A comparison of sighted and visually impaired children's text comprehension.

Papastergiou et al. (2019) visited a Greek special school.

They gave the same text-comprehension quiz to kids with and without visual impairments.

The task had two kinds of questions: literal and inferential.

Students who were blind scored higher than sighted classmates.

The edge showed up only on literal questions.

Both groups did the same on questions that needed guessing or inference.

Lam et al. (2021) found a mirror result: kids with dyslexia beat peers on non-verbal creativity.

Both papers show a clinical group turning a weakness into a strength.

Martinussen et al. (2015) saw the opposite pattern: teens with ADHD scored lower on reading.

The difference is task type. Athanasia gave braille text; Rhonda used print.

Liu et al. (2023) meta-analysis links poor visual attention to dyslexia.

That deficit may push dyslexic readers to lean on sound, while blind readers lean on memory for exact words.

Do not assume a sensory loss equals a comprehension loss.

When you assess a child who is blind, give credit for strong literal memory.

Use that strength to teach inference skills next.

For mixed groups, pair braille users with print users; each can model the skill the other needs.