Relative contributions of components to different reading comprehension tasks in grade 3-4

Abstract

Objectives: There has been insufficient work done to explore underpinning components of different reading comprehension tasks. The purpose of this study was to investigate differential patterns of relations of components to two widely used assessments of reading comprehension. Methods: One hundred and twenty-seven typically developing children in grade 3 to 4 completed two measures of reading comprehension in 'open-ended question task' and 'cloze task formats'. Assessments to measure nonverbal IQ, phonological memory, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, receptive vocabulary, and word reading were also undertaken. Results: Correlation and regression analyses indicated that the two measures of reading comprehension are influenced by common components such as receptive vocabulary and phonological awareness. The findings also suggested that while morphological awareness predicted reading comprehension ability measured in 'open-ended question task format', phonological memory and nonverbal IQ predicted the ability in 'cloze task format'. Conclusion: Even though common main components that predict reading comprehension exist, the differential patterns of relations and predictions of other components reflect that different measures might tap different components. The results also indicate that there might be differences in the underlying processing of two reading comprehension measures. In the future, the same approaches in this study should be used for children with comprehension difficulties in reading. © 2017 Korean Academy of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology.