Authors
Arne Lervåg & Monica Melby-Lervåg
Summary
This chapter focuses on what we know about the development of reading comprehension in the early school years, with a particular emphasis on understanding causal processes. According to the simple view of reading, reading comprehension is the product of decoding and language comprehension. Linguistic comprehension is typically assessed using tests of listening comprehension in which a person answers questions about the meaning of a spoken passage. A different approach to measuring the development of reading comprehension over time is to use individual growth curve modeling. The chapter emphasizes on evidence from longitudinal studies of typically developing children published between 2004 and 2020. Reading comprehension is a highly complex skill that is undoubtedly heavily dependent on language comprehension ability. There is very strong support for the simple view of reading: Variations in reading comprehension are strongly predicted by variations in decoding and linguistic comprehension.