Visuospatial perspective-taking of a protagonist during narrative comprehension: the effects of task load and individual differences in visuospatial working memory.

Introduction: This study examined whether visuospatial perspective uses the character perspective during narrative comprehension. Method: Participants read narrative stimuli depicting the spatial positional relationships between characters and objects and judged whether the objects were on the left or right from the character's perspective. We manipulated whether the spatial positional relationships between characters depicted in the narrative stimuli resulted in a visuospatial perspective. We hypothesized that the high-load perspective-taking condition would indicate longer reaction times compared to the low-load perspective-taking condition, as shifting perspectives between characters in the high-load condition require more time for visuospatial perspective-taking. Results: As predicted, the reaction time was longer for high-load perspective-taking than for low-load perspective-taking. Discussion: During narrative comprehension, the reaction time for visuospatial perspective-taking must move virtually within the representation from the main character's perspective to that of another character. Visuospatial perspective-taking is involved in narrative comprehension.

Greater utilization of executive functions networks when listening to stories with visual stimulation is related to lower reading abilities in children.

Narrative comprehension relies on basic sensory processing abilities, such as visual and auditory processing, with recent evidence for utilizing executive functions (EF), which are also engaged during reading. EF was previously related to the "supporter" of engaging the auditory and visual modalities in different cognitive tasks, with evidence of lower efficiency in this process among those with reading difficulties in the absence of a visual stimulus (i.e. while listening to stories). The current study aims to fill out the gap related to the level of reliance on these neural circuits while visual aids (pictures) are involved during story listening in relation to reading skills. Functional MRI data were collected from 44 Hebrew-speaking children aged 8-12 years while listening to stories with vs without visual stimuli (i.e., pictures). Functional connectivity of networks supporting reading was defined in each condition and compared between the conditions against behavioral reading measures. Lower reading skills were related to greater functional connectivity values between EF networks (default mode and memory networks), and between the auditory and memory networks for the stories with vs without the visual stimulation. A greater difference in functional connectivity between the conditions was related to lower reading scores. We conclude that lower reading skills in children may be related to a need for greater scaffolding, i.e., visual stimulation such as pictures describing the narratives when listening to stories, which may guide future intervention approaches.

A greater modulation of the visual and fronto-parietal networks for children in a post-media versus pre-media exposure group.

AIM: Media use in children has exploded in the past several decades, most recently fuelled by portable electronic devices. This study aims to explore differences in functional brain connectivity in children during a story-listening functional MRI (fMRI) task using data collected before (1998) and after (2013) the widespread adoption of media. METHODS: Cross-sectional data were collected from English-speaking 5- to 7-year-old children at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, USA, of a functional MRI narrative comprehension task completed in 1998 (n = 22) or 2013 (n = 25). Imaging data were processed using a graph theory approach, focusing on executive functions, language and visual processing networks supporting reading. RESULTS: Group differences suggest more efficient processing in the fronto-parietal network in the pre-media group while listening to stories. A modulation of the visual and fronto-parietal networks for the post-media exposure group was found. CONCLUSION: Further studies are needed to assess effects over time in the more exposed group to discern a causal effect of portable devices on cognitive networks.

Construction or updating? Event model processes during visual narrative comprehension.

The plot of a narrative is represented in the form of event models in working memory. Because only parts of the plot are actually presented and information is continually changing, comprehenders have to infer a good portion of a narrative and keep their mental representation updated. Research has identified two related processes (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1997): During model construction (shifting, laying a foundation) at large coherence breaks an event model is completely built anew. During model updating (mapping) at smaller omissions, however, the current event model is preserved, and only changed parts are updated through inference processes. Thus far, reliably distinguishing those two processes in visual narratives like comics was difficult. We report a study (N = 80) that aimed to map the differences between constructing and updating event models in visual narratives by combining measures from narrative comprehension and event cognition research and manipulating event structure. Participants watched short visual narratives designed to (not) contain event boundaries at larger coherence breaks and elicit inferences through small omissions, while we collected viewing time measures as well as event segmentation and comprehensibility data. Viewing time, segmentation, and comprehensibility data were in line with the assumption of two distinct comprehension processes. We thus found converging evidence across multiple measures for distinct model construction and updating processes in visual narratives.

Language First, Cognition Later: Different Trajectories of Subcomponents of the Future-Reading Network in Processing Narratives from Kindergarten to Adolescence.

