JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE 39, 85–101 (1998) ARTICLE NO. ML982564 Semantic Processing and the Development of Word-Recognition Skills: Evidence from Children with Reading Comprehension Dif®culties

Children with specific reading comprehension difficulties were compared with control children on tests of language skill. The two groups performed at a similar level on tests requiring predominantly phonological skills, but the poor comprehenders performed less well on tests tapping semantic ability. Although the two groups were matched for decoding ability (as assessed by nonword reading), the poor comprehenders were worse at reading words with irregular spelling patterns and low-frequency words. These results show that despite having adequate phonological decoding skills, poor comprehenders have problems reading words that are typically read with support from semantics. These findings are related to connectionist models of reading develop-ment in which phonological and semantic processes interact. q 1998 Academic Press Traditional accounts of reading develop- guistic comprehension. Both of these skills ment have stressed the importance of phono- were necessary, but neither alone was suffi-logical awareness to the acquisition of reading cient for successful reading. Gough and skill (Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Gough, Tunmer’s argument implies that children can Ehri, & Treiman, 1992). Such models have have difficulties with either of these funda-been silent as to the role of semantic skills mental aspects of reading. While dyslexic and other language resources in learning to children often comprehend in advance of their read, although a number of studies have re- ability to decode (Frith & Snowling, 1983), ported that dyslexic children have primary children who have specific difficulties with deficits in phonological but not semantic pro- reading comprehension have normal word