Dyslexia, Working Memory or Attention? Why Children Can Struggle with Reading for Different Reasons
6 November 2026
By Marc Wheeler, Chartered Psychologist, Principal Educational Consultant and Neurodevelopmental Assessment Specialist
When a child struggles with reading, it is natural for parents and teachers to want to understand why. Sometimes the difficulty seems relatively straightforward. A child may struggle to recognise unfamiliar words, read very slowly or make persistent spelling errors, leading to concerns about dyslexia. In other cases, the picture is less clear. A child might read individual words accurately but have little understanding of what they have read. They might struggle to remember information from a passage, lose their place frequently or find it almost impossible to concentrate during independent reading. These difficulties can lead to questions about working memory, attention or possible neurodevelopmental differences.
In my assessment work, I frequently encounter children whose difficulties do not fit neatly into one category. A child may have strong verbal reasoning skills but find reading unexpectedly difficult. Another may perform well during a short, structured assessment but struggle considerably when expected to read independently in the classroom. Sometimes, parents and teachers describe quite different experiences of the same child, particularly where difficulties become more apparent during homework or at the end of a demanding school day.
The challenge is that similar reading difficulties can have different underlying explanations, and those explanations matter when deciding what support to provide. A child who cannot reliably decode unfamiliar words needs a different teaching response from a child who reads fluently but struggles to understand complex language. Equally, difficulties with attention or working memory may make reading harder without necessarily indicating dyslexia.
Research into reading development, dyslexia, ADHD and autism provides a useful foundation for understanding these differences. More importantly, it can help us make better decisions about assessment, teaching and intervention.
Understanding what reading actually involves
Reading is often treated as a single skill, particularly when schools report whether a child is working at, above or below an expected standard. However, successful reading depends on several processes working together. Children need to recognise written words, connect letters with sounds, develop fluent word recognition, understand vocabulary, interpret sentences and make connections between ideas. They also need to maintain sufficient attention to follow what they are reading and retain information long enough to construct meaning.
One of the most established frameworks for understanding reading is the Simple View of Reading, which identifies word recognition and language comprehension as two essential components of successful reading comprehension. Put simply, children need to be able to read the words and understand the language those words represent. Difficulties in either area can affect their understanding of written text.
Hulme and Snowling (2016) explain that difficulties with word-level decoding, commonly associated with dyslexia, and difficulties with reading comprehension can represent different patterns of reading impairment. Their review also demonstrates how closely reading development is connected to oral language, with phonological skills playing an important role in learning to decode and broader language skills contributing to comprehension.
This distinction has considerable practical relevance. Imagine two children who both achieve a below-average score on a reading comprehension assessment. The first struggles to recognise the words and consequently finds it difficult to access the passage. When someone reads the same information aloud, they demonstrate good understanding. The second reads the passage accurately but struggles to explain its meaning, even when the demand to decode is removed. Although their overall assessment scores might be similar, the reasons for their difficulties are quite different.
For teachers, this means that identifying a child as having weak reading comprehension should be the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one. We need to establish whether the difficulty lies primarily with decoding, language comprehension or a combination of factors. We should also consider how attention, memory and the demands of the task may be influencing performance. Without that understanding, there is a risk that children receive interventions which are well intentioned but do not sufficiently address their needs.
Dyslexia: when recognising words remains difficult
Dyslexia is associated with persistent difficulties in developing accurate or fluent word reading and spelling. Although individual profiles vary, research has consistently identified phonological processing as an important factor in its development. Phonological processing concerns how we recognise, distinguish and manipulate sounds within spoken language, and these skills are closely connected to learning the relationships between letters and sounds.
For some children, these relationships develop relatively easily through teaching and practice. For others, recognising unfamiliar words remains difficult, and reading can be slow and effortful even when they have received appropriate instruction. A child may struggle to blend sounds into words, read unfamiliar vocabulary or develop automatic recognition of words they have encountered many times before. Some children eventually become reasonably accurate readers but continue to experience substantial difficulties with fluency and spelling.
