This exploratory study identified underlying skill and ability differences among subgroups of adolescent and young adult struggling readers (N = 290) overall and in relation to a fluency-based instructional grouping method. We used principal axis factoring of participants' scores on 18 measures of reading-related skills and abilities identified in…

This study examined syntactic comprehension in French children with dyslexia in both listening and reading. In the first syntactic comprehension task, a partial version of the Epreuve de Comprehension syntaxico-semantique (ECOSSE test; French adaptation of Bishop's test for receptive grammar test) children with dyslexia performed at a lower level…

According to Gough and Tunmer's Simple View of Reading, Reading Comprehension = Decoding (D) x Listening Comprehension (C). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the model with a sample of First Nations children, known to have average decoding and listening comprehension but poor reading comprehension. In addition, the authors examined the…

A pre-post experimental design with 6-week delayed posttest was implemented to investigate the effects of reading comprehension strategy (RCS) instruction with and without attribution retraining (AR) on reading outcomes for seventh, eighth, and ninth graders with learning and other mild disabilities. Students were randomly assigned to one of three…

Emerging research supports the contribution of executive function (EF) to reading comprehension; however, a unique pattern has not been established for children who demonstrate comprehension difficulties despite average word recognition ability (specific reading comprehension deficit; S-RCD). To identify particular EF components on which children…

Low-achieving readers in Grade 5 often lack comprehension strategies, domain knowledge, word recognition skills, fluency, and motivation to read. Students with such multiple reading needs seem likely to benefit from instruction that supports each of these reading processes. The authors tested this expectation experimentally by comparing the…

This study examined longitudinally the double-deficit hypothesis in Greek, an orthographically consistent language, following a group of children from kindergarten to Grade 2. Four groups were formed on the basis of two composite scores of phonological and naming-speed criterion measures: a double-deficit group (DD; n = 17), a phonological deficit…

Fourth graders who were good readers (N=95) and poor readers (N=27) were given tests of syntactic competence, vocabulary, and auditory and reading comprehension. Scores on the auditory and reading comprehension tests were significantly correlated. Poor readers performed significantly poorer on the syntactic test, but results did not support the…

The author supports the theory that for some disabled readers the nature of the form-schema (syntatic expectations) they make use of in processing text does not result in stable comprehension because their recognition strategies are linked to their past experience in constructing meaning from speech. Implications for instruction are discussed.…

The purpose of this study was to determine the components of working memory (WM) that underlie less skilled readers' comprehension and word recognition difficulties. Performance of 3 less skilled reading subgroups--children with reading disabilities (RD) in both word recognition and comprehension; children with comprehension deficits only; and…

A major focus in reading difficulty is lack of automaticity in decoding, which overloads the attentional system, leads to the use of small, meaningless visual processing units such as the individual letter, places heavy demands on short-term memory, and interferes with comprehension. Techniques for diagnosis and remediation are noted. (Author/JW)

The literature on individual differences in cognitive processes that operate at the text level is reviewed. Poor readers display comprehension deficits independent of word-decoding skill, due to deficient syntactic abilities and to more general metacognitive strategies. The general conclusions from this review and from Part One (ED 150 706) are…