Some children demonstrate adequate or better reading achievement in early school grades but fall significantly behind their peers in later grades. These children are often referred to as late-emerging poor readers. In this study, we investigated the prevalence and heterogeneity of these poor readers. We also examined the early language and…

Multiple studies have shown that kindergarten measures of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge are good predictors of reading achievement in the primary grades. However, less attention has been given to the early predictors of later reading achievement. This study used a modified best-subsets variable-selection technique to examine…

Purpose: This study examined the reading achievement growth of children with language impairments (LI) across the school grades. The authors sought to determine whether children with LI demonstrate a delayed, deficit, or cumulative pattern of reading achievement growth when compared with children with typical language (TL). Method: A group of 225…

The Simple View of Reading states that reading comprehension is the product of word recognition and listening comprehension. Whereas much research has focused on word recognition accuracy, recent attention has been directed toward word recognition fluency. The current study investigated whether a separate fluency component should be added to the…

Purpose: To examine concurrently and retrospectively the language abilities of children with specific reading comprehension deficits ("poor comprehenders") and compare them to typical readers and children with specific decoding deficits ("poor decoders"). Method: In Study 1, the authors identified 57 poor comprehenders, 27 poor decoders, and 98…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether specific language impairment (SLI) and dyslexia are distinct developmental disorders. Method: Study 1 investigated the overlap between SLI identified in kindergarten and dyslexia identified in 2nd, 4th, or 8th grades in a representative sample of 527 children. Study 2 examined…