.397** 0.155 2.504* 1.675 0.083

.001 .001 .010 .022 .164 .000 .089 .040 .001

.258 .084 .037 .069 .510 .120 .544 .325 .154 .078 .384 .198

1.127 0.430 0.340 0.452 4.152** 0.686 3.158** 2.286* 0.980 0.591 3.240** 1.469

.011 .002 .001 .002 .149 .004 .086 .045 .008 .003 .091 .018

**

2.746+

5.123*

Note: Inc. R2, increment in variance accounted for; b, standardized regression coefficient; sr2, squared semi-partial correlation. + p < .10. * p < .05. ** p < .01.

flexibility, second-order false belief, and reading awareness) accounted for an additional 13.3% of variance in reading comprehension (p < .001). In total, these preschool and elementary school predictors accounted for 86.2% of variance in reading comprehension, with social cognition and executive skills accounting for 28.9% of variance beyond traditional predictors. Finally, following our procedure for the previous regression analyses, the power analysis for this regression with 12 predictors indicated that the achieved power was 1.00, exceeding the recommended minimum value of .80 recommended by Cohen (1992). Several variables emerged as significant unique predictors of reading comprehension: preschool counterfactual thinking and cognitive flexibility and elementary school decoding and readingspecific cognitive flexibility. Specifically, preschool counterfactual thinking accounted for 8.6% of unique variance in reading comprehension (p = .006), and preschool cognitive flexibility accounted for 4.5% of unique variance in reading comprehension (p = .036). Similarly, elementary school decoding accounted for 14.9% of unique variance in reading comprehension (p = .001), and reading-specific cognitive flexibility in middle childhood accounted for 9.1% of unique variance in reading comprehension (p = .005).

Discussion This longitudinal study examined the roles of false belief understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and executive function in pre-readers’ language comprehension and in elementary school-aged stu-

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dents’ reading awareness and reading comprehension. It is the first study to examine this set of variables with preschool and school-aged children. As predicted, false belief understanding, counterfactual reasoning, and executive functions contributed to children’s developing comprehension skill: phrase and sentence comprehension in preschool and reading comprehension in middle childhood. Specifically, as hypothesized, false belief understanding predicted preschool phrase and sentence comprehension and later reading awareness; it also was correlated with reading comprehension in middle childhood. Counterfactual reasoning and cognitive flexibility, on the other hand, contributed to elementary school-aged students’ reading comprehension. Each of these findings is discussed in turn below, focusing on the three areas of comprehension development targeted in the study: prereaders’ phrase and sentence comprehension and elementary school-aged students’ reading awareness and reading comprehension. Phrase and sentence comprehension We included a measure of phrase and sentence comprehension as an indicator of pre-reader comprehension. Indeed, performance on this measure in preschool was significantly related to reading comprehension in middle childhood beyond vocabulary. In preschool, false belief understanding accounted for 21% of the variance in phrase and sentence comprehension. The phrases were not specific to mental state understanding, yet preschoolers’ abilities to attribute mental states to others and to understand connections between thoughts and behavior predicted their understanding of simple and complex phrases and sentences beyond other variables, including general vocabulary knowledge. These results complement recent data on the association between language and theory of mind understanding (see Milligan, Astington, & Dack, 2007) and support the idea that language contributes to false belief understanding and that false belief understanding accounts for individual differences in language skill. In this case, false belief understanding contributes to those aspects of oral language comprehension that support later reading comprehension. Cognitive flexibility accounted for 7.1% of unique variance in phrase and sentence comprehension. This was not statistically significant, likely due to the sample size, yet it is potentially practically significant. A post hoc power analysis confirmed our suspicions, indicating that achieved power was .58; our sample would need to be larger to detect significance for this particular effect. As noted, however, the contribution of cognitive flexibility to phrase and sentence comprehension may be of practical significance. This link fits well with previous work that demonstrated the significance of cognitive flexibility for reading comprehension, which is discussed more fully below (e.g., Altemeier et al., 2008; Cartwright, 2002; Cartwright, 2007). Only recently have scholars begun to focus on comprehension development in pre-readers because of its important role in the development of reading comprehension, whereas the development of prereaders’ word recognition skills has been studied extensively (DeBruin-Parecki et al., 2015). Our finding that false belief understanding predicted preschool phrase and sentence comprehension underscores the importance of pre-readers’ theory of mind understanding for oral language comprehension. In conjunction with previous work, these results suggest that false belief understanding contributes to oral language comprehension more generally as well as narrative comprehension more specifically (Tompkins et al., 2013). Additional work is needed to explore further the role of false belief and other cognitive processes, including cognitive flexibility, in early reading comprehension. Reading awareness As hypothesized, false belief understanding, in both preschool and middle childhood, was related to children’s metacognitive awareness of reading processes. Yet only second-order false belief performance in middle childhood accounted for unique variance in reading awareness. This work is consistent with previous research that demonstrated associations between mental state understanding and metaknowledge about reading (Cross & Paris, 1988; Garner, 1987; Israel, Block, Kinnucan-Welsch, & Bauserman, 2005; Keene & Zimmermann, 2007; Lecce et al., 2010; Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Pelletier, 2006) and extends that work by examining associations between performances in preschool and middle childhood. Children who understand others’ perspectives and associate mental states and

