ABSTRACT
Listening comprehension (LC) is considered an important but complex skill that predicts later reading comprehension in various languages. In this study, we aimed at understanding the relationship of LC with different linguistic and cognitive components. For this purpose, 262 Arabic-speaking kindergartners participated in this study. Our regression results showed that both linguistic and cognitive measures explained 53% of the variance in LC. Regarding the linguistic measures, while vocabulary, syntactic knowledge and morphological knowledge contributed significantly to LC, the phonological awareness contribution was not significant. As for the cognitive measures, both working memory and speed of processing were found to contribute significantly to LC whereas the contribution of speed of processing was marginal. Our findings are discussed in the light of previous findings in the literature.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the staff and the children from the participating pre-schools for their cooperation as well as students in the Master’s degree program in learning disabilities for their role in data collection.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.