Word- and Text-Level Reading Difficulties in Students With Dyslexia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine whether group-based differences exist in word- and text-level reading in a clinical sample of students with dyslexia, and to shed light on the cognitive processes supporting these essential skills. Second- through seventh-grade students were administered a battery of standardized measures of cognitive processing skills (phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming [RAN], and verbal short-term memory), word reading skills (decoding and word identification), oral text reading (fluency and comprehension), and silent text reading (fluency and comprehension). Word- and text-level reading skills were used to place students into the following groups: text fluency deficit, globally impaired, and partially remediated. Results replicated the existence of a text fluency deficit group. Reader group differences in terms of cognitive processing skills were less pronounced than expected, with only phonological awareness differentiating among them. Phonological awareness and RAN emerged as the important contributors to reading skill, though their relative contributions varied across word- and text-level measures. Together, these results point to importance of considering text-level reading processes across modality in both research and clinical contexts.