POOR WRITTEN AND ORAL TEXT COMPREHENSION IN THIRD GRADE CHILDREN : A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY

In this multiple case study we analyzed oral text comprehension, reading profiles and underlying cognitive abilities (attention, executive functions, working memory, narrative memory, rapid automatized naming and vocabulary) of 9 children identified as poor written text comprehenders after a school screening on 75 third grade children. Four out of the 9 children were named Language-Minority (L-M) children, since they had immigrant parents. The remaining 5 children were born in Italy from Italian parents. The comparisons of the two subgroups suggested that the lexical route of reading was particularly impaired in the L-M subgroup and that written text comprehension was weakened by restricted vocabulary which, in turn, was not supported by efficient phonological short-term memory. In a second type of data analysis we examined the individual profiles of the 9 children, irrespective of their belonging to the L-M or Italian subgroups, and identified different patterns of associations among reading performance, written text comprehension and oral text comprehension. The findings showed that poor text comprehension always co-occurred with word and/or text reading difficulties which, in turn, were associated to slow naming and weak verbal working memory. Moreover, when children had both written and oral text comprehension difficulties, not only verbal working memory was impaired but also narrative memory, suggesting a weakness in the episodic buffer (Baddeley 2000; 2010). The implications of poor working memory associated to slow naming and/or weak episodic buffer for text comprehension are discussed.