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behavior are more aware of their own thought processes involved in reading, supporting the importance of metacognition. Similarly, readers who are low in reading comprehension are much less aware of their own reading processes than their peers with better comprehension (Dermitzaki, Andreou, & Paraskeva, 2008; Jacobs & Paris, 1987; Lecce et al., 2010; Paris & Myers, 1981; Vidal-Abarca, Mañá, & Gil, 2010). Such metacognitive skills enable readers to reflect on and manage their own thought processes while reading as well as to consider those of the author (Lecce et al., 2010), both of which facilitate skilled reading comprehension. Finally, as predicted, our findings regarding the contribution of theory of mind to reading awareness suggest the importance of false belief for the development of reading comprehension and the metacognitive management of reading comprehension processes. This relation makes sense; readers must make sense of authors’ perspectives to understand texts. In addition, to understand event sequences in narratives, readers frequently must infer characters’ mental states to understand reasons for characters’ actions. However, elementary school students have difficulty with these kinds of social inferences. Recent work suggests that the relation between theory of mind and text comprehension may, in fact, be reciprocal. Adults who read fiction more frequently, for example, have higher levels of theory of mind than adults who do not (Kidd & Castano, 2013), although more work is necessary to tease out the particular ways in which theory of mind understanding supports the development of reading comprehension from preschool throughout the lifespan.

Reading comprehension Cognitive flexibility in both preschool and middle childhood and counterfactual reasoning in preschool made significant contributions to reading comprehension in middle childhood. In fact, cognitive flexibility, in preschool and middle childhood, accounted for a total of 13.6% of the variance in reading comprehension beyond other important variables. These findings underscore the now welldocumented association between cognitive flexibility and reading comprehension (e.g., Altemeier et al., 2008; Cartwright, 2002, 2007; Cartwright et al., 2010; Colé, Duncan, & Blaye, 2014; Yeniad, Malda, Mesman, van IJzendoorn, & Pieper, 2013). Cognitive flexibility allows readers to consider multiple aspects of a story or situation simultaneously, enabling them to understand the complexity of narratives, and also allows readers to construct mental models of texts’ meanings while simultaneously decoding text (see Cartwright, 2015b, for a review); furthermore, students with specific reading comprehension difficulties, despite adequate decoding skills, demonstrate significantly lower cognitive flexibility than their peers with better reading comprehension, indicating that they are unable to coordinate simultaneously the meaning-focused and word-level aspects of print (Cartwright et al., 2015). The current study is the first to demonstrate the importance of early counterfactual reasoning for later reading comprehension in childhood and adds to work that supported this relationship in adulthood (Trabasso & Bartolone, 2003). Counterfactual reasoning in preschool accounted for 8.6% of unique variance in reading comprehension 3 years later. Skilled readers consider both causal connections between events that have occurred and alternative hypothetical realities (e.g., fictional worlds, events that do not match reality). They continually predict and re-predict alternative outcomes as they read (Pressley, 2002). Thus, those who are able to think counterfactually are better able to generate such alternatives and consider the possibilities in a story. Future work needs to explore this connection further. Together, these findings suggest the importance of flexible thinking for reading comprehension. In the current study, as in previous work (Guajardo, 2011), cognitive flexibility and counterfactual reasoning are related, suggesting that they involve overlapping processes. Both involve the ability to consider different aspects of an object or a situation simultaneously. We speculate that this flexibility in thought enables children and adults to consider different aspects of a story and anticipate what is to come or juggle the many competing mental processes required for successful reading comprehension (e.g., word decoding, meaning construction). Interestingly, recent work has indicated an association between cognitive flexibility and prospective memory, which may require future-oriented thinking similar to that required by counterfactual reasoning (Mahy & Munakata, 2015). Such planning abilities

