Skills related to reading comprehension in early readers growing up in poverty contexts

The present study aims to analyze the contribution of oral language and reading comprehension skills in early readers of Spanish who grow up in poverty context in Buenos Aires, Argentina. For this, reading comprehension, reading accuracy, reading fluency, vocabulary and morphosyntax processing were tested in 31 3rd graders. Full sample data analysis show that reading comprehension measures was associated with vocabulary, oral language processing, reading speed and accuracy. In contrast to results obtained in other languages with transparent orthographies, regression analysis shows that reading comprehension was mainly explained by reading accuracy and not by reading speed. In order to improve the data analysis, two groups of children with different levels of reading comprehension were selected: one group (21 children) whose level of comprehension was near to the average obtained and one group of children (10 subjects) with lower reading comprehension level. The results of a mean comparison test showed that in groups of children with different levels of reading comprehension, the skills that differed were those related to morphosyntactic processing.