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Individual differences in the vocabulary skills of children with poor reading comprehension
Colenbrander, Danielle Kohnen, Saskia Smith-Lock, Karen Nickels, Lyndsey
Colenbrander, Danielle
Kohnen, Saskia
Smith-Lock, Karen
Nickels, Lyndsey
Abstract
As a group, poor comprehenders (children who have poor reading comprehension despite age-appropriate decoding abilities) have often been shown to have vocabulary difficulties. However, vocabulary knowledge is complex and could affect reading comprehension in more than one way. We explored this complexity by assessing the vocabulary and oral language skills of poor comprehenders at the individual level. All poor comprehenders displayed some degree of oral language deficit in the context of intact nonword and irregular word reading skills, but patterns of oral language deficit differed across participants. The majority had weak vocabulary skills which took the form of semantic weaknesses, while a minority had age-appropriate vocabulary skills but poor syntactic or listening comprehension skills. Our results support the Simple View of Reading and demonstrate the importance of considering individual variation when developing theories of, and treatments for, poor reading comprehension.
Keywords
vocabulary, reading comprehension, individual differences, oral language, irregular word reading
Date
2016
Type
Journal article
Journal
Learning and Individual Differences
Book
Volume
50
Issue
Page Range
210-220
Article Number
ACU Department
Faculty of Education and Arts
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as green open access
License
File Access
Controlled
Open
Open