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may be important for constructing, and changing, mental models of text meaning while reading. Future work should examine the implications of these relationships for reading comprehension. Contrary to expectations, false belief understanding did not contribute uniquely to reading comprehension in our analyses that included both early and middle childhood executive function variables. Although the correlation of first-order false belief to reading comprehension approached significance and second-order false belief performance correlated significantly with reading comprehension, neither variable accounted for unique variance. It is possible that the known relation of cognitive flexibility to theory of mind, described above, may account for the relation of false belief to reading comprehension. Given that the relation of cognitive flexibility to reading comprehension is robust across the lifespan (Altemeier et al., 2008; Cartwright, 2002, 2007; Cartwright et al., 2010; Colé et al., 2014; Yeniad et al., 2013), this relation may be masking the contribution of false belief to reading comprehension in middle childhood. To test this notion, we conducted a hierarchical regression analysis predicting reading comprehension from concurrent reading awareness and second-order false belief while controlling for age, maternal education, vocabulary, and decoding skill; second-order false belief accounted for 14.1% of unique variance in reading comprehension (p = .048) in this analysis. When preschool language comprehension was controlled, the unique contribution of second-order false belief dropped to 8.9% of unique variance in reading comprehension (p = .059), which makes sense given oral language comprehension’s unique relation to first-order false belief. These findings suggest that second-order false belief does indeed relate to reading comprehension in important ways, a question that deserves further exploration. Limitations and future directions The primary limitation of the current study is the small sample size. Indeed, a few potentially meaningful relationships (i.e., cognitive flexibility and phrase and sentence comprehension; false belief and reading awareness) approached significance and may have been statistically significant with a larger sample. Future work should examine these relationships further. Although this is a limitation, the small sample size also amplifies the robustness of the significant relationships that were found. This is the first study to examine associations between counterfactual reasoning and reading awareness and comprehension in childhood. Given that the initial goal of the longitudinal study was to examine associations between false belief understanding and reading skill, we assessed only counterfactual reasoning in preschool. Yet the design enabled us to examine the relevance of counterfactual reasoning to developing comprehension skill, and indeed meaningful associations between counterfactual reasoning in preschool and later reading comprehension emerged. It would be interesting to determine whether concurrent relationships existed as well. This is an important direction for future work. A related limitation is that only two aspects of executive function, working memory and cognitive flexibility, were explored during the preschool years due to constraints on time (Guajardo et al., 2009). Another important aspect of executive function is inhibitory control, which is also related to false belief performance and counterfactual reasoning (Drayton et al., 2011). Future work should include this third aspect of executive function when exploring the current set of variables. Our findings have interesting implications for methods to enhance young children’s reading comprehension and reading awareness skills. They suggest that training both social cognitive and executive function skills may lead to improvements in reading abilities. More specifically, training cognitive flexibility or counterfactual reasoning skills may lead to improvements in reading comprehension. In fact, Cartwright and colleagues (Cartwright, 2002; Cartwright et al., 2015) demonstrated that cognitive flexibility training can lead to improvements in reading comprehension in middle childhood for typically developing readers and students who struggle with reading comprehension despite adequate decoding abilities. Future work needs to examine whether counterfactual reasoning can be trained and, if so, whether such training can facilitate the development of reading comprehension. Similarly, theory of mind understanding can be trained (e.g., Guajardo & Watson, 2002; Lecce, Bianco, Demicheli, & Cavallini, 2014; Wellman & Peterson, 2013), yet it remains to be seen whether training theory of mind concepts in middle childhood would lead to improvements in reading awareness. Recent work

