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Updated: May 11, 2026

Decomposing the Variance in Reading Comprehension to Reveal the Unique and Common Effects of Language and Decoding
Published on: October 11, 2018
Developing a structural model of reading: the role of hearing status in reading development over time
Karien M Coppens1, Agnes Tellings, Robert Schreuder
1School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, PO Box 616, Maastricht 6200 MD, the Netherlands. k.coppens@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
Abstract:
The purpose of the present study was to develop a structural model of reading based on the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Data from a 4-year longitudinal study of Dutch primary school children with and without hearing loss were used to conduct an exploratory analysis of how lexical components (i.e., decoding skills, lexical decision, and lexical use) relate to one another and to reading comprehension. Our structural model supports a positive role of the quality of the mental lexicon for reading comprehension. Furthermore, it was possible to apply the same conceptual model of reading development to both groups of children when incorporating hearing status as a grouping variable. However, a multigroup comparison model showed that the predictive values of the relations between the different tasks differed for the two groups.
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