Narrative comprehension is a linguistic ability that emerges early in life and has a critical role in language development, reading acquisition, and comprehension. According to the Simple View of Reading model, reading is acquired through word decoding and linguistic comprehension. Here, within and between networks, functional connectivity in several brain networks supporting both language and reading abilities was examined from prereading to proficient reading age in 32 healthy children, ages 5-18 years, scanned annually while listening to stories over 12 years. Functional connectivity changes within and between the networks were assessed and compared between the years using hierarchical linear regression and were related to reading abilities. At prereading age, the networks related to basic language processing accounted for 32.5% of the variation of reading ability at reading age (at 12-14 years) (R2 = 0.325, p = 0.05). At age 17, more complex cognitive networks were involved and accounted for 97.4% of the variation in reading ability (R2 = 0.974, p = 0.022). Overall, networks composing the future-reading network are highly involved in processing narratives along development; however, networks related to semantic, phonological, and syntactic processing predict reading ability earlier in life, and more complex networks predict reading proficiency later in life.

Narrative Understanding as a Means of Understanding the Other: A Review of Andrea Smorti's Book Telling to Understand.

In this review I propose to discuss the contribution that Smorti's book makes to the study of autobiographical memory, since it examines the benefits that narratives provide to understanding human experience and the ability they offer in discovering and representing uncertainty. Andrea Smorti has long been engaged in the study of memory, autobiography, storytelling and psychology, as evidenced by his numerous studies mentioned in the book. Furthermore, in exploring the more purely psychological aspects of narratives, Smorti investigates the benefits that narratives offer to individual psychological well-being. Firstly published in Italian in 2018, Andrea Smorti's (2021) "Telling to Understand" is now available for the first time to the English-speaking public.

Events shape long-term memory for story information.

We segment what we read into meaningful events, each separated by a discrete boundary. How does event segmentation during encoding relate to the structure of story information in long-term memory? To evaluate this question, participants read stories of fictional historical events and then engaged in a post-reading verb arrangement task. In this task, participants saw verbs from each of the events placed randomly on a computer screen, and then they arranged the verbs into groups onscreen based on their understanding of the story. Participants who successfully comprehended the story placed verbs from the same event closer to each other than verbs from different events, even after controlling for orthographic, text-based, semantic, and situational overlap between verbs. Thus, how people structure story information into separate events during online comprehension is associated with how that information is stored in memory. Specifically, story information within an event is bound together in memory more so than information between events.

Maternal education as an environmental factor related to reading in children with reading difficulties: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

The expanded simple view of reading (SVR) model suggests that word decoding, language comprehension and executive functions are necessary for reading comprehension. Children with reading difficulties (RDs) often have deficits in critical components of reading established in the expanded SVR model and alterations in brain function of reading-related regions. Maternal education could provide children with advantageous educational opportunities or resources that support reading acquisition. The primary goal of this study was to examine the contributions of maternal education to the behavioural and neurobiological correlates of the expanded SVR model. Seventy-two 8- to 12-year-old children with RDs and typical readers (TRs) completed reading, behavioural and an functional magnetic resonance imaging stories-listening task to determine the functional connectivity of the receptive language network to the whole brain in association with maternal education. Higher maternal education was associated with better vocabulary in children with RDs and positive functional connectivity between the receptive language network and regions related to visual processing in children with RDs versus TRs. These data suggest that maternal education supports the ability to comprehend oral language and engagement of neural networks that support imagination/visualization in children with RDs.

The words that little by little revealed everything: Neural response to lexical-semantic content during narrative comprehension.

The ease with which narratives are understood belies the complexity of the information being conveyed and the cognitive processes that support comprehension. The meanings of the words must be rapidly accessed and integrated with the reader's mental representation of the overarching, unfolding scenario. A broad, bilateral brain network is engaged by this process, but it is not clear how words that vary on specific semantic dimensions, such as ambiguity, emotion, or socialness, engage the semantic, semantic control, or social cognition systems. In the present study, data from 48 participants who listened to The Little Prince audiobook during MRI scanning were selected from the Le Petit Prince dataset. The lexical and semantic content within the narrative was quantified from the transcript words with factor scores capturing Word Length, Semantic Flexibility, Emotional Strength, and Social Impact. These scores, along with word quantity variables, were used to investigate where these predictors co-vary with activation across the brain. In contrast to studies of isolated word processing, large networks were found to co-vary with the lexical and semantic content within the narrative. An increase in semantic content engaged the ventral portion of ventrolateral ATL, consistent with its role as a semantic hub. Decreased semantic content engaged temporal pole and inferior parietal lobule, which may reflect semantic integration. The semantic control network was engaged by words with low Semantic Flexibility, perhaps due to the demand required to process infrequent, less semantically diverse language. Activation in ATL co-varied with an increase in Social Impact, which is consistent with the claim that social knowledge is housed within the neural architecture of the semantic system. These results suggest that current models of language processing may present an impoverished estimate of the neural systems that coordinate to support narrative comprehension, and, by extension, real-world language processing.