Pennington and Lefly (2001) followed 124 children over three years to investigate early reading development in children with and without a family history of dyslexia. They found that 34% of children in the higher familial-risk group developed reading disability, compared with 6% in the lower-risk group. Their findings also demonstrated the predictive importance of early phonological processing and letter knowledge. Hulme and Snowling (2016) similarly identified phoneme awareness, letter–sound knowledge and rapid naming as important aspects of early reading development.
What I find particularly relevant about this research is that the difficulties associated with dyslexia can begin to emerge well before a child has fallen substantially behind their peers. Ozernov-Palchik and Gaab (2016) described what they called the dyslexia paradox: children are often identified as dyslexic only after experiencing persistent reading difficulties, despite evidence supporting the benefits of earlier intervention. This raises an important question about how schools respond when children first begin to struggle. We should not need to wait until a child has experienced repeated failure before investigating the nature of their difficulties and providing appropriately targeted support.
For teachers, persistent difficulties with sound awareness, blending, unfamiliar word reading and spelling should prompt a closer examination of the child's literacy development. It is worth considering whether the difficulty has remained despite appropriate teaching, whether the child can apply phonics knowledge independently and whether reading accuracy and fluency are developing at similar rates. Families can also provide useful information about the child's early language development, experiences of reading at home and any family history of literacy difficulties.
Importantly, dyslexia is not an indication of low intelligence, and identification should not depend on finding a discrepancy between cognitive ability and reading attainment. A child may demonstrate excellent reasoning, vocabulary and understanding while continuing to find word recognition extremely difficult. The purpose of assessment is to understand the nature and persistence of the difficulty, rather than expecting children to fit a particular pattern of strengths and weaknesses.
When a child can read the words but struggles to understand them
Some children appear to be competent readers because they can recognise words accurately and read aloud with reasonable fluency. However, when asked to explain what they have read, they struggle. They may be unable to identify the main idea, explain why something happened or make connections between different parts of a passage. This can be particularly confusing for parents, who understandably wonder why their child can read a story but cannot tell them what it means.
Reading comprehension involves much more than recognising individual words. Children need to understand vocabulary, interpret grammatical structures, connect information across sentences and draw inferences from what is written. They also need to use their existing knowledge to make sense of the text. A child might understand each individual word in a sentence but still struggle to understand the overall message, particularly when information is implied rather than explicitly stated.
Hulme and Snowling (2016) found that early oral language development was an important predictor of later reading comprehension. This is useful because it reminds us that some reading comprehension difficulties are fundamentally related to language understanding. If a child cannot understand a complex sentence when it is spoken aloud, asking them to read the same sentence independently is unlikely to resolve the difficulty.
Research involving autistic children provides further evidence of how reading accuracy and comprehension can develop differently. Nation and colleagues (2006) examined the reading abilities of 41 autistic children and found considerable variation. Some demonstrated strong word recognition alongside significant difficulties with comprehension, while others experienced difficulties with decoding or both aspects of reading. Ricketts and colleagues (2013), in a study involving 100 autistic adolescents, found that word recognition and oral language both contributed independently to reading comprehension. Measures of social functioning and social cognition also explained additional variation in performance. A meta-analysis by Brown, Oram-Cardy and Johnson (2013) similarly identified reading comprehension difficulties at group level, while recognising substantial differences between individuals.
These findings are useful, but they need to be interpreted carefully. They do not mean that autistic children necessarily struggle with comprehension or that all difficulties understanding a story arise from social cognition. Rather, they demonstrate that reading comprehension can be influenced by several different processes, and that a diagnosis alone cannot tell us which areas a particular child finds difficult.
For example, understanding a story may require a child to recognise why a character acted in a particular way, interpret an implied emotion or connect an earlier event with something that happens later. If these aspects of comprehension are difficult, simply providing more reading practice may not be enough. The child may benefit from explicit teaching of vocabulary, supported discussion of character motivations, opportunities to explain their understanding and structured teaching of inference.
