Reading Comprehension in Adults With Intellectual Disabilities: Effects of Easy-to-Read Adaptations in Spanish Short...

Reading comprehension in individuals with intellectual disabilities is shaped by linguistic complexity and cognitive processing demands. Easy-to-Read (E2R) adaptations aim to reduce these demands, yet empirical evidence on their effects in narrative texts remains limited.

This study examines how E2R adaptations of Spanish short stories affect reading comprehension. Thirty-seven adults with intellectual disabilities completed comprehension assessments for 11 texts in their original and adapted versions under a partially crossed, unbalanced within-subject design. Directional changes in comprehension (improvement, maintenance or worsening) were modelled using a cumulative logistic mixed-effects framework accounting for variability across both participants and texts.

E2R adaptations most frequently maintained comprehension and did not lead to systematic improvement or deterioration. However, both improvement and worsening occurred with nonzero probability, and variability was observed across participants and texts. Fewer syntactic difficulties were reported in the adapted versions, whereas lexical challenges persisted.

E2R adaptations do not produce uniform gains in comprehension, and their outcomes vary across readers and narrative materials. These findings provide empirical evidence to refine the application of accessibility guidelines to narrative texts and inform the evaluation of manual and automatic text adaptation approaches.