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Prevalence and Nature of Late-Emerging Poor Readers
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Prevalence and Nature of Late-Emerging Poor Readers

Hugh W Catts, Donald Compton, J. Bruce Tomblin and Mindy Sittner Bridges
Journal of educational psychology, Vol.104(1), pp.166-181
02/2012
DOI: 10.1037/a0025323
PMCID: PMC3835401
PMID: 24273341
url
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/3835401View
Open Access

Abstract

Some children demonstrate adequate or better reading achievement in early school grades, but fall significantly behind their peers in later grades. These children are often referred to as late-emerging poor readers. In this study, we investigated the prevalence and heterogeneity of these poor readers. We also examined the early language and nonverbal cognitive abilities of late-emerging poor readers. Participants were 493 children who were a subsample from an epidemiological study of language impairments in school-age children. In kindergarten, children were administered a battery of language, early literacy, and nonverbal cognitive measures. Word reading and reading comprehension achievement was assessed in second, fourth, eighth, and tenth grades. Latent transition analysis was used to model changes in reading classification (good vs. poor reader) across grades. Population estimates revealed that 13.4% percent of children could be classified as late-emerging poor readers. These children could be divided into those with problems in comprehension alone (52%), word reading alone (36%), or both (12%). Further results indicated that late-emerging poor readers often had a history of language and/or nonverbal cognitive impairments in kindergarten. Subtypes of poor readers also differed significantly in their profiles of language, early literacy, and nonverbal cognitive abilities in kindergarten. Results are discussed in terms of causal factors and implications for early identification.
latent transition analysis Late-emerging poor readers reading disabilities subtypes of poor readers early identification

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