A wide share of secondary school children does not reach the expected competence level in reading. These children could benefit from more efficient intervention responses, providing a better understanding of their cognitive weaknesses/deficits. Our aim was to explore the cognitive heterogeneity of a population of poor readers identified from a large sample of 948 sixth-grade children. We first assessed the contribution of phoneme awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and visual attention span (VAS) to reading performance in a subset of 281 children including poor and average readers/spellers. We show that all three skills are unique and significant predictors of reading fluency. We then restricted the analysis to participants with normal Raven's score (IQ) and oral language skills to focus on 110 children with more specific reading difficulties. A unique VAS deficit was found in 18% of these poor readers while 20% and 15.5% showed a unique PA or RAN deficit. Children with multiple or no deficit were further identified. The overall findings provide evidence for a variety of cognitive profiles in poor readers. They suggest that, in addition to PA interventions, training programs targeting VAS might be useful for the nontrivial share of poor readers who exhibit a VAS deficit.

中文翻译：

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贫困读者的各种认知特征：VAS 受损亚型的证据

很大一部分中学生没有达到预期的阅读能力水平。这些儿童可以从更有效的干预反应中受益，从而更好地了解他们的认知弱点/缺陷。我们的目的是探索从 948 名六年级儿童的大样本中确定的贫困读者群体的认知异质性。我们首先评估了音素意识 (PA)、快速自动命名 (RAN) 和视觉注意广度 (VAS) 对 281 名儿童（包括贫困和普通读者/拼写者）的阅读表现的贡献。我们表明，所有三种技能都是阅读流畅性的独特且重要的预测因素。然后我们将分析限制在具有正常 Raven' 的参与者 s 分数 (IQ) 和口语技能重点关注 110 名有更具体阅读困难的儿童。在这些较差的阅读器中，18% 发现了独特的 VAS 缺陷，而 20% 和 15.5% 显示出独特的 PA 或 RAN 缺陷。进一步确定了多个或没有缺陷的儿童。总体发现为贫困读者的各种认知特征提供了证据。他们认为，除了 PA 干预外，针对 VAS 的培训计划可能对表现出 VAS 缺陷的贫困读者中的重要份额有用。