In school, I would encourage teachers to compare how a child responds to written and spoken information. Can they answer questions about a passage when it is read aloud? Do they understand individual sentences but struggle to connect ideas across a longer text? Is the difficulty particularly apparent when questions require inference rather than straightforward retrieval? These observations can help establish whether the support needs to focus on decoding, language comprehension or more specific aspects of understanding.
Working memory: when holding on to information becomes difficult
Working memory allows us to hold information temporarily while using or manipulating it. We rely on it when following instructions, solving problems, organising our thoughts and making sense of complex information. Reading places demands on working memory because we need to retain earlier information while processing what comes next.
Consider a child reading a long sentence containing several pieces of information. They may recognise every word correctly but struggle to remember how the beginning of the sentence relates to the end. This becomes increasingly challenging as texts grow longer and more complex. A child might reach the end of a paragraph and have little idea what it was about, despite apparently reading it accurately.
Working memory difficulties can also become apparent in other areas of learning. A child might struggle to follow several spoken instructions, forget the steps involved in a mathematical problem or lose track of what they intended to write. Where these difficulties occur across different activities, it may be appropriate to investigate working memory as part of the child's wider learning profile.
However, we need to be careful about assuming that forgetting information from a text automatically indicates a working memory weakness. The child may not have understood the vocabulary, may have struggled to decode the words or may have missed information because their attention was interrupted. These different explanations can produce similar outcomes, which is why assessment needs to consider the wider evidence.
Jacobson and colleagues (2011) investigated working memory, processing speed and reading fluency in children with ADHD. Their study involved 41 children with ADHD and 21 comparison participants aged between 9 and 14 years. Importantly, the researchers screened for word-reading and language disorders, allowing them to examine reading fluency difficulties that were not simply explained by poor decoding. They found that children with ADHD demonstrated reduced oral and silent reading fluency, and that working memory and aspects of processing speed were associated with reading performance.
This is an important finding because it demonstrates that reading efficiency can be affected even when children possess adequate word-recognition skills. It also shows why we should avoid interpreting slow reading as automatically indicating dyslexia. A child may recognise words accurately but require additional time to process, organise or respond to information.
What does this mean for classroom practice?
Where working memory demands appear to be contributing to reading difficulties, the first consideration should be whether we can reduce unnecessary demands without reducing the learning objective. For example, allowing a child to refer back to the text when answering questions may help them demonstrate understanding without requiring them to retain an entire passage in memory. Breaking longer texts into manageable sections, making key vocabulary visible and encouraging brief summaries can also help children organise information.
I would be cautious about recommending working memory training as a direct solution to reading difficulties. Although specific memory tasks can improve with practice, this does not necessarily mean those improvements will transfer to reading comprehension. Where a child has difficulties with decoding or language comprehension, those areas require direct teaching. Memory-related adjustments may help the child access learning more effectively, but they should not replace evidence-based literacy intervention.
For parents, the same principle applies at home. If a child struggles to remember what they have read, it can be helpful to pause at natural points, discuss the main ideas and return to earlier sections together. These activities should support understanding, rather than making reading feel like a test of how much information the child can remember.
ADHD and reading: it is not always about being distracted
Children with ADHD can experience reading difficulties for several reasons. Some have co-occurring literacy difficulties, including dyslexia. Others may possess reasonably secure reading skills but struggle to use them consistently because of difficulties with sustained attention, working memory, processing efficiency or organising information.
In the classroom, a child might read successfully during a short, supported activity but struggle when expected to complete a longer task independently. They may lose their place, overlook important details or reach the end of a passage without retaining its meaning. It can be tempting to interpret these behaviours simply as a lack of concentration, but research suggests that the relationship between ADHD and reading is more complicated.
Purvis and Tannock (2000) examined differences between children with ADHD, reading disability, both conditions and neither condition. Their findings suggested that phonological processing difficulties were more closely associated with reading disability, while aspects of behavioural control were more closely related to ADHD. The study also demonstrated that children could experience both sets of difficulties.
