Abstract

In the present studies, second and fourth grade reading disabled(RD) children were compared with normal children on word list reading task, syllables reading task, and reading span task. In study 1, 15 second grade and 15 fourth grade RD children performed poorly on word list reading task, syllables reading task, and reading span task. They spent more time in word list reading and made more errors than normal children in syllables reading. Word frequency and pronouncibility of syllables had little influence on normal children, whereas they had significant impact on the reading disability group. The two reading ability groups showed large differences for low frequency word and difficult-to-pronounce syllables. It suggests that RD children may have failed to develop automatic decoding skills and that some RD children have insufficient grapheme-phoneme correspondence knowledge. On reading span task RD children showed smaller reading span and slower sentence verification time than normal children. This result suggests that RD children have deficits in working memory. In study 2, 10 RD children were taught with a decoding skill training, and another 10 RD children trained for reading comprehension skills. After training, their performances were compared with those of 10 non-trained RD children. Two training groups' reading comprehension scores were significantly improved to the normal range. The decoding skill training group's syllable reading errors were diminished, and second grade RD children showed larger training effect than fourth grade RD children. The results of these studies suggest that both decoding skills and working memory would be the causing or maintaining factors of reading disability. Decoding skills are more influential on 2nd-grade students than 4th-grade students, and working memory is more important to 4th grade students than 2nd-grade students. Finally, the implications and limitations of this study were discussed with suggestions for the future study.