Reading comprehension in young adult learners of English with and without dyslexia

Reading comprehension skills are essential for academic success and social inclusion. Although word-level decoding difficulties are the distinctive marker of dyslexia at all ages, issues with text understanding are considered a common secondary consequence of the primary deficit. The study investigates such issues in young adult learners of English. More specifically it explores whether, given their characteristic cognitive and communicative profile, the type of questions (i.e., factual vs. inferential questions) and the language of the text (i.e., L1 vs. English as a foreign language) may be factors of increased difficulty for learners with this condition and may consequently result in reduced accuracy. Data point to significant differences between the focus and the control group with respect to inferential processing of texts. Neurotypical learners were found to systematically outperform their dyslexic peers in accurately answering questions relying on either local or global coherence inferencing, and their performance was less influenced by reading in a foreign language. Pedagogical implications are discussed, and suggestions for future research are made.