Neuroanatomical correlates of macrostructural receptive abilities in narrative discourse in unilateral left hemisphere stroke: A behavioural and voxel-based morphometry study.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about story retelling and comprehension abilities in groups with lower levels of education and socio-economic status (SES). A growing body of evidence suggests the role of an extended network supporting narrative comprehension, but few studies have been conducted in clinical populations, even less in developing countries. AIMS: To extend our knowledge of the impact of a stroke on macrostructural aspects of discourse processes, namely main and complementary information, in individuals with middle-low to low SES and low levels of education. Relationships were tested between the performance in story retell and comprehension and reading and writing habits (RWH). Also, the associations between retelling and comprehension measures and their structural grey matter (GM) correlates were explored. METHODS & PROCEDURES: A total of 17 adults with unilateral left hemisphere (LH) chronic ischaemic stroke without the presence of significant aphasia and 10 matched (age, education and SES) healthy controls (HC) participated in the study. Retell and comprehension tasks were performed after listening or reading narrative stories. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis was conducted on a subgroup of nine individuals with LH stroke and the 10 matched controls using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Retelling and comprehension abilities were not significantly different between LH and HC, nonetheless quantitively lower in LH. Exploratory correlations showed that retelling and comprehension abilities in both written and auditory modalities were correlated with naming abilities. At the neural level, written comprehension positively correlated with GM density of the LH, including areas in the temporal pole, superior and middle temporal gyrus as well as the orbitofrontal cortex, precentral and postcentral gyri. Auditory narrative comprehension was associated with GM density of the lingual gyrus in the right hemisphere. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The present results suggest that retelling and comprehension of auditory and written narratives are relatively well-preserved in individuals with a LH stroke without significant aphasia, but poorer than in HC. The findings replicate previous studies conducted in groups with higher levels of education and SES both at the behavioural and neural levels. Considering that naming seems to be associated with narrative retell and comprehension in individuals with lower SES and education, this research provides evidence on the importance of pursuing further studies including larger samples with and without aphasia as well as with various SES and education levels. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on this subject Story retell and comprehension of auditory and written discourse have been shown to be affected after stroke, but most studies have been conducted on individuals with middle to high SES and high educational levels. What this paper adds to existing knowledge The study reports on narrative retell and comprehension in both auditory and written modalities in groups of HC and individuals with LH brain damage, with low-to-middle SES and lower levels of education. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? This study highlights the importance of taking into consideration the sociodemographic and RWH of patients when assessing discourse retell and comprehension in both auditory and written modalities. It also underlines the importance of including patients without significant aphasia following LH stroke to look at the effect of both stroke and aphasia on narrative comprehension and story retelling.

Late dominance of the right hemisphere during narrative comprehension.

