Ninety-nine elementary-school learning disabled and normal children were assigned to one of four comprehension-facilitating conditions (word identification and meaning aids, sentence aids, purpose-setting aids, and prior-knowledge aids) to determine their effects on comprehension. Controlling for age, intelligence, prior reading achievement, and pretest comprehension levels, sentence aids were found to be significantly more effective than prior knowledge for both learning disabled and similarly achieving, but younger readers. Moreover, for the same two groups of subjects the average effect of words and sentences (micro-level aids) was significantly higher than the average effect of purpose setting and prior knowledge (macro-level aids). No significant differences were found among the four types of comprehension facilitators for normally achieving readers who were the same age as the learning disabled group.
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