Children's Compensations for Poorly Automated Reading Skills

The compensatory-encoding model (CEM) postulates that readers whose decoding of words or verbal working memory capacities is inefficient can compensate so that literal comprehension of text is not deleteriously affected. However, the use of compensations may draw cognitive resources away from higher level reading activities such as comprehension monitoring. The model was tested in 3rd graders who were recorded as they read aloud texts containing embedded anomalies. Literal comprehension was assessed. The efficiency of the decoding of words, the semantic encoding of words, and verbal working memory were measured. Consistent with the model, inefficient readers compensated by pausing, looking back, rereading, and sounding out words more often than efficient readers but had literal comprehension scores as good as those of efficient readers.