Scientists identify two overlooked skills that predict reading success
A massive new study reveals that intelligence plays a surprisingly limited role in children's reading success, while visual processing showed no meaningful connection at all. Instead, the strongest predictors are sound recognition, vocabulary, and background knowledge, offering new clues about how to help struggling readers.
Key points
- A Texas A&M-led study found auditory processing and comprehension-knowledge best predict reading success.
- Visual processing showed no meaningful link to reading ability in the analysis.
- General intelligence mattered for reading, but less than some earlier research suggested.
A large new study led by Dr. Daniel Hajovsky of Texas A&M University's Department of Educational Psychology suggests the skills that best predict reading success are not the ones long assumed to matter most. The research, which also involved scientists from the University of Kansas, St. John's University, Montclair State University and Temple University, challenges common beliefs that reading ability mainly reflects intelligence or visual processing.
The team combined 50,000 correlations from 137 cognitive and achievement test batteries into a single statistical model, according to the report.
What the study found
Visual processing showed no meaningful relationship with reading ability, and general intelligence was linked to reading performance but less strongly than some earlier research had suggested. Instead, two less frequently discussed abilities stood out: auditory processing, which involves recognizing and distinguishing the sounds in spoken words, and comprehension-knowledge, meaning the vocabulary, concepts and background information a child has built up.
These two abilities were more reliable predictors of reading performance than any other skills examined. Memory, reasoning and mental processing speed also contributed, but in more supporting roles.
Struggles in reading are not a sign of low ability but often reflect one specific skill that needs strengthening within a larger system that works together.
— Dr. Daniel Hajovsky
What it means for children
The findings could help educators identify specific weaknesses in students who struggle with reading and tailor instruction to those needs, rather than treating all reading problems the same. For families, the study indicates that a child who has trouble reading is not necessarily less intelligent or incapable of becoming a strong reader.
Hajovsky said cooperation among schools, parents and communities is the most effective approach, and that reading develops through a network of connected skills.