Greven and colleagues (2012) examined associations between ADHD symptoms and reading development in a longitudinal study involving approximately 7,000 twin pairs. They found that ADHD symptoms and reading performance predicted one another over time, although the predictive effects were small. Inattentive symptoms were more strongly associated with reading than hyperactive-impulsive symptoms, and the relationship was substantially influenced by shared genetic factors.
These findings suggest that difficulties with attention and reading can share developmental influences. We should therefore be careful about assuming that reading difficulties in children with ADHD arise solely because they are distracted during lessons. Equally, a child who appears distracted during reading may not necessarily have ADHD. Reading that requires unusually high levels of effort can itself be tiring and frustrating, particularly when a child has experienced repeated difficulties.
One study I think is especially relevant to classroom assessment is the scoping review by Parks and colleagues (2022), which examined 34 studies of reading comprehension in individuals with ADHD. The researchers found that comprehension performance depended partly on the type of task being used. Difficulties were particularly apparent when participants were asked to retell stories or identify central ideas. In some studies, performance improved when task demands were lower.
This has significant implications for how we interpret children's work. Imagine asking a child to read a long passage and then explain everything that happened without referring back to the text. The task requires reading comprehension, but it also places demands on attention, memory, information selection and organising a verbal response. A child who struggles may understand more than their answer suggests.
If we then provide the passage again and ask more focused questions, their performance may improve. This does not make the original difficulty unimportant, but it tells us something useful about the conditions under which the child can demonstrate their understanding.
Teachers can use this information practically by examining whether a child performs differently during short and extended reading activities, whether access to the text improves their answers and whether difficulties occur across other subjects. Adjustments such as dividing tasks into manageable stages, reducing unnecessary distractions and allowing opportunities to revisit information may help children engage more successfully.
However, ADHD should not be used as a general explanation for every literacy difficulty. Where a child also struggles to recognise unfamiliar words, develop fluency or understand language, those skills need to be assessed and taught directly.
Why similar reading difficulties can require different teaching
Perhaps the most important implication of this research is that children with similar attainment scores may need quite different support.
Imagine three pupils in Year 5 who all struggle with reading comprehension. The first reads slowly, has difficulty decoding unfamiliar words and makes persistent spelling errors. However, when someone reads the passage aloud, they demonstrate good understanding. The second reads accurately but struggles with vocabulary, inference and understanding complex sentences, even when information is presented verbally. The third reads and understands appropriately during short, supported activities but struggles to maintain performance during longer independent tasks, particularly when required to retain and organise information.
All three children might be described as working below the expected standard in reading comprehension. Yet the first child's needs may relate primarily to word recognition and fluency, the second to broader language comprehension and the third to attention, memory or executive functioning. There may also be overlap between these areas.
This is where I think we need to be particularly careful about how intervention decisions are made. A generic reading comprehension intervention may help some children, but it is unlikely to address every possible cause of difficulty. Similarly, providing additional phonics teaching to a child whose decoding is secure but whose oral language comprehension is weak may not address their main barrier.
Hulme and Snowling (2016) distinguish between interventions aimed at developing decoding and those focused on language comprehension. For children with word-level reading difficulties, systematic instruction targeting phoneme awareness, letter knowledge and decoding is supported by research. For children whose difficulties primarily concern understanding language, approaches targeting vocabulary, narrative skills, inference and comprehension monitoring may be more appropriate.
The evidence concerning children with ADHD is also encouraging. Chan and colleagues (2023) conducted a meta-analysis of 18 studies involving 564 children with ADHD who were at risk of reading difficulties. They found substantial benefits from targeted reading interventions, with particularly strong evidence for approaches involving at least 30 hours of instruction focused on decoding and phonemic awareness. This finding should not be interpreted as a fixed intervention requirement for every child, but it does demonstrate that children with ADHD can benefit considerably from direct literacy teaching.
