## 1 Introduction
### The Effect of Reading Modalities and Text Types on Reading Comprehension  
Audio-assisted reading (AR), in which individuals read text while listening to the corresponding audio, is one of the reading modalities proposed to enhance the reading comprehension of poor readers. Previous studies have demonstrated that audio assistance helps them engage more effectively with the text and utilize their cognitive strengths with improved semantic chunking. Under the AR condition, automatic reading, facilitated by the reduced cognitive load of decoding words, allows them to allocate more of their attention to understanding the content of the text when compared to the reading-only (R) condition [15; 16; 17; 18]. However, a debate remains regarding whether all school-age children can benefit from AR, as the AR condition could potentially lead to an increased cognitive load by necessitating the simultaneous processing of visual and auditory stimuli [19; 20].  
The type of text, broadly consisting of two types--fictional (narrative) and non-fictional (expository)--is also acknowledged to have an impact on reading comprehension [21; 22; 23]. Fictional text that young readers typically encounter from early childhood is often presented in a sequential manner. This inherent structure helps young children to understand the story more easily, given the similarity between the narrative progression and the development of real-life events they experience [24]. On the other hand, non-fictional text requires more time for reading and comprehension compared to fictional text due to the unfamiliarity of the subject matter and the complexity of sentence structures [25; 26]. Hence, it is relatively easier for school-age children to achieve reading comprehension of fictional text as opposed to non-fictional text [22]. Additionally, as children grow older, their comprehension of fictional text can readily improve compared to that of non-fictional text, because recognizing the causal relationship between events is often sufficient for comprehension. In contrast, non-fictional text demands more structured training, including syntactic comprehension and background knowledge, to be effectively comprehended beyond merely understanding causality [27; 28].  
[PERSON] et al. [29] investigated the impact of various story presentation methods (audio-only, audio-with-text, and text-only) and story types (fiction and non-fiction) on the comprehension of first- and second-grade students. Consistent with previous research, children demonstrated better comprehension of the fictional stories than of the non-fictional stories, and performance of literal comprehension tasks exceeded that of inferential comprehension tasks. Regarding the story presentation methods, overall comprehension scores of the fictional stories in the audio-only condition and the audio-with-text condition were found to be significantly higher than those in the text-only condition. In terms of non-fictional stories, only the audio-with-text condition exhibited higher comprehension scores compared to the condition with reading only. These results suggest that 6- to 8-year-old children can benefit from AR with both fictional and non-fictional stories, surpassing the R condition for both types of stories. Moreover, the effects of the story presentation methods may differ depending on the text type.