Approximately 10% of students who have adequate decoding skills still struggle with reading comprehension (Feifer, 2007). As a parent, it can be mystifying to see a student fluently decode a page and then state that they have no idea what it means. This is especially surprising when the student does not appear to have oral language deficits. Let us set aside the more subtle areas of language difficulty for the moment and address the impact that poor attention and executive function have on reading comprehension.

Until you put the words together the meaning isn’t clear.

When we read, our brains have to construct meaning and if a student struggles with directing their cognitive abilities this may not happen. Think of it as a fusion between what is on the page and what is occurring in the reader’s mind. Reading comprehension is an active process, but many of our kids with attention difficulties read passively. They assume that if they read the words then their meaning will be absorbed. Deriving meaning requires action. Meaning is constructed by actively linking the information to our background knowledge or schemas. A lack of knowledge or experience creates infertile soil for rooting that newly read page in our understanding. But even a reader with an existing knowledge base, still needs to activate what they already know to anchor the new information and enhance understanding. Students need to notice if the new information adds to their prior knowledge, conflicts with it, or supports it. This only happens when they are making connections, drawing inferences, and noticing key points.

Comprehension also relies on self-monitoring, so we notice when a sentence doesn't make sense. A reader needs the self-control to pause, to think, to reread, and then have the diligence to problem solve. Research suggests that comprehension monitoring is an independent factor that contributes to understanding (Clarke et al., 2014). Kids who fail to monitor also fail to build rich mental models of the text they are reading. I have worked with kids who rely on cover illustrations to form their sole mental image of a place or character. These students fail to independently picture what they read without explicit coaching.

Readers need to have the working memory capacity and ability to alternate their attention and retain references mentioned in earlier sentences, even as they continue to process what is new, implied, and not plainly stated. They need to divide long sentences into meaningful parts, so as not to overload their working memories with 30 bits of information at the word level rather than 5 or so manageable chunks. These challenges are huge for our kids with attention difficulties and are often further compounded by co-occurring weaknesses in word-level decoding or oral language deficits.

We can think of it in the following way. New information and background information mingle in our cognitive desktop (our working memory), from there we grasp concepts and make inferences (Kaufman,2010). The less familiar the material the tougher the demands will be on a kid’s working memory. And of course, any distractions either internally or externally will bring the whole house of cards crashing down. Comprehension is certainly a multi-layered concept and it may be the most complex reading difficulty to assess and remediate.

References:

Clarke, P., Truelove, E., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M., (2013). Developing Reading Comprehension. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons.

Feifer, S.G.(2007). Know how executive function skills affect reading comprehension. Today’s School Psychologist, July 8

Kaufman, C. (2010). Executive function in the classroom: practical strategies for improving performance and enhancing skills for all students. Baltimore, USA: Paul H. Brooks Publishing Co.

Reading comprehension relies on attention.