Reading
Does the Simple View of Reading fit teens with intellectual disability?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
For teenagers with intellectual disability, understanding what they read depended not just on decoding words and understanding speech, but directly on vocabulary and working memory too.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Single-time-point assessment of about 4 hours of reading, language and cognitive tests per student, analysed with competing structural equation models of the Simple View of Reading.
- N
- N=136 · 136 adolescents aged 12-19 with non-specific intellectual disability tested in Swedish schools (59 girls); the preregistered target was 150.
- Population
- Swedish-speaking adolescents in special education classes with non-specific intellectual disability; about half also had diagnoses such as ADHD or autism.
- Outcome
- Reading comprehension (multiple-choice questions on texts), modelled from decoding, listening comprehension and cognitive/language predictors such as vocabulary and working memory.
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Key findings
The model constrained to the Simple View fitted the data very poorly, while the unconstrained model fitted well and was statistically preferred. In the best model, decoding strongly predicted reading comprehension, vocabulary and verbal working memory had direct effects on reading comprehension, and listening comprehension itself no longer contributed once these were included. The predictors (vocabulary and working memory) are the same ones known from typically developing children, so the authors see partial support for a delay rather than a different profile, although the delay and difference models turned out identical and could not be formally distinguished.
Methodology
The team tested 136 Swedish adolescents with intellectual disability on reading comprehension, listening comprehension, word and nonword decoding, and a wide range of other skills including vocabulary, grammar, several memory measures, phonological awareness, rapid naming and home literacy. Using structural equation modelling, they compared a model obeying the Simple View of Reading (reading comprehension equals decoding times listening comprehension, with every other skill acting only through those two) against an unconstrained model allowing direct effects. They also asked whether the predictors resembled those of younger typically developing children (a delay profile) or were different.
Limitations
The data come from one time point, so the paths in the model describe associations, not causes, and cannot show how reading develops. The sample fell short of the planned 150 and about half the students had additional diagnoses such as ADHD or autism, which the authors note makes it harder to attribute effects to intellectual disability itself. The working-memory measure that mattered (listening span) is itself heavily verbal, so it may partly re-measure language skill, and the models were refined using modification indices, which risks fitting sample-specific quirks.
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