Unraveling Reading Comprehension

Behavioral, Neurobiological, and Genetic Components

edited by

Brett Miller, Ph.D.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Maryland

Laurie E. Cutting, Ph.D.
Peabody College of Education and Human Development
Vanderbilt University

Contents

About the Editors
About the Contributors
The Dyslexia Foundation and the Extraordinary Brain Series
Acknowledgments

I Introduction

1 Unraveling the Behavioral, Neurobiological, and Genetic Components of Reading Comprehension: An Introduction

Laurie E. Cutting and Brett Miller

2 Reflections on Transitions in the Field of Dyslexia: Learning from the Past to Benefit the Future

Robin D. Morris

II What Goes Wrong When Reading Comprehension Fails?

3 Reading Comprehension and Reading Comprehension Problems: A Word-to-Text Integration Perspective

Charles Perfetti, Joseph Z. Stafura, and Suzanne M. Adlof

4 How Might Comprehension Deficits Be Explained by the Constraints of Text and Multilevel Discourse Processes?

Art Graesser and Haiying Li

5 Sources of Comprehension Problems During Reading

Anne Helder, Paul van den Broek, Linda Van Leijenhorst, and Katinka Beker

6 Reading Comprehension Difficulties in Struggling Readers

Kate Cain

7 Oral Language Disorders and Reading Comprehension Problems

Hugh W. Catts

8 Is Reading the Same as Viewing? An Exploration of the Similarities and Differences Between Processing Text- and Visually Based Narratives

Joseph P. Magliano, Lester C. Loschky, James A. Clinton, and Adam M. Larson

III How Can Assessment and Statistical and Computational Modeling Help Us Understand Reading Comprehension?

9 Rationale for a New Generation of Reading Comprehension Assessments

John P. Sabatini and Tenaha O’Reilly

10 The Development of Eye-Movement Control and Reading Skill

Erik D. Reichle

11 Taking Models and Neuroimaging to Task: What Do We Know About How People Actually Read?

Jason D. Zevin and Jianfeng Yang

12 What Can Be Learned About the Reading Comprehension of Poor Readers Through the Use of Advanced Statistical Modeling Techniques?

Donald L. Compton, Amanda C. Miller, Jennifer K. Gilbert, and Laura M. Steacy

IV The Neurobiology and Genetics of Reading and Reading Comprehension

13 From Words to Text: Neurobiology and Behavioral Bases of Reading Comprehension

Laurie E. Cutting, Sabrina L. Benedict, Allison Broadwater

14 Neuroimaging Studies of Reading Disabilities: Toward Brain-Based Learning Models

Kenneth R. Pugh, Stephen J. Frost, Nicole Landi, Jonathan L. Preston, W. Einar Mencl, and Jay G. Rueckl

15 The Proactive Comprehender: What Event-Related Potentials Tell Us About the Dynamics of Reading Comprehension

Gina R. Kuperberg

16 Relating Reading Comprehension to Language and Broader Reading Skills: A Behavioral Genetics Approach

Stephen A. Petrill

17 What We Know (or Do Not Know) About the Genetics of Reading Comprehension and Other Reading-Related Processes

Elena L. Grigorenko

V Intervention: Addressing the Needs of Learners

18 Intervening to Support Reading Comprehension Development with Diverse Learners

Carol McDonald Connor

19 Why Intensive Interventions Are Necessary for Adolescents with Dyslexia: Findings from 3-Year Intervention and Future Research

Sharon Vaughn and Michael Solis

Future Directions in Reading Comprehension Research

Peggy McCardle, Laurie E. Cutting, and Brett Miller

Index

CHAPTER 6

Reading Comprehension Difficulties in Struggling Readers

Kate Cain

Reading is a widespread and varied activity. We read different types of text for different purposes. For example, we read fiction for pleasure and entertainment; we read information (or expository) texts in order to learn new ideas and extend our knowledge; and we read e-mails, text messages, and the contents of social message boards to communicate with family and friends. Clearly, reading plays a central role in our educational, working, recreational, and social lives. Although these various reading scenarios cover a range of task-specific goals, they also include a common aim: Readers seek to understand the content of what they read. The focus of this chapter is comprehension and why some children struggle to understand what they read.

What is Involved in Reading Comprehension?

Before we can examine and determine the reasons for reading comprehension failure, we must first identify what is involved in the act of comprehending. Consider the following text:

"Ruby was carrying the glass of juice. She tripped on the step. Her eyes filled with tears. Mum fetched the mop. 'Don’t worry, darling,' said Mum, 'there’s no use crying over spilt milk.'"

Skilled comprehenders recognize the individual words on the page and readily access their meanings. The strings of words form meaningful sentences, and skilled comprehenders identify the connections between them and integrate their meanings. In the example above, there are cohesive cues that signal some of these links: "she" and "her" and "darling" all refer back to Ruby, the main protagonist. Good memory aids the integration process: Readers need to store the meanings from individual sentences accurately in order to establish the overlap between them.

Skilled comprehenders are also sensitive to context and appreciate that Mum is not literally referring to spilt milk; rather, she is using a figurative expression. These processes do not occur sequentially, but in parallel. Thus, comprehension is a dynamic process. The current situation model informs the recognition of subsequent words, the comprehension of the current sentence, and the interpretation of new events. By engaging in these processes during reading, as well as drawing on knowledge that is external to the text, skilled comprehenders construct a memory-based representation of the text’s meaning.

Who Has Reading Comprehension Difficulties?

Reading is a complex cognitive activity: It draws on a range of knowledge bases and skills that must be coordinated to achieve successful understanding, and sufficient memory resources are required to support this. For this reason, skilled reading has been likened to the performance of a symphony orchestra.

Proficiency in each component of the simple view of reading lies on a continuum. As such, there are children with poor reading comprehension in the presence of adequate word recognition skills (poor comprehenders); children with dyslexia who may have difficulty decoding but still possess good listening comprehension; and those who have both poor word recognition and language comprehension leading to comprehension difficulties.

A useful framework within which to consider the most likely sources of comprehension difficulty is the simple view of reading. According to this framework, reading comprehension is the product of two sets of knowledge and skills: those that enable the individual to read the words on the page and access their meanings, and those that support comprehension of the text.

A Closer Look at the Barriers to Successful Comprehension

The ability to read words is essential for reading comprehension to occur. There is now a fairly consistent literature that has unpacked the word-reading component of the simple view and identified the critical factors that support its development, namely, print awareness, letter-sound knowledge, phonological processes (including phonological awareness and memory), and orthographic knowledge.

Researchers are now gaining a detailed picture of the different knowledge, skills, and resources that contribute to the language comprehension component, which serve as the critical barriers to comprehension during reading development.

Note: Children read or listen to texts containing sentence pairs and are then asked questions to tap their ability to integrate information within the text and to generate such inferences as "Why was Jenny late home from school?"