Neurological origins of poor reading comprehension despite fast word decoding?

Full Abstract

Barnes, Faulkner, and Dennis (2001) found that hydrocephalic children (mean age = 11.5 years) of average or above-average verbal intelligence exhibit poor reading comprehension despite their fast and accurate decoding skills on individual words. This finding attracts the attention of reading researchers because it appears to be against the following standard principle of reading comprehension failure (Gough & Hillinger, 1980), thereby provoking basic issues centering around it (e.g., Stanovich, 1991): Reading Comprehension = Word Decoding x Listening Comprehension. This formula indicates that when listening comprehension is kept well within the normal range, reading comprehension is highly correlated with word decoding (e.g., Perfetti, 1985). In contrast, with poor listening comprehension children would be poor readers however good they may be at reading words (e.g., Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2000). Although Barnes et al. clearly demonstrated that children with hydrocephalus decoded individual words better than they comprehended text, it is not readily apparent whether their findings are inconsistent with the standard principle. The purpose of the present article is twofold. The first is to examine whether Barnes et al.'s findings constitute a counterexample of the above principle. (Note that Barnes et al. did not address this question.) The second and more important purpose is to discuss the possible origins of the decoding-better-than-sentence/text-comprehension pattern. We also present some pedagogical implications for poor readers such as hydrocephalic children. Copyright 2001 Elsevier Science (USA).

Author information

Author/s: Yamada, Jun (J);

Affiliation: Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan. junyamd(-atsign-)hiroshima-u.ac.jp

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comment; Journal Article

Journal: Brain and language (Brain Lang), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Feb; vol 80 (issue 2) : pp 253-9

Dates: Created 2002/02/05; Completed 2002/05/14; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 11827447, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

Comments and Corrections

CommentOn: Brain Lang. 2001 Jan;76(1):35-44. (PMID: 11161353)

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