For decades, explanations for why some children struggle with reading have often focused on two factors: intelligence and the ability to process visual information. Children who read easily have frequently been assumed to be more intelligent, while those who struggle have sometimes been viewed as less capable. Another common belief is that reading difficulties arise primarily from problems interpreting the words and letters on a page.
However, a major new study challenges these assumptions, suggesting that the abilities most important for reading success may be very different from what many people expect. Daniel Hajovsky, an associate professor in Texas A&M University's Department of Educational Psychology, led one of the most extensive investigations to date into how cognitive abilities relate to reading performance. The research brought together scientists from the University of Kansas, St.
John's University, Montclair State University and Temple University to examine which mental skills best predict reading development and why some children encounter difficulties. Massive Study Reveals What Really Predicts Reading Success To investigate these relationships, the researchers combined 50,000 correlations drawn from 137 cognitive and achievement test batteries into a single statistical model. This large-scale approach allowed them to assess the contribution of individual mental abilities to reading performance while also helping clarify why previous studies had sometimes produced conflicting conclusions.
The findings revealed several surprises. Visual processing showed no meaningful relationship with reading ability across the analysis. General intelligence was associated with reading performance, but its influence was considerably smaller than some earlier research had suggested.
Instead, two less frequently discussed abilities emerged as particularly important predictors of reading success: auditory processing and comprehension-knowledge. "One notable finding was that general intelligence was less dominant than in some earlier meta-analyses," Hajovsky said. "Broad abilities such as comprehension-knowledge and auditory processing played strong, specific roles in reading beyond general intelligence, especially for decoding and comprehension." Two Overlooked Skills Play a Major Role in Reading Auditory processing involves recognizing and distinguishing the individual sounds that make up spoken words.
For example, a child needs to identify the separate sounds within a word to understand how those sounds correspond to written letters. This skill helps support decoding, the process of working out how written words are pronounced. Comprehension-knowledge refers to the vocabulary, concepts and background information a child has accumulated through learning and everyday experiences.
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