Early Predictors of Reading Comprehension Difficulties

.............................................................................................................. 3 SAMMANFATTNING PÅ SVENSKA ................................................................... 4 LIST OF PAPERS..................................................................................................... 5 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 7 WHAT IS READING? ............................................................................................. 8 WORD READING .................................................................................................... 9 PHASES OF DECODING DEVELOPMENT ....................................................................10 COMPREHENSION................................................................................................12 A COMPREHENSION EXAMPLE ................................................................................12 DIFFERENT TYPES OF COMPREHENSION ..................................................................13 A COMPREHENSION MODEL ....................................................................................15 ASSESSMENT OF READING COMPREHENSION ..........................................................17 EARLY PREDICTORS OF READING ................................................................19 PRINT KNOWLEDGE ................................................................................................20 PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS (PA) .........................................................................20 RAPID AUTOMATIZED NAMING (RAN) ..................................................................22 VOCABULARY ........................................................................................................23 VERBAL MEMORY ..................................................................................................24 GRAMMAR .............................................................................................................25 CAUSAL PREDICTORS .............................................................................................26 READING DIFFICULTIES....................................................................................27 DECODING DIFFICULTIES ........................................................................................28 The double deficit hypothesis ...........................................................................30 Decoding deficits and reading comprehension .................................................31 READING COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES ..............................................................31