The Relationship Between CHC Cognitive Abilities (Gf and Gc) and Reading Comprehension in Relation to Gender: From the Perceptive of Cattel-Horn-Carroll

Studies have shown that the factor which is regarded more influential in acquiring all language skills and sub-skills is human cognitive abilities. More or less a good number of studies which have investigated the relationship between intellectual abilities and second language acquisition (SLA) have revealed a medium to high correlation between these variables.Then, this study investigated the relationship between two broad human cognitive abilities of CHC theory and reading comprehension in males and females. Between different theories about cognitive abilities two broad cognitive abilities of Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory, Crystallized and Fluid intelligence were selected to measure their relationship with mastering reading skill in English as foreign language across gender. Data have been collected from 100 EFL students of Azad university of Mashhad, in fact three different instruments distributed among them, a reading test, Raven matrices and C-test subsequently and the results were analyzed by Pearson correlation and Two-way ANOVA.Results have shown significant relationship between Fluid intelligence and reading comprehension (r =0.43) and no meaningful relation between Crystallized intelligence and reading comprehension (r =0.11). Moreover, boys with the mean score of Fluid intelligence (20.09) slightly outperformed girls (M=19) in reading skill. There was approximately no difference between males mean score in Crystallized intelligence (55) in comparison to females mean (54). Based on the strong relation between Fluid intelligence and reading comprehension,it can be interpreted that learning skills and sub-skills of English as second or foreign language especially reading comprehension is more dependent onreasoning, logical and mathematical intelligence rather than vocabulary or world knowledge or our experiences which are more influential in learning English as first language.