Oral and Written Expression in Children With Reading Comprehension Difficulties

Abstract

Several studies have highlighted that children with reading comprehension difficulties also have problems in tasks that involve telling a story, in writing or verbally. The main differences identified regard poor comprehenders' lower level of coherence in their productions by comparison with good comprehenders. Only one study has compared poor and good comprehenders' performance in both modalities (oral and written), however, to see whether these modalities differently influence poor comprehenders' performance. We qualitatively and quantitatively compared the performance of good and poor comprehenders in oral and written narrative tasks with the aim of shedding light on this issue. Regression analyses were also used to explore the role of working memory and vocabulary in explaining individual differences. Our results showed that the two groups produced narratives of comparable length, with similar percentages of spelling mistakes, whereas they differed in terms of the quality of their narratives, regardless of the modality. These differences were qualified by analyzing the children's use of connective devices, and poor comprehenders were found to use a higher proportion of additive devices than good comprehenders. Regression analyses showed that working memory (particularly the intrusion errors measure) explained a modest part of the qualitative differences in narrative production. Implications for our theoretical understanding of poor comprehenders' profiles and education are discussed.

Written language in children with weak reading skills: the role of oral language, phonological processing, verbal working memory and reading

“…This was surprising considering that previous research has found significant reciprocal connections between reading comprehension and text composition (Abbott, Berninger & Fayol, 2010). Some previous studies also indicate that students with poor reading comprehension may find writing challenging (Carretti, Motta & Re, 2016;Cragg & Nation, 2006). The lack of significant correlations between reading comprehension and writing in this study may be due to the construction of the reading comprehension task in Grade 3.…”

Writing Disabilities and Reading Disabilities in Elementary School Students

“…Certainly, any disorder could co-occur with a WD, and efforts to address other relationships have been studied in children exhibiting ADHD symptoms (Re, Pedron, & Cornoldi, 2007), reading comprehension deficits (Carretti, Motta, & Re, 2014; Carretti, Re, & Arfè, 2011), and developmental dyslexia (Berninger, Nielsen, Abbott, Wijsman, & Raskind, 2008); however, data from the present study provide some of the first rates of WD + RD co-occurrence in a young elementary school population. Conversely, it is important to note that although there appears to be an overlap of WDs and RDs, there were equal percentages of students who experienced a WD-Only across each of the four grades.…”

The Comprehension Problems of Children With Poor Reading Comprehension Despite Adequate Decoding: A Meta-Analysis

“…A discrepancy between reading comprehension and word-level decoding with additional requirements that decoding skills are within the normal range and that comprehension scores fall below a given percentile or cut point (Cain & Towse, 2008; Carretti, Motta, & Re, 2014; Catts et al, 2006; Henderson, Snowling, & Clarke, 2013; Kasperski & Katzir, 2012; Megherbi, Seigneuric, & Ehrlich, 2006; Nation, Clarke, Marshall, & Durand, 2004; Nation, Snowling & Clark, 2007; Nesi, Levorato, Roch & Cacciari, 2006; Pelegrina, Capodieci, Carretti, & Cornoldi, 2014; Pimperton & Nation, 2014; Ricketts, Nation, & Bishop, 2007; Shankweiler et al, 1999; Tong et al, 2011; Tong et al, 2014).…”

“…The view that comprehension problems are general to oral language and reading is supported by multiple investigations. Children with SCD have demonstrated weaknesses related to a variety of oral language domains, such as semantic processing, listening comprehension, and syntactic ability (Carretti, Motta, & Re, 2014; Nation & Snowling, 2000; see Cain & Oakhill, 2011 and Justice, Mashburn, & Petscher, 2013 for longitudinal evidence). When compared to typical readers, these children also tend to perform significantly poorer on measures tapping verbal working memory skills (see Carretti, Borella, Cornoldi, & De Beni, 2009).…”