Oral narrative comprehension and individual differences in 7 and 11-year-old children: vocabulary, working memory and Theory of Mind ; La comprensión de narraciones orales y las diferencias individuales en niños entre 7 y 11 años: vocabulario, memoria de trabajo y teoría de la mente ; A compreensão de narrativas orais e as diferenças individuais em crianças de 7 a 11 anos: vocabulário, memória de trabalho e Teoria da Mente

The purpose of this study was to analyze the role of vocabulary, working memory, Theory of Mind, and sustained attention in the comprehension of oral narratives and the generation of inferences in children aged 7 to 11. Reading comprehension skills were used as the criterion to establish the study's cohort groups. A total of 126 Spanish-speaking Colombian children participated in the study. They were assessed using tasks that measured comprehension of oral narratives, as well as standardized tests of vocabulary, working memory, Theory of Mind, and sustained attention. The results indicated a significant difference in vocabulary between the group of poor comprehenders and the comparison group with better comprehension performance. The poor comprehenders also performed worse than the comparison group in the narrative comprehension test with visual support, as a result of significant differences in responding to emotional inference questions. The correlational analysis showed that the vocabulary variable was associated with all measures of oral narrative comprehension. Additionally, working memory correlated with almost all measures of oral narrative comprehension, except for answering inference questions when the text did not have visual support. Finally, Theory of Mind demonstrated a significant correlation with answering emotional inference questions and the measures without visual support. ; El propósito de esta investigación consistió en estudiar el rol del vocabulario, la memoria de trabajo, la teoría de la mente y la atención sostenida en la comprensión de narraciones orales y la generación de inferencia en niños de entre 7 y 11 años. Para ello, se utilizaron las habilidades de comprensión lectora como criterio para establecer los grupos de cohorte del estudio. La muestra, conformada por 126 niños colombianos hispanohablantes, fue evaluada en tareas de comprensión de narraciones orales, así como mediante pruebas estandarizadas en vocabulario, memoria de trabajo, teoría de la mente y atención sostenida. Los ...