Lexical Quality and Reading Comprehension in Primary School Children

Abstract

In a cross-sectional study, we examined the relationship between the quality of lexical representations and text comprehension skill in German primary school children (Grades 1–4). We measured the efficiency and accuracy of orthographical, phonological, and meaning representations by means of computerized tests. Text comprehension skill was assessed with a standardized reading test with questions requiring recognition of text information and inferencing. Both the accuracy of and the efficiency of access to the three types of lexical representations contributed to explaining interindividual variation in text comprehension skill. Results from a path-analytic model suggest a specific causal order of the three components of lexical quality with the quality of meaning representations partly mediating the effects of form representations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research reported in this article was supported by a grant from the German Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF, grant 01GJ0985). We thank David Nitz for programming assistance and Lilly Andrich, Claudia Beck, Tatjana DeToia, Wanja von der Felsen, Christian Kirsch, Katrin Klein, Dominik Mathieu, Sarah Rom, Miriam Schwarzenthal, Vanessa Wergin, Barbara Werner, and Monika Wieland for their help in preparing stimulus materials and collecting data. Researchers who would like to inspect the items of the ProDi-L assessments used in this study are invited to send an e-mail to the first author.