title: Developing a structural model of reading: the role of hearing status in reading development over time.
abstract: The purpose of the present study was to develop a structural model of reading based on the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Data from a 4-year longitudinal study of Dutch primary school children with and without hearing loss were used to conduct an exploratory analysis of how lexical components (i.e., decoding skills, lexical decision, and lexical use) relate to one another and to reading comprehension. Our structural model supports a positive role of the quality of the mental lexicon for reading comprehension. Furthermore, it was possible to apply the same conceptual model of reading development to both groups of children when incorporating hearing status as a grouping variable. However, a multigroup comparison model showed that the predictive values of the relations between the different tasks differed for the two groups.
authors.affiliation: School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, PO Box 616, Maastricht 6200 MD, the Netherlands. k.coppens@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
authors.forename: Karien M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Coppens
authors.forename: Agnes
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tellings
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schreuder
authors.forename: Ludo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Verhoeven
mesh_terms: D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D032882:Comprehension; D036262:Empirical Research; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009426:Netherlands; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities; D011932:Reading; D013334:Students; D014825:Vocabulary