Children described as "poor comprehenders" (PCs) have reading comprehension difficulties in spite of adequate word reading abilities. PCs are known to display weakness with semantics and higher-level aspects of oral language, but less is known about their grammatical skills, especially with regard to morphosyntax. The purpose of this…

This study compared how lexical quality (vocabulary and decoding) and executive control (working memory and inhibition) predict reading comprehension directly as well as indirectly, via syntactic integration, in monolingual and bilingual fourth grade children. The participants were 76 monolingual and 102 bilingual children (mean age 10 years,…

Many studies have shown that learning to read in a second language (L2) is similar, in many ways, to learning to read in a first language (L1). Nevertheless, reading development also relies upon oral language proficiency and is greatly influenced by orthographic consistency. This longitudinal study aimed to analyze the role of linguistic…

The achievement gaps between poor and more affluent students are persistent and chronic, as many students living in poverty are also members of more isolated communities where dialects such as African American English and Southern Vernacular English are often spoken. Non-mainstream dialect use is associated with weaker literacy achievement. The…

In Study 1, children in grades 4-9 (N = 88, 29 females and 59 males) with persisting reading and/or writing disabilities, despite considerable prior specialized instruction in and out of school, were given an evidence-based comprehensive assessment battery at the university while parents completed questionnaires regarding past and current history…

The alphasyllabary of Kannada comprises more than 400 symbols called "akshara"; each symbol is visuo-spatially complex with a consistent representation at the dual levels of the syllable and the phoneme. We investigated reading difficulties in Kannada among 8-12 year old children by conducting a between-groups followed by a case series…

Reading comprehension is a multi-dimensional process that includes the reader, the text, and factors associated with the activity of reading. Most research and theories of comprehension are based primarily on research conducted with monolingual English speakers (L1). The present study was designed to investigate the cognitive and linguistic…

The present study was designed to investigate the influence of syntactic complexity on sentence comprehension in Hebrew. Participants were 40 native Hebrew-speaking 5th grade dyslexic and normally reading children aged 10-11 years. Children's syntactic abilities were tested by three experimental measures: syntactic judgment, a sentence-picture…

Compares the performance of poor readers with that of matched good readers and younger average readers. Found that all poor readers performed poorly in all three linguistic areas concurrently, and these difficulties persisted; poor readers demonstrated a difference between their phonological processing skills and their semantic/syntactic skills;…