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The relationship between L2 reading comprehension and working memory has been studied for years, and previous studies highlight the existence of a correlation between the two. However, to our knowledge, no previous study used Kintsch's Multilevel Comprehension Model to operationalize reading comprehension in the investigation of its relationship with working memory. More specifically, according to Kintsch's model, comprehension consists of three text representation levels—the surface level (the literal wording of the text), the textbase (which includes inferences made by the reader), and the situation model (the integration of explicit and implicit text information with readers' background knowledge). Therefore, the study reported in this paper examined the contribution of working memory, the short‐term retention of information and its manipulation, to different text representation levels during L2 reading comprehension. To do so, fifty‐five (N = 55) adult L2 learners of French completed L2 reading comprehension task tapping into three levels of text representation and a numerical complex working memory task. The results showed, on the one hand, a significant contribution of working memory to L2 reading comprehension and, on the other hand, that this relationship was specifically observed with the situation model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metasyntactic ability, which is the ability to reflect upon, and intentionally control and manipulate syntactic aspects of language (Gombert, 1988), is believed to play an important role in language skills development among native speakers and heritage language learners. Although a substantial amount of research has described the role of metasyntactic ability in written language development, little is known about the underlying cognitive processes supporting it. Metasyntactic ability requires storage, control and manipulation of information. Thus, it is thought to tap into memory capacities, namely phonological memory capacity and working memory capacity. While some studies have looked into the relationship between each of these memories and metasyntactic ability, none has examined the relationship and contribution of both to metasyntactic ability. In the present study, we investigated this among 25 heritage language speakers of Arabic, learners of French (mean age = 9 years), living in a French-speaking environment. Three measurement instruments were used: a repetition of French asemantic ungrammatical sentences measuring metasyntactic ability; a numerical complex span task to measure the working memory capacity (Oakhill, Yuill, & Garnham, 2011); and a non-word recognition task to measure phonological memory capacity. Results from the multiple regressions revealed a significant unique contribution of working memory capacity to metasyntactic ability, providing support for the importance of the control system for metasyntactic ability among heritage language learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]