Reading is an important skill, and becomes even more so beyond elementary years, when the focus shifts to comprehension as a means of learning and understanding academic material across subjects (Kamil et al., 2008; Shanahan et al., 2010; Snow, 2002). One construct receiving much recent interest in research, especially that related to academic achievement, is mind wandering (MW). MW has been defined as "a shift away from a primary task toward internal information" (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). Though it is known to be ubiquitous among people (McVay & Kane, 2012), there are numerous theories about why MW occurs, in different contexts, and in relation to various other factors, and no one theory is currently dominant. MW and other factors such as working memory (WM) and decoding are all known to influence functional outcomes such as reading comprehension (RC), but there is little information on how all of these factors interact with one another with regard to RC. Most prior work focuses on adults and thus generalization to children is still needed. Therefore, the goals of this project were to examine the roles of WM, MW, decoding, and their interactions in relation to RC. It was hypothesized that each would demonstrate a significant relationship with the outcome of RC and that they would interact with one another beyond their individual main effects.

The sample included 214 6th and 7th grade students with a larger proportion of struggling readers. Participants were each administered the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement -Third Edition (KTEA-3; Kaufman & Kaufman, 2014) Letter Word Recognition subtest (decoding), the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fifth Edition (WISC-5; Wechsler, 2014) Digit Span and Picture Span subtests(WM), and the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests - Fourth Edition (GMRT-4; MacGinitie, 1978) Comprehension subtest (RC). Four measures of MW were administered: the trait-based Mind Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ; Mrazek et al., 2013); two task-based (or state-dependent) retrospective reporting (TBRR) questionnaires (Matthews et al., 2002), and a researcher-generated single-item task-based retrospective report administered after four tasks. Correlations and regression were utilized to evaluate the relationships among predictor variables, and with regard to RC, including how predictors moderate one another.

All three key predictors demonstrated a significant relationship with RC both via zero-order correlations and main effects in the context of interactive relationships. WM and decoding demonstrated positive relationships with RC and MW demonstrated a negative relationship with RC, though only when one (MWQ) measure of MW was used, rather than the TBRR measure. There was a significant interaction of decoding and MW as measured by the TBRR questionnaires on the outcome of RC. Other interactions were not significant.

These results clarify the interactive relationships of these three key predictors on the important academic achievement outcome of RC, ultimately suggesting that intervention strategies for achievement problems in areas such as RC should consider MW in conjunction with decoding abilities in order to implement effective strategies that capitalize on individual children's strengths and build on their particular weaknesses.

This longitudinal study investigates whether reading strategies are influenced by the orthographic depth of languages, specifically Spanish or Cantonese, acquired through enrollment in bilingual immersion programs. Spanish shares an alphabet with English and is considered a phonologically transparent language (Sun et al., 2022). Research has shown that second language learners of Cantonese, an opaque language, performed better on orthographic awareness tasks that involve whole-word visual information processing (Wang and Geva, 2003). We hypothesize that students enrolled in a bilingual immersion program will outperform peers in general education (GENED) on selected reading tasks. More specifically, those in Spanish-immersion programs will perform better on English tasks involving phonological processing; whereas those in Cantonese-immersion programs will perform better on single-word/character processing tasks.

Participants (n=102) were native English speakers recruited from the San Francisco Unified School District. Our sample included 42 females and 60 males. Thirty-nine identified as White, 33 Mixed Race, 25 Asian, 4 Latinx, and 1 Black. Thirty-nine children were in GENED, 33 in Spanish immersion programs (Sp), and 30 in Cantonese immersion programs (Cn). Each child was assessed on a core language/behavioral battery at Kindergarten (T1) and 2nd-3rd grade (T2). Time 2 participants were between 7 and 9 years old.

Those that scored at least one standard deviation below the mean (SS=85) on a nonverbal intelligence screener (KBIT-2 Matrices) were excluded to mitigate confounds of intellectual disabilities. Groups' performance in English was compared on English tasks involving phonological processing (CTOPP-2 Blending Words and Elision) and single-word/character information processing tasks (WJ-IV Letter Word Identification and KABC-II Rebus).

Simple main effects analysis showed that time did have a statistically significant effect on test performance (p <0.001). At T2, analysis revealed a significant impact of school enrollment on Blending Words [F (2, 51.0) = 4.19, p = 0.018]. As predicted, post-hoc analysis revealed the students enrolled in the Spanish-immersion program significantly outperformed those in general education on this task. Across the other three tasks, those enrolled in Spanish and Cantonese immersion programs performed as strong as or better than those in GENED, but the variability was not statistically significant.

This study uniquely isolated the effects of bilingual education without confounding factors of access to resources of a more heterogeneous socioeconomic sample. Mixed results partially supported our hypotheses: Spanish-immersion participants performed significantly better than those in GENED on one English phonological processing task (Blending Words). Although Cantonese immersion students had a higher mean performance than those in GENED on single-word/-character processing tasks, the variance was not statistically significant. This implies that bilingual education may offer advantages in either reading strategy. According to the literature, characteristics of a language may influence literacy acquisition; thus, subsequent research may continue to examine the effect of learning multiple languages with varying levels of orthographic depth on the development of English reading strategies.