Reading comprehension is a complex skill that has been widely studied. Nevertheless, insights on the process of emotional inferences in children have remained limited. Therefore, the first aim of...Show moreReading comprehension is a complex skill that has been widely studied. Nevertheless, insights on the process of emotional inferences in children have remained limited. Therefore, the first aim of this study is to investigate reading time differences in emotion-eliciting and control narratives read by children. Furthermore, in previous studies perspective taking, working memory and visuospatial ability have been suggested to influence reading processes. This leads to a second aim: examine the influence of working memory, visuospatial abilities and perspective taking on reading times of emotion-eliciting and control narratives read by children. Participants were 84 students in grade 5 in the age group 10 - 12. Each participant read 10 emotion-eliciting and 10 control short narratives in random order. Narratives were characterized by either an emotion-eliciting or a control target sentence. Furthermore, measures of working memory, visuospatial abilities, perspective taking and reading fluency were administered. Results revealed RT differences between kinds of sentences (target or closure) and working memory was found to influence the RT of children. These results indicate a difference in the ability to make emotional inference between children and adults.Show less
