The question of reading skill includes definitional and
substantive components. The definitional question is
answered as follows: reading skill is an individual’s
standing on some reading assessment. Skilled readers
are those who score above some standard on this
assessment; readers of low skill are those who score
below some standard. The substantive question is this:
What are the processes of reading that produce
variation in assessed reading skill? This question is the
focus here: given that two individuals differ in some
global assessment of their reading, what differences
in reading processes are candidates to explain this
difference?