The practical message is that improving attention and engagement does not automatically resolve underlying reading difficulties. A child with ADHD who struggles to decode words still needs effective teaching of decoding. Similarly, adjustments that reduce memory demands or provide access to text through assistive technology can be extremely helpful, but they serve a different purpose from teaching the skills required for independent reading.
Good provision may need to combine these approaches, with each intervention linked to a clearly identified need.
What should teachers and SENDCos do when reading difficulties persist?
When a child is struggling with reading, I would begin by looking carefully at what the child can do, what they find difficult and how consistent those difficulties are across different activities. Existing assessment information can provide a useful starting point, but it is important to examine the individual components of reading rather than relying entirely on an overall attainment judgement.
For example, if a child is struggling with comprehension, I would want to know whether they can decode unfamiliar words accurately, whether their reading is fluent and whether they understand the same information when it is presented orally. I would also want to examine the types of comprehension questions they find difficult. Do they manage straightforward retrieval but struggle with inference? Can they understand individual sentences but lose track across a longer passage? Does performance change when the text remains available?
These questions are often more useful than asking immediately whether the child has dyslexia or ADHD. They help establish which skills need further assessment and which aspects of the task may be contributing to the difficulty.
I would also consider whether the child experiences similar difficulties outside reading. A child who struggles to retain instructions across several subjects may require further investigation of working memory or language comprehension. A child whose attention difficulties occur during many different activities may need a broader examination of executive functioning. Where concerns are particularly apparent during reading, we should consider whether the literacy task itself is unusually demanding.
Another important consideration is the child's response to teaching and intervention. If additional support has already been provided, we need to examine what was taught, how consistently it was delivered and whether it addressed the specific area of difficulty. Simply recording that a child has received a reading intervention does not tell us whether the intervention was appropriate or effective.
For instance, where decoding is the concern, progress should be monitored through measures that reflect the skills being taught, such as unfamiliar word reading, accuracy and fluency. Where comprehension is the concern, it may be more useful to examine vocabulary knowledge, understanding of sentences, inference and the ability to integrate information across passages.
I would also encourage schools to consider the amount of effort involved in a child's reading. Some children achieve apparently acceptable outcomes but require substantially more time, repetition or adult support than their peers. If a child can complete a reading activity only through considerable additional effort, that tells us something important about the support they may require. Attainment and the demands involved in achieving it should both inform our understanding of need.
What can parents do if they are concerned?
Parents often recognise that something is difficult for their child but are unsure exactly what the problem is. Reading homework may take much longer than expected, a child may avoid reading independently or they may appear to understand stories very well when listening but struggle to read them for themselves.
These experiences are useful sources of information. I would encourage parents to share specific examples with their child's teacher or SENDCo, particularly where difficulties appear different at home and school.
Rather than beginning with a request for a particular diagnosis, it can be more helpful to ask what the school understands about the child's reading profile. Is the main difficulty recognising words, reading fluently or understanding text? What assessment information supports that view? Has the child received additional teaching, and what progress has been observed? Are there concerns about language, memory or attention that might require further investigation?
It is also worth asking how the school is measuring progress. If an intervention is intended to improve decoding, we should expect to see progress in the child's ability to read words accurately and increasingly fluently. If the aim is to improve comprehension, we need evidence that the child is developing the necessary understanding and can apply those skills to increasingly demanding texts.
Parents can help at home by maintaining positive reading experiences and making sure that reading does not become associated entirely with correction or failure. Reading aloud to children, discussing stories, explaining unfamiliar vocabulary and encouraging them to talk about what they have understood can all support language development and enjoyment of reading.
Where independent decoding is difficult, shared reading and access to audiobooks can also allow children to engage with stories and information that might otherwise be inaccessible. These approaches support language, knowledge and participation, although they should complement rather than replace direct reading instruction where it is needed.
Most importantly, children should be included in conversations about their learning. Asking what they find difficult, when reading feels easier and what helps them can provide information that is not always apparent from test scores or classroom observations.
