Connections Between Reading Comprehension and Word‐Problem Solving via Oral Language Comprehension: Implications for Comorbid Learning Disabilities

In this article, we discuss the approach adopted within the Vanderbilt University Learning Disabilities Innovation Hub, which focuses on students with higher‐order comorbidity: students with concurrent difficulty with reading comprehension and word‐problem solving. The aim of the Hub's Research Project is to test what we refer to as the higher‐order comorbidity hypothesis: that language comprehension plays a critical role in reading comprehension and word‐problem solving. In the Hub's study, we test the hypothesize that language comprehension offers a coordinated approach for improving both outcomes and that this approach thus provides direction for understanding higher‐order comorbidity and support for the validity of reading comprehension and word‐problem solving comorbidity as a learning disabilities subtyping framework. In the first segment of this article, we describe a model that connects reading comprehension and word‐problem solving development via oral language comprehension, and we provide a brief overview of prior related research on these connections. This first section provides the basis for the second segment of this article, in which we discuss the Vanderbilt Hub's innovative approach for investigating these connections. This study tests a theoretically‐coordinated framework on students' performance in both high‐priority domains of academic development, while exploring effects for boys versus girls and for linguistically diverse learners.