PET and fMRI studies suggest that auditory narrative comprehension is supported by a bilateral multilobar cortical network. The superior temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG) makes it an attractive tool to investigate the dynamics of how different neuroanatomic substrates engage during narrative comprehension. Using beta-band power changes as a marker of cortical engagement, we studied MEG responses during an auditory story comprehension task in 31 healthy adults. The protocol consisted of two runs, each interleaving 7 blocks of the story comprehension task with 15 blocks of an auditorily presented math task as a control for phonological processing, working memory, and attention processes. Sources at the cortical surface were estimated with a frequency-resolved beamformer. Beta-band power was estimated in the frequency range of 16-24 Hz over 1-sec epochs starting from 400 msec after stimulus onset until the end of a story or math problem presentation. These power estimates were compared to 1-second epochs of data before the stimulus block onset. The task-related cortical engagement was inferred from beta-band power decrements. Group-level source activations were statistically compared using non-parametric permutation testing. A story-math contrast of beta-band power changes showed greater bilateral cortical engagement within the fusiform gyrus, inferior and middle temporal gyri, parahippocampal gyrus, and left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during story comprehension. A math-story contrast of beta power decrements showed greater bilateral but left-lateralized engagement of the middle frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule. The evolution of cortical engagement during five temporal windows across the presentation of stories showed significant involvement during the first interval of the narrative of bilateral opercular and insular regions as well as the ventral and lateral temporal cortex, extending more posteriorly on the left and medially on the right. Over time, there continued to be sustained right anterior ventral temporal engagement, with increasing involvement of the right anterior parahippocampal gyrus, STG, MTG, posterior superior temporal sulcus, inferior parietal lobule, frontal operculum, and insula, while left hemisphere engagement decreased. Our findings are consistent with prior imaging studies of narrative comprehension, but in addition, they demonstrate increasing right-lateralized engagement over the course of narratives, suggesting an important role for these right-hemispheric regions in semantic integration as well as social and pragmatic inference processing.

Online assessment of narrative macrostructure in adult Irish-English multilinguals.

Background: Online assessment of narrative production and comprehension became an important component of language assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to establish quantitative measures of narrative macrostructure in the production and comprehension of adult Irish-English bilinguals in an online assessment. Methods: A total of 30 Irish-English bilingual adults participated in an online assessment of oral narrative production and comprehension. Narratives were elicited using LITMUS-MAIN for Irish and English. Story-tell elicitation method was used for all stories. Twenty participants produced Baby Birds and Baby Goats story pairs while 10 participants produced Cat and Dog story pairs. Quantitative measures of story structure, comprehension score, and the overall number of Internal State Terms (ISTs) in production and comprehension were compared across the story pairs, languages, and the output type (production vs. comprehension). Results: A general linear model indicated no differences in either story structure or story comprehension scores across languages for both sets of stories. Combined analysis for all participants and stories indicated no difference in the story structure scores or comprehension scores across the languages or the story pairs. While the overall number of ISTs was the same across languages, a higher number of ISTs was observed in comprehension relative to production in both languages for Cat and Dog story pair only, but not for Baby birds and Baby goats' stories. The major benefit of using online assessment was the accessibility of participants. The major drawback was the inability to control the environment and the quality of the internet connection. Conclusion and implications: While online assessment increased the availability of participants, which is a significant factor in rural Ireland characterized by low population density and the high percentage of Irish speakers, the availability of stable internet connection limited the applicability of online assessment. Measures of narrative macrostructure were stable across the languages and the story pairs. This is important because of high variability in exposure to Irish, frequent code-switching, and a high number of morphosyntactic errors due to rapid language change that characterizes Irish-English bilinguals. Identifying reliable measures of language performance for Irish-English adult speakers is an important step toward establishing developmental norms for Irish-English bilinguals.

Negative correlation between word-level surprisal and intersubject neural synchronization during narrative listening.

Word-predictability measures, such as surprisal, have been used to show that linguistic prediction is an essential neural mechanism for successful comprehension. However, the neural dynamic of this mechanism may differ across individuals listening to the same narrative, revealing possible idiosyncrasies. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the ability of the surprisal measure to address the linguistic prediction in terms of the intersubject phase synchronization (ISPS) among healthy volunteers listening to a narrative during continuous functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanning. The data of twenty-seven participants, acquired in a previous study, were re-analyzed to estimate the ISPS associated with an audiobook listening, played forward and backward. Mean ISPS differences between playing conditions were first analyzed across the whole brain. ISPS time-series during the forward condition was explained with both a lexical-only and a semantics-weighted lexical surprisal model of the narrative word series to detect correlations between ISPS and word surprisal values. Compared to the backward condition, mean ISPS was significantly higher during forward condition in a broad network encompassing frontal, temporal, and parietal areas. The lexical-only model disclosed significant negative ISPS-surprisal correlations in the angular gyrus bilaterally, precuneus, left inferior parietal lobule, left middle frontal gyrus, left cerebellum, and left inferior frontal gyrus. The semantics-weighted surprisal model disclosed significant negative ISPS-surprisal correlations in the right angular gyrus, right precuneus, and left inferior frontal gyrus. Besides engaging language-related areas, narrative processing induces significant ISPS levels beyond the language network. The negative ISPS-surprisal correlations observed would signal divergent neural dynamics among individuals, leading to lower group synchronization, when the words to be integrated are characterized by higher surprisal levels. These results provide further support to the use of language models, such as the surprisal, to explain the neural processes of narrative comprehension and additional information into how the human brain exploits predictions during language comprehension.

