READING SKILL - SOME ADULT COMPARISONS

Three groups of college readers were compared on several information-p rocessing and language comprehension tasks that tap the cognitive comp onents of reading. The groups were skilled readers with high verbal an d nonverbal abilities, low-skilled readers with a disparity between ve rbal and nonverbal abilities, and low-skilled readers who were low in both verbal and nonverbal ability. Results confirm the importance of w ord processing and general language comprehension in distinguishing sk illed from less skilled readers. Results also support the view that re ading ability is best described as a continuous function and provide e vidence of the reemergence of lower level processing skills in adults as a function of text difficulty.