Reading Comprehension Monitoring in School-aged Children with Language Impairment

Objectives: This study investigated reading comprehension monitoring in school-aged children with language impairment (LI). Reading comprehension monitoring was measured using error detection and correction tasks. Error types included lexical inconsistency, external inconsistency, internal inconsistency which is violating prior knowledge, and internal inconsistency within the text itself. Methods: Fifteen children with LI between Grade 3 and 5 and 15 grade-matched typically developing children participated. A total of 30 participants read 3 stories that contained 3 types of errors and performed error detection and error correction tasks. Results: Children with LI showed difficulty both in detection tasks and correction tasks compared to typically developing children. When looking at the performance of each task error type, both groups found the external inconsistency type best in the detection task, followed by the vocabulary and internal inconsistency error type. In the correction task, external inconsistency error types were best corrected, followed by internal inconsistency and vocabulary. Also, it was found that the total reading comprehension monitoring score and lexical inconsistency error type were related to reading comprehension for children with LI, while total reading comprehension monitoring scores and internal inconsistency error type were related to reading comprehension for typically developing children. Conclusion: School-aged children with LI were found to have difficulty in reading comprehension monitoring compared to typically developing children, especially in finding errors rather than in correcting errors. This finding suggested that problems in reading comprehension monitoring for school-aged children with LI would be likely to negatively influence reading comprehension.