Comparing Children With and Without Learning Disabilities on Their Home Literacy Environment and Its Association With Pre-Reading Skills

Despite children with learning disabilities (LDs) being at high risk for reading delays, how the informal home literacy environment (HLE) of LD children compares to that of their non-LD peers has not previously been investigated. Neither has the extent to which informal HLE is associated with pre-reading skills been compared for these two groups. To address these questions, we analyzed the data of 2,090 U.S. children with and without LDs from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort of 2010-2011 (ECLS-K:2011). Children with LDs had a lower informal HLE the summer before kindergarten than those without LDs, although this difference was not independent of group differences in socioeconomic status (SES). Next, informal HLE was associated with pre-reading skills at the start of kindergarten comparably for children with and without LDs, and this remained true after accounting for SES. In conclusion, LD children experience lower informal HLE than their non-LD peers.