Understanding Poor Reading Comprehension: Current Approaches in Theory and Research.

Two views of the sources of poor reading comprehension are currently distinguishable in the research literature: a decoding sufficiency view and a comprehension skills view. The decoding sufficiency view argues that decoding is the only skill that must be acquired for general language comprehension. The broader, comprehension skills hypothesis argues that a deficiency in any of several basic component skills could thwart reading comprehension mastery. R. M. Golinkoff's major review of studies comparing good and poor comprehenders posited three components of comprehension: decoding, lexical access, and text organization. Research on decoding has yielded some hypotheses relating decoding speed to comprehension, but problems of study design cast some doubt on these conclusions. Research on lexical access ability indicates that poor comprehenders do not typically lack this ability; however, if cognitive overload during reading is more frequent among poor comprehenders, it is likely that lexical access functioning will deteriorate. Most clearly, text organization research has consistently shown that poor comprehenders are word-by-word readers while good comprehenders employ higher level strategies. (JL)