| Based on a long history of investigation into the characteristics of children with dyslexia, deficits in phonological awareness were isolated as a cardinal and singular feature of dyslexia. Mounting evidence would suggest, however, that other areas of linguistic knowledge could also pose specific challenges for children with reading impairments. A central aspect of oral language knowledge that has received little attention in reading research is syntactic knowledge. Studies of reading comprehension rarely investigate the contribution of syntactic knowledge to comprehension. Given that roughly 35-45% of fourth graders in the U.S. do not understand grade-level text, the need to understand the processes involved in text comprehension is apparent.;In the present study, the relationship between syntactic abilities and reading comprehension in dyslexia was explored. Specifically, the contributions of sentence-level knowledge, as measured by both receptive and expressive measures, to text reading fluency and comprehension were investigated in a group of second and third grade readers with significant reading impairments. Children were classified according to the Double Deficit hypothesis to identify subgroups. These four subtypes were: single phonological deficit, single naming speed deficit, double deficit or deficit in both areas, and an unclassified reading deficit. Two important purposes of the study were to determine if discrete subgroups of children displayed different patterns of sentence-level abilities, and if variations in knowledge of syntax resulted in different levels of text reading. Findings indicate that syntactic knowledge accounts for significant variance in text reading fluency and comprehension. Furthermore, children with phonological and double-deficit profiles perform significantly lower than other groups on measures of receptive and expressive sentence-level knowledge. The implications of this work both for theories of reading impairments and assessment and identification strategies are discussed. |
