Strengths and weaknesses in reading skills of youth with intellectual
disabilities
A B S T R A C T
Reading-related skills of youth with intellectual disability (ID) were compared with those
of typically developing (TD) children of similar verbal ability level. The group with ID
scored lower than the TD group on word recognition and phonological decoding, but
similarly on orthographic processing and rapid automatized naming (RAN). Further,
phonological decoding significantly mediated the relation between group membership
and word recognition, whereas neither orthographic processing nor RAN did so. The group
with ID also underperformed the TD group on phonological awareness and phonological
memory, both of which significantly mediated the relation between group membership
and phonological decoding. These data suggest that poor word recognition in youth with
ID may be due largely to poor phonological decoding, which in turn may be due largely to
poor phonological awareness and poor phonological memory. More focus on phonological
skills in the classroom may help students with ID to develop better word recognition skills.
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