Relations among reading motivation, reading amount, and reading comprehension in the early elementary grades

• Reading motivation and reading comprehension were examined in very young students.
• Intrinsic reading motivation affected comprehension through reading amount.
• Competition-oriented motivation was directly and negatively related with comprehension.
• Controlling for cognitive ability and socioeconomic status did not alter the findings.
• Gender did not moderate the obtained relations.

In this study, we examined the associations of intrinsic (i.e., involvement-oriented) and extrinsic (i.e., competition-oriented) reading motivation with reading amount and reading comprehension (at the word, sentence, and text level) in a sample of second- and third-grade elementary students (N = 1053). Cognitive ability and socioeconomic status were taken into account as control variables. Reading amount was assumed to mediate the relation between reading motivation and reading comprehension. Moreover, the potentially moderating role of gender was explored. Structural equation analyses revealed that involvement contributed significantly to reading comprehension, and this relationship was mediated through reading amount. Competition-oriented reading motivation was directly and negatively related with reading comprehension. The predictive contributions of reading motivation were confirmed in an alternative model with text-level comprehension as the dependent variable and both word- and sentence-level comprehension as additional predictors. Finally, gender did not moderate the obtained relations.