A systematic review of factors that impact reading comprehension in children with developmental language disorders.
Check expressive language first, then use literal questions—those two moves keep reading tests fair for kids with DLD.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Cheng et al. (2024) looked at every paper that asked, “Why do some children with developmental language disorder struggle to understand what they read?”
They pulled studies from around the world and checked which child skills best predicted reading scores.
The team also asked if those predictors were missing from the well-known Active View of Reading model.
What they found
Three things stood out: how well a child can talk, how hard the questions are, and whether the language disorder is short-term or lifelong.
Kids who could retell a story in their own words did better on reading tests.
Inference-heavy questions (“Why did the character cry?”) sank scores the most.
How this fits with other research
The finding echoes MacLean et al. (2011) and Holck et al. (2010): inference questions trip up children with Down syndrome and pragmatic language impairment alike.
It also lines up with Gonzalez-Barrero et al. (2018), who showed that early receptive plus expressive delays forecast later reading trouble.
Dai et al. (2025) add a twist: complex syntax hurts too, but only for certain sentence types. Together the papers say, “Check both vocabulary depth and sentence skill, then pick your question type carefully.”
Why it matters
Next time you test reading, start with an expressive language probe. If the child can’t retell the page, swap inference questions for literal ones and teach sentence structure first. This quick switch can save hours of frustration and keep the assessment valid.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have a high rate of co-occurring reading difficulties. The current study aims to (i) examine which factors within the Active View of Reading (AVR; Duke & Cartwright, 2021) apply to individuals with DLD and (ii) investigate other possible factors that relate to reading comprehension ability in individuals with DLD, outside the components in the AVR. Electronic database search and journal hand-search yielded 5058 studies published before March 2022 related to reading comprehension in children with DLD. 4802 articles were excluded during abstract screening, yielding 256 studies eligible for full-text review. Following full-text review, 44 studies were included and further coded for demographics, language of assessment, description of reported disabilities, behavioral assessment, and reading comprehension assessment. While the results aligned with the AVR model, three additional factors were identified as significantly relating to reading comprehension abilities in children with DLD: expressive language (oral and written), question types of reading assessment, and language disorder history. Specifically, expressive language was positively associated with reading comprehension ability, while resolved DLD showed higher reading comprehension abilities than persistent DLD. Furthermore, children with DLD may face additional difficulties in comprehending inference-based questions. This study provides factors for researchers, educators, and clinical professionals to consider when evaluating the reading comprehension of individuals with DLD. Future research should further explore the relative importance of factors of the AVR to reading comprehension outcomes throughout development.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2024 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104731