Background: A significant portion of adults struggle to read at a basic level. Word reading (defined here as decoding and word recognition) appears to play a pivotal role for this population of readers; however, less is known about how word reading relates to other important semantic processes (e.g., vocabulary, sentence processing) known to…

Phonological awareness has been found to be an important skill underpinning reading development in several alphabetic languages. However, the development of phonological awareness and its relationship to reading development can be influenced by the nature of the language under investigation. While understanding this relationship in Thai language…

The purpose of this study was to analyze primary school first grade students' reading levels and correlate their visual perception skills. For this purpose, students' reading speed, reading comprehension and reading errors were determined using The Informal Reading Inventory. Students' visual perception levels were also analyzed using…

The aim of this study was to compare the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC) with the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA) and other measures of reading and related skills with a sample of older low-progress readers and to provide additional information regarding the validity of the YARC in Australia. The data from an…

Rapid automatized naming (RAN) robustly predicts early reading abilities across languages, but its underlying mechanism remains unclear. This study found that RAN associated significantly with processing speed but not with phonological awareness or orthographic knowledge in 89 Hong Kong Chinese second-graders. RAN overlaps more with processing…

Many children and adults have specific reading disabilities; insight into the brain structure underlying these difficulties is evolving from imaging. Previous research highlights the left temporal-parietal white matter as important in reading, yet the degree of involvement of other areas remains unclear. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and…

The present study used a randomized control trial to examine the effects of a widely used multicomponent Tier 2-type intervention, Passport to Literacy, on the reading ability of 221 fourth graders who initially scored at or below the 30th percentile in reading comprehension. Intervention was provided by research staff to groups of 4-7 students…

The concept of Matthew effects in reading development refers to a longitudinally widening gap between high achievers and low achievers. Various statistical approaches have been proposed to examine this idea. However, little attention has been paid to psychometric issues of scaling. Specifically, interval-level data are required to compare…

The present study used a randomized control trial to examine the effects of a widely-used multi-component Tier 2 type intervention, Passport to Literacy, on the reading ability of 221 fourth graders who initially scored at or below the 30th percentile in reading comprehension. Intervention was provided by research staff to groups of 4-7 students…

Commonly used literacy motivation assessments do not specifically explore literacy motivation in school. These context-general assessments may be problematic for struggling adolescent readers, as qualitative research documents that these adolescents exhibit different levels of cross-context motivation. The present study explores whether an…

The majority of previous research on academic skills, self-concept of ability and interest has deployed the variable-oriented approach and focused on self-concept, or ability, or interest only. This study examined the patterns and dynamics of pattern change in Finnish children's word reading skill, self-concept of ability and interest from…

According to the Simple View of Reading, reading ability can be divided into decoding and language comprehension. In the present study, decoding and comprehension's contribution to reading ability was studied both in children with reading difficulties and in children with typical reading ability. Decoding and comprehension was further divided into…

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disability (RD) frequently co-occur in the child population and therefore raise the possibility of shared genetic etiology. We used a quantitative trait loci (QTL) approach to assess the involvement of the dopamine transporter (DAT1) gene polymorphism in mediating reading disability and…

This article presents a critical review of the literature surrounding the potential impact of undiagnosed and untreated vision impairment on reading development in the early years of primary school. Despite pre-school screening programmes, it is still possible for children to enter school with undiagnosed, uncorrected vision impairments. This can…

Vocabulary is an essential component of language. It is central to reading ability, writing ability and listening ability, and the most important aspect of second-language (L2) knowledge for academic achievement. The aim of this paper is to investigate quantitatively some of the factors that make some L2 words more difficult to learn and retain…