Narrative Comprehension Guides Eye Movements in the Absence of Motion.

Viewers' attentional selection while looking at scenes is affected by both top-down and bottom-up factors. However, when watching film, viewers typically attend to the movie similarly irrespective of top-down factors-a phenomenon we call the tyranny of film. A key difference between still pictures and film is that film contains motion, which is a strong attractor of attention and highly predictive of gaze during film viewing. The goal of the present study was to test if the tyranny of film is driven by motion. To do this, we created a slideshow presentation of the opening scene of Touch of Evil. Context condition participants watched the full slideshow. No-context condition participants did not see the opening portion of the scene, which showed someone placing a time bomb into the trunk of a car. In prior research, we showed that despite producing very different understandings of the clip, this manipulation did not affect viewers' attention (i.e., the tyranny of film), as both context and no-context participants were equally likely to fixate on the car with the bomb when the scene was presented as a film. The current study found that when the scene was shown as a slideshow, the context manipulation produced differences in attentional selection (i.e., it attenuated attentional synchrony). We discuss these results in the context of the Scene Perception and Event Comprehension Theory, which specifies the relationship between event comprehension and attentional selection in the context of visual narratives.

Narrative comprehension and production abilities of children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.

BACKGROUND: The 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11DS) is associated with language deficits and weak intellectual functioning. In other clinical groups, linguistic and cognitive difficulties have been associated with impaired acquisition of narrative abilities. However, little is known about the narrative abilities of children with 22q11DS. AIMS: To describe the ability of children with 22q11DS to produce and comprehend narrative macrostructure. Additionally, to examine the role of intellectual functioning in explaining their narrative difficulties. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Narrative skills of 14 school-aged children with 22q11DS were compared to those of younger typically developing (TD) children matched on mental age and same-aged peers with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Children with 22q11DS had significantly lower scores on narrative comprehension than younger TD children. No significant differences emerged on narrative production. Children with 22q11DS and children with DLD did not differ significantly on any of the narrative measures. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Narrative comprehension in children with 22q11DS seems more affected than production. Narrative comprehension difficulties cannot be entirely explained by a low level of intellectual functioning. Narrative comprehension and production abilities in 22q11DS require further consideration.

Adult attachment and engagement with fictional characters.

Adult attachment influences how people engage with stories, in terms of how immersed or transported they become into these narratives and the tendency to form close bonds with characters. This likely stems from the ability of stories and story characters to provide interpersonal intimacy without the threat of rejection. In Study 1, we expand on this work to examine how attachment relates to two previously uninvestigated aspects of character engagement: character identification and parasocial interactions. Taking a statistically conservative approach, controlling for broader traits, we demonstrate that the attachment dimensions of anxiety and avoidance differentially predict these forms of character engagement. A high-powered, pre-registered, Study 2 follows up on these results by examining the types of characters that are most appealing, based on one's attachment orientation. Together, these studies demonstrate that attachment plays an essential role in both how we engage with characters and the types of characters to whom we are attracted.

Cognitive and Neural State Dynamics of Narrative Comprehension.

Narrative comprehension involves a constant interplay of the accumulation of incoming events and their integration into a coherent structure. This study characterizes cognitive states during narrative comprehension and the network-level reconfiguration occurring dynamically in the functional brain. We presented movie clips of temporally scrambled sequences to human participants (male and female), eliciting fluctuations in the subjective feeling of comprehension. Comprehension occurred when processing events that were highly causally related to the previous events, suggesting that comprehension entails the integration of narratives into a causally coherent structure. The functional neuroimaging results demonstrated that the integrated and efficient brain state emerged during the moments of narrative integration with the increased level of activation and across-modular connections in the default mode network. Underlying brain states were synchronized across individuals when comprehending novel narratives, with increased occurrences of the default mode network state, integrated with sensory processing network, during narrative integration. A model based on time-resolved functional brain connectivity predicted changing cognitive states related to comprehension that are general across narratives. Together, these results support adaptive reconfiguration and interaction of the functional brain networks on causal integration of the narratives.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The human brain can integrate temporally disconnected pieces of information into coherent narratives. However, the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms of how the brain builds a narrative representation remain largely unknown. We showed that comprehension occurs as the causally related events are integrated to form a coherent situational model. Using fMRI, we revealed that the large-scale brain states and interaction between brain regions dynamically reconfigure as comprehension evolves, with the default mode network playing a central role during moments of narrative integration. Overall, the study demonstrates that narrative comprehension occurs through a dynamic process of information accumulation and causal integration, supported by the time-varying reconfiguration and brain network interaction.

