Predictors of Reading Comprehension Among Struggling Readers Who Exhibit Differing Levels of Inattention and Hyperactivity

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of inference making, decoding, memory, and vocabulary on reading comprehension among 7th- through 12th-grade struggling readers with varying levels of inattention and hyperactivity. We categorized a group of 414 struggling readers into 3 groups based on results from factor mixture modeling: (a) low inattention+low hyperactivity, (b) high inattention+high hyperactivity, and (c) high inattention+low hyperactivity. Results indicated that vocabulary and inference making, but not decoding, predicted reading comprehension outcomes among all 3 groups of struggling readers. Working memory predicted reading comprehension among struggling readers in the low inattention+low hyperactivity and high inattention+high hyperactivity groups.