Six component reading skills show strong average relationships with reading comprehension in struggling adult readers (rs ≥ .50)¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · quant-synthesis r3 · q3 · i3 large
Currency · newest study 2016 · checked against its sources 2026-10-17 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i3 Morphological awareness, language comprehension, fluency, oral vocabulary knowledge, real word decoding, and working memory each exhibited strong relationships with adult reading comprehension (average rs between .52 and .59). → Tighe 2016

Evidence¶

Tighe 2016¶

Tighe, Elizabeth L.; Schatschneider, Christopher. (2016). Examining the Relationships of Component Reading Skills to Reading Comprehension in Struggling Adult Readers: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219414555415

q3 · i3 · quant-synthesis · r3

Random effects meta-analysis of 16 studies and 2,707 struggling adult readers, using Pearson r as the effect size index. The six strong predictors' average rs ranged from .52 to .59 (e.g., morphological awareness r = .59), meeting the article's Cohen-based strong threshold of "at least 25%" of comprehension variance.

"The component skills of morphological awareness, language comprehension, fluency, oral vocabulary knowledge, real word decoding, and working memory exhibited strong relationships with reading comprehension (rs between .52 and .59)."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Decoding — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes
• Morphological Awareness — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes
• Reading and Language — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes

Related Claims¶

• Most predictor effect sizes showed high heterogeneity; only morphological awareness, working memory, and language comprehension fell in the moderate I² range — related
• Morphological awareness is a significantly stronger correlate of adult reading comprehension than phonological awareness and RAN — related
• Rapid automatized naming is the only component skill weakly related to reading comprehension in struggling adult readers (r = .15) — reports the opposite
• Real word decoding relates more strongly to adult reading comprehension (r = .52) than pseudoword decoding (r = .42), though not significantly — related
• Pseudoword decoding, orthographic knowledge, and phonological awareness show moderate relationships with adult reading comprehension (rs .34–.42) — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Effect sizes linking reading components to comprehension are highly heterogeneous across studies, partly explained by age, country, and comprehension test used. — related
• English (L2) decoding shows a strong linear relationship with English reading comprehension, with the correlation decreasing as children get older — related
• L2 oral language shows a moderate to strong positive relationship with L2 reading comprehension for multilingual learners, and the correlation increases with age — related
• L2 oral language proficiency predicts reading comprehension more strongly than decoding skills — related
• Syllable stress awareness and spelling skills correlate with each other and with in-game training performance — related
• Baseline reading and untaught Grade 2 vocabulary scores correlated moderately with near-, mid-, and far-transfer comprehension outcomes — related
• Decoding fluency did not uniquely predict reading comprehension in any grade 4–10, though it correlated moderately with comprehension (.47–.74) — related
• The correlation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension is r = .536 in school-aged readers of English — related