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indicating that theory of mind training with 4- and 5-year-olds leads to improvements in metamemory (Lecce et al., 2014), another aspect of metacognition, certainly suggests that it might. Moreover, the current findings have implications for theoretical conceptions of reading comprehension processes such as the popular simple view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990). Hierarchical regressions indicate that social cognitive and executive skills contribute a practically and statistically significant amount of variance (28.9%) to reading comprehension beyond language comprehension and decoding processes, which accounted for just over a quarter (26.6%) of variance in reading comprehension. Thus, our findings suggest that cognitive processes beyond those traditionally associated with reading comprehension (i.e., executive functions and social cognitive factors) are critical to successful reading comprehension development. Theoretical conceptions of reading comprehension should be expanded to include the kinds of complex cognitive processes that we associate with executive functioning, including the processes investigated in this study. Findings regarding unique contributions of social cognition and executive functions to reading comprehension have only recently emerged in the literature but have the potential to impact comprehension theory, research, and instruction in positive ways, expanding our understanding of what it means to develop good reading comprehension (see Cartwright, 2015a, for a review). Conclusion The current study contributes to our understanding of the importance of social cognition and executive functions for reading comprehension and awareness. Importantly, it adds to our relatively limited knowledge of the relevance of false belief understanding and counterfactual reasoning for academic performance. False belief understanding contributes to both early oral comprehension skills and later reading awareness, whereas counterfactual reasoning plays an important role in reading comprehension. Interestingly, this is the first study, to our knowledge, to explore relations between early counterfactual thinking and later reading comprehension. Moreover, cognitive flexibility is particularly critical for reading comprehension and may contribute to early comprehension skills as well. These results demonstrate the practical applications of false belief understanding (both first order and second order) and counterfactual reasoning in childhood and provide the foundation for critical future work on the implications of social cognition and executive function for reading skill. Acknowledgements We are grateful to Jessica Parker Zdinak, Kathryn Hallett Arno, Jennifer Schuster, Jennifer Silvent, Erin Lewis, Elizabeth Coppage, and Christy Philyaw for their assistance with data collection and/or coding. We appreciate the cooperation of the children who participated in the study, and their parents and teachers. We also thank the three anonymous reviewers who provided excellent feedback. References Altemeier, L. E., Abbott, R. D., & Berninger, V. W. (2008). Executive functions for reading and writing in typical literacy development and dyslexia. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 30, 588–606. Astington, J., Harris, P. L., & Olson, D. R. (Eds.). (1988). Developing theories of mind. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bartsch, J. R., & Wellman, H. (1989). Young children’s attribution of action to beliefs and desires. Child Development, 60, 946–964. Bigler, R. S., & Liben, L. S. (1992). Cognitive mechanisms in children’s gender stereotyping: Theoretical and educational implications of a cognitive-based intervention. Child Development, 63, 1351–1363. Blair, C., & Razza, R. P. (2007). Relating effortful control, executive function, and false belief understanding to emerging math and literacy ability in kindergarten. Child Development, 78, 647–663. Bock, A. M., Gallaway, K. C., & Hund, A. M. (2015). Specifying links between executive functioning and theory of mind during middle childhood: Cognitive flexibility predicts social cognition. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16, 509–521. Borella, E., Carretti, B., & Pelegrina, S. (2010). The specific role of inhibition in reading comprehension in good and poor comprehenders. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 43, 541–552. Cain, K. (2006). Individual differences in children’s memory and reading comprehension: An investigation of semantic and inhibitory deficits. Memory, 14, 553–569. Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. V. (1999). Inference making ability and its relation to comprehension failure. Reading and Writing, 11, 489–503. Carlson, S. M., & Moses, L. J. (2001). Individual differences in inhibitory control and children’s theory of mind. Child Development, 74, 1032–1053.

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