Helle Lindsted: Making sense of a “complete mess”: A study of reading comprehension in Danish

Various factors may impact the process of reading. The depth of the orthography influences the reading strategy for readers of shallow and deep orthographies because the complexity of the
mapping between graphemes and phonemes increases with depth. In this thesis, reading comprehension in Danish, considered a deep orthography, is examined. While phonological awareness is commonly recognized as an underlying cause of reading difficulties, little is known about the effect of VAS in Danish readers. An experiment consisting of three tasks involving phonological awareness, visual attention span (VAS) skills and reading comprehension respectively is conducted with 22 adult L1 Danish readers. It is investigated which of the two reading subskills of phonological awareness and VAS skills has the highest contribution to reading comprehension. The results show that phonological awareness is low in declared dyslexic readers as well as in those with the poorest reading comprehension in general but that these groups on average perform well on VAS tasks. It is also found that those with the best VAS accuracy exhibit the best reading comprehension.