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Although the concept of general reading skill has been assumed to be the primary contribution to comprehension, a demonstration that reading skill contributes to comprehension independent of domain knowledge has been lacking. This research investigates the relative contribution and trade‐off effects of children's knowledge and reading skill in text comprehension in a single study. Children in Grades 4 through 7, grouped as high or low reading skill and high or low knowledge on the basis of a domain‐specific topic, participated in this study. Comprehension was measured in two parallel texts: one domain specific and one domain general. The results suggested that domain knowledge and reading skill can be traded in order to achieve similar levels of comprehension. Reading skill compensates for deficient knowledge and specific knowledge compensates for deficient reading ability.
Adams et al. (Wed,) studied this question.