When might a psycho-educational assessment be helpful?
Not every child who struggles with reading requires a comprehensive assessment immediately. Appropriate teaching, careful monitoring and early intervention should form the starting point. However, a more detailed assessment may be appropriate when difficulties persist despite targeted support, when progress is limited or when the reasons for the child's difficulties remain unclear.
This is particularly relevant where a child demonstrates an uneven profile, such as strong reasoning and oral language alongside weak word reading, or accurate decoding alongside significant comprehension difficulties. It can also be helpful where concerns about working memory, attention or wider neurodevelopmental functioning appear to be influencing learning.
A psycho-educational assessment might examine reading accuracy, fluency, comprehension, spelling, phonological processing, working memory and other relevant learning skills. Depending on the concerns, it may also involve developmental history, questionnaires, observations and consultation with parents and teachers.
The important consideration is how the information is interpreted. Standardised scores can identify areas of relative strength and weakness, but they rarely explain the entire picture. A low working memory score does not establish that working memory is responsible for poor comprehension. Similarly, an elevated attention questionnaire score does not demonstrate that ADHD is the cause of reading difficulties.
Assessment should bring together the evidence to develop a reasoned explanation of the child's needs, recognising both what the findings support and where uncertainty remains. Where difficulties suggest the need for speech and language assessment or a formal ADHD diagnostic assessment, this should be considered through the appropriate professional pathways.
I believe the value of a good assessment lies in what happens afterwards. The findings should help teachers understand which skills require direct teaching, which adjustments may improve access to learning and how progress can be evaluated. Parents should leave with a clearer understanding of their child's difficulties and a practical sense of what support is likely to help.
An assessment report should provide more than a description of what a child cannot do. It should help explain why those difficulties are occurring and what adults can reasonably do in response.
The right support starts with understanding the difficulty
The evidence reviewed here demonstrates that reading difficulties are rarely explained adequately by a single score or observation. Dyslexia is strongly associated with difficulties developing accurate and automatic word recognition. Broader language difficulties can affect comprehension even where decoding is secure. Working memory and processing speed may influence reading efficiency, while attention and executive functioning can affect how successfully children apply their skills during different tasks.
Research involving autistic children and children with ADHD also reminds us that diagnostic categories do not provide a complete account of reading ability. There is considerable variation within these groups, and individual children may experience several overlapping difficulties.
For schools, the implication is that intervention should follow a careful understanding of the child's needs. For parents, it means that concerns about reading deserve proper investigation, particularly when a child continues to struggle despite support. For those undertaking assessments, it means interpreting the evidence thoughtfully and making recommendations that connect directly to the difficulties identified.
There is also a wider consideration. Reading difficulties affect more than academic attainment. They can influence confidence, independence, access to the curriculum and the amount of effort a child must expend simply to participate in everyday learning. A child who appears to be coping may still be finding reading considerably more demanding than their peers, and that experience should inform the support they receive.
At Wheeler Education, my approach to psycho-educational and neurodevelopmental assessment is grounded in understanding the individual child, examining the evidence and translating the findings into practical recommendations for families and schools.
Ultimately, when a child struggles with reading, the most useful question is not simply whether they have dyslexia, ADHD or working memory difficulties. It is what is making reading difficult for this particular child, how those difficulties affect their learning, and what we can do to provide the right support.
Wheeler Education offers a range of assessment and consultation services to help parents and schools understand the reasons behind a child's reading difficulties. By exploring different aspects of learning, including literacy skills, language processing, working memory and attention, we can help distinguish between different areas of need and identify the support most likely to make a difference.
If you would like further information about how we can help, please feel free to get in touch using the contact link below.
References
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Chan, E. S. M., Shero, J. A., Hand, E. D., Cole, A. M., Gaye, F., Spiegel, J. A., & Kofler, M. J. (2023). Are reading interventions effective for at-risk readers with ADHD? A meta-analysis. Journal of Attention Disorders, 27(2), 182–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547221130111
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