The Relationship of Phonological Awareness, Rapid Naming, and Verbal Memory to Severe Reading and Spelling Disability

The present study examined the relationship of phonological awareness, naming speed, and verbal memory to the scores obtained from five tests assessing word attack, word identification, reading comprehension, and spelling skills in 54 children with severe reading disabilities (48 boys and 6 girls; M age = 9 years, 7 months). Multiple regression analyses indicated that the best predictor of achievement across the five academic tests was the Verbal Comprehension factor from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Age, socioeconomic status (SES), and externalizing behavior problems were also significant predictors of achievement, depending on the academic measure. After controlling for age, SES, behavior problems, and intelligence, the phonological awareness task added significantly to the prediction of word attack, spelling, and reading comprehension scores; rapid letter naming added significantly to the prediction of word identification and prose passage speed and accuracy scores; and a word-list memory task added significantly to the prediction of word recognition scores. These results suggest that several independent processes interact to determine the extent and severity of reading problems.