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. 2012 Feb;104(1):10.1037/a0025323.
doi: 10.1037/a0025323.

Prevalence and Nature of Late-Emerging Poor Readers

Hugh W Catts  1 , Donald Compton, J Bruce Tomblin, Mindy Sittner Bridges
Affiliations

Prevalence and Nature of Late-Emerging Poor Readers

Hugh W Catts et al. J Educ Psychol. 2012 Feb.

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.

Keywords: Late-emerging poor readers; early identification; latent transition analysis; reading disabilities; subtypes of poor readers.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Profiles (with 99.92% confidence intervals) of the kindergarten measures for the subtypes. Note. PV = picture vocabulary; OV = oral vocabulary; GC = grammatic completion; GU = grammatic understanding; SI = sentence imitation; NC = narrative comprehension; NR = narrative recall; PA = phonological awareness; LID = letter identification; IQ = nonverbal IQ. TD = typically developing; LERD = late emerging RD; EIRD = early identified RD; W = word reading only; C= comprehension only; CW = comprehension + word reading.; LETD = late emerging typically developing
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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