Risk Factors of Difficulty in Reading Comprehension at Third to Sixth Japanese Graders: The Effects of Understanding the Reversible Relationships

The present study investigated the risk factors that disturb comprehension of the main idea in passages. Participants were 1,168 children in third to sixth grade. Tests on text comprehension of multiple paragraphs, understanding sentences, and understanding the reversible relationships of a single paragraph were undertaken. The odds ratio was calculated to identify the risk factors which would cause non-attainment of the test on comprehension of a multiple-paragraph text. The analysis confirmed consistent influence of scores of the test for understanding reversible relationships of a single paragraph, despite controlling for understanding of conjunctions and directives, level of working memory, and performance of reading kanji words. From these results, a poor understanding of the reversible relationships of a single paragraph is a risk factor that causes difficulty in comprehending the main idea of a passage.