Reading Comprehension and Comprehension Monitoring in First-grade Children with Vocabulary Delay

Abstract

Objectives: This study investigated reading comprehension and reading comprehension monitoring abilities of children with vocabulary delay at the end of the first grade. Specifically, the study examined whether children with vocabulary delays could detect internal inconsistency errors, which are contradictory pieces of information in a short story, and whether they could correct those errors to make appropriate changes to the story at the beginning stage of reading. Methods: Fourteen children with vocabulary delay and 15 typically developing children participated in this study. Each child read 10 short stories without internal inconsistency errors and 10 stories with internal inconsistency errors. After reading the text, children were asked to find any inconsistent parts of the story and correct them. Results: The results showed that children with vocabulary delay performed worse on reading comprehension than their peers. They also scored statistically lower on both the error detection and error correction tasks in stories with internal inconsistency errors compared to typically developing children. For typically developing children only, there were significant correlations between reading comprehension and reading comprehension monitoring. Conclusion: Children with vocabulary delay exhibited difficulties in both reading comprehension and comprehension monitoring. Poor vocabulary knowledge can hinder their ability to recognize when a text is misunderstood or to apply effective strategies for resolving problems, ultimately leading to reading comprehension failure. This suggests that children with language disorders, including those with vocabulary delays, need to be assessed and provided with interventions for both reading comprehension and comprehension monitoring.