Individual Differences in Learning to Read Words

Reading is one of the most complicated and uniquely human activities. As such, learning to read requires the coordination of a complex set of skills, with demands changing markedly across the span of development. The study of individual differences in reading development, as it applies to children and adolescents, has a long and influential history in helping advance the science of reading. In this chapter, the authors begin by outlining analytical tools now available to examine individual differences, with an emphasis on exploratory item response models, before moving on to review child‐ and word‐level sources of variation that have been shown to predict variations in the development of word‐reading skill. They highlight child‐by‐word predictors that allow for new and more nuanced approaches to examining item‐level variance in word‐reading outcomes. A range of word‐level characteristics show promise in explaining individual differences in reading development.