The prediction of reading comprehension by cognitive and motivational factors: Does text accessibility during comprehension testing make a difference?

• The role of comprehension assessment is taken into account when evaluating the predictive strength of reader characteristics.
• Cognitive and motivational predictors are brought together and their contributions to reading comprehension are compared.
• The findings suggest that motivation is more important when comprehension is tested with access to the text.
• Cognitive predictors are more important when comprehension is measured without text access.

This study examined the unique contributions of various predictors to reading comprehension measured either without or with access to the text during testing. Reasoning ability, prior knowledge, and decoding skills were assumed to have stronger contributions to comprehension without text access than with text access, whereas current motivation should be more strongly associated with comprehension measured with access to the text. Metacognitive strategy knowledge and test anxiety were expected to be equally associated with comprehension in the two test conditions. Participants were 424 eighth- and ninth-grade students. They were presented with several instruments measuring cognitive and motivational predictors and read a text on a mathematical topic; then half of them took a test on comprehension either without or with text access. Based on multiple-group structural equation modeling, results indicated that reasoning ability, decoding ability, and metacognitive strategy knowledge significantly predicted comprehension only in the without-text condition, whereas achievement motivation and test anxiety significantly predicted comprehension only in the with-text condition. The unique contributions of intrinsic motivation to comprehension were significant, but did unexpectedly not differ between the without-text and the with-text condition.