Direct and Indirect Pathways of Variation in Length of Exposure to the Majority Language, Cognitive and Language Skills in Preschoolers' Listening Narrative Comprehension.

Listening narrative comprehension, according to the theoretical framework of the multicomponent model for comprehension, involves numerous skills that interact dynamically between each other and have the potential to give rise to individual differences in comprehension. The purpose of the current work was to define a comprehensive and complete multicomponent model of listening narrative comprehension in preschool age. We investigated how variation in Length of Exposure to majority Language (i.e., how long children have been exposed to the Italian language), lower-order cognitive (WM, inhibitory control, attention shifting), language skills (receptive vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, rapid naming), and higher-order cognitive skills (inferences, TOM, knowledge of story-structure) are related to listening narrative comprehension in Italian of 111 preschool children (Mage = 61 months; SD = 6.8) growing in a monolingual or multilingual context. Structural equation modeling results showed that the model explained 60% variance in listening narrative comprehension in Italian of children aged four to six and predicted the outcome both through direct and mediated paths, coherently with the multicomponent model of comprehension.

Lending a hand to storytelling: Gesture's effects on narrative comprehension moderated by task difficulty and cognitive ability.

Compelling evidence suggests observing iconic gestures benefits learning. While emerging evidence suggests typical iconic gestures benefit comprehension to a greater extent than atypical iconic gestures, it is unclear precisely when and for whom these gestures will be most helpful. The current study investigated factors that may moderate when and for whom gesture benefits narrative comprehension most, including the type of gesture, task difficulty, and individual differences in cognitive ability. Participants were shown a video narrative in which they observed either typical gestures (commonly produced gestures, highly semantically related to accompanying speech), atypical gestures (gestures that are seldom produced), or no gestures. The video narrative was either viewed with interference (background noise to increase task difficulty) or no interference (no background noise). To determine whether the effects of gesture observation and externally imposed task difficulty on narrative comprehension further depend on an individual's cognitive abilities, participants completed four measures of cognitive abilities (immediate and delayed non-verbal memory, attention, and intellectual ability). Observing typical gestures significantly benefitted narrative comprehension compared with atypical and no gestures combined, which did not differ significantly. Participants with below average and average levels of delayed non-verbal memory benefitted more from typical gestures than atypical or no gestures compared with those with an above average level of delayed non-verbal memory. However, this interaction was only significant when the task was difficult (i.e., with interference) but not when the task was simple (i.e., no interference). This finding suggests that the type of iconic gesture observed may affect gesture's beneficial effect on narrative comprehension, and that such gestures may be more beneficial in difficult tasks, but only for certain individuals.

Effects of a Home Literacy Environment Program on Psychlinguistic Variables in Children from 6 to 8 Years of Age.

(1) Background: the objective of this study was to improve certain psycholinguistic and cognitive skills that are fundamental to the development of the reading process, such as phonological awareness, reading decoding, vocabulary and oral narrative comprehension, through the introduction of an Home Literacy Environment Active (HLE(A)) program that involved 54 participants enrolled in the first and second grades of elementary school (from 6 to 8 years old) in the city of Malaga area. (2) Methods: The central task of the intervention program was for the child to read aloud to an adult in the family for between 10 and 15 min, four days per week. In addition, the school students were evaluated on four occasions, at the beginning and end of each academic year, using the Batería de Evaluación de los Procesos Lectores Revisada, Test para la Detección de la Dislexia en niños and Escala Weschsler de Inteligencia instruments. (3) Results: the results demonstrated the efficacy of the HLE(A) program in the improvement of psycholinguistic and cognitive variables measured and, consequently, to an improvement in reading learning and cognitive development. Ultimately, the scientific literature on the subject and the data from the study led us to suggest that it would not only be beneficial for HLE(A) programs to be instituted in early childhood education stage (up to 6 years of age), but that they should be continued after age 6, in elementary education.