Role of PASS Cognitive Processes in Explaining the Ability of Word Reading and Text Comprehension in Children with Dyslexia

Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder. Recently, researchers have focused on the cognitive correlates of this disorder. Identifying the cognitive processes of children with dyslexia can provide a deeper understanding of this disorder and guide the effective intervention programs for it. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the role of four cognitive processes of Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) in explaining the ability of word reading and text comprehension in children with dyslexia.

This research was a descriptive correlational study. The study population included all the students with dyslexia who were studying at grades two to five of primary school in Isfahan in the academic year of 2017-2018. A sample of 100 students was selected by multistage sampling. Ravenchr('39')s Progressive Matrices (1956), Reading and Dyslexia Test (Karami Noroozi & Moradi, 2005), Assessment System-second edition (Naglieri, Das & Goldstein, 2014) were used to collect the data. Data were analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient and regression analysis.

Findings showed that "word reading" was associated with simultaneous and successive processing and attention, and "text comprehension" was associated with simultaneous and successive processing, planning and attention (P≤0.01). Based on the regression analysis, the simultaneous and successive processing predicts 49% of the variance of "word reading", whereas successive processing and planning predict 44% of the variance of "text comprehension".

Results showed that children with dyslexia have dysfunction in simultaneous and successive processing and planning. These finding can be helpful in the process of diagnosing this disorder and designing interventions for it. In fact, identifying the cognitive processes involved in "reading" can provide a deeper understanding of how to facilitate and improve reading performance through explicit training of PASS processes.