Effects of Educational Interventions Targeting Reading Comprehension and Underlying Components

Abstract

AbstractIn most school subjects, students' comprehension of what they read is crucial, as is improving that comprehension. In this article, we review studies on the effects of interventions on reading comprehension. A simple view of reading sees reading comprehension as the product of linguistic comprehension and decoding skills, while an augmented view also emphasizes domain general cognitive skills (e.g., working memory, auditory processing). Studies that target skills directly related to reading comprehension through strategy training show moderate to large effects. In studies that target reading comprehension through the underlying components (i.e., decoding, linguistic comprehension, and domain‐general cognitive skills), training decoding has the largest effect on standardized tests of reading comprehension (small to moderate effects). Studies targeting linguistic comprehension have mixed results, highlighting the need for more randomized controlled trials that measure effects on reading comprehension. Finally, domain general interventions show little promise in terms of effects on reading comprehension.