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The authors examined the development of oral language and decoding skills from preschool to early elementary school and their relation to beginning reading comprehension using a cross-sequential design. Four-and 6-year-old children were tested on oral language and decoding skills and were retested 2 years later. In all age groups, oral language and decoding skills formed distinct clusters. The 2 clusters were related to each other in preschool, but this relation became weaker in kindergarten and 2nd grade. Structural equation modeling showed that both sets of skills in 2nd grade independently predicted a child's reading comprehension. These findings confirm and extend the view that the 2 clusters of skills develop early in a child's life and contribute to reading comprehension activities in early elementary school, with each cluster making a considerable, unique contribution.

This study examined the common and distinct contributions of context-free and context reading skill to reading comprehension and the contributions of context-free reading skill and reading comprehension to context fluency. The 113 4th-grade participants were measured in reading comprehension, read aloud a folktale, and read aloud the folktale's words in a random list. Fluency was scaled as speed (words read correctly in 1 min) and time (seconds per correct word). Relative to list fluency, context fluency was a stronger predictor of comprehension. List fluency and comprehension each uniquely predicted context fluency, but their relative contributions depended on how fluency was scaled (time or speed). Results support the conclusion that word level processes contribute relatively more to fluency at lower levels while comprehension contributes relatively more at higher levels.

The psychometric characteristics of the NCIQ proved to be reliable and probably valid and sensitive to clinical changes. The data obtained with the NCIQ reflected that the instrument was able to detect that a CI had significant effects on several health-related QoL aspects, including the social and psychological domains.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of prior knowledge and text structure on cognitive processes during comprehension of scientific texts. To investigate the processes online, we used a thinkaloud methodology in Experiment 1 and a reading time methodology in Experiment 2. In both experiments, we obtained offline comprehension measures and measures of individual differences in working memory and need for cognition. Across the two experiments, the results indicated that readers adjust their processing as a function of the interaction between prior knowledge and text structure. In particular, adjustments in the actual processes that take place during reading were observed for readers who had erroneous prior knowledge, but only when they read a text that was structured to explicitly refute this prior knowledge. Furthermore, the results showed that readers' memory for the text was affected by differences in their prior knowledge, independently of text structure. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relation between different factors that are associated with comprehension of scientific texts and have implications for theories of comprehension and conceptual change.

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