The relationship between reading motivation and reading comprehension in students with learning disabilities: The mediating effects of reading amount and strategy use.

BACKGROUND: The present study is one of the first to investigate how intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation influence reading comprehension among students with learning disabilities through the mediating roles of reading amount and strategy use. Although previous research has found consistent evidence for the effects of reading motivation on reading comprehension in students with learning disabilities.

AIMS: This study investigates how intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation influence reading comprehension among students with learning disabilities through the mediating roles of reading amount and reading strategies.

METHOD: The sample of our study consisted of 154 eighth-grade students with learning disabilities from 150 schools. Data were analyzed using parallel multiple mediation analysis.

RESULT: Results showed that intrinsic reading motivation was positively related to both reading amount and reading strategy use, whereas extrinsic reading motivation was negatively associated with strategy use and unrelated to reading amount. Reading comprehension was significantly linked to the use of reading strategies but not directly to intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, nor to reading amount. Intrinsic motivation had an indirect positive effect on reading comprehension via strategy use, while extrinsic motivation indirectly affected comprehension negatively through the same path. However, reading amount did not mediate the relationship between motivation and comprehension CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that interventions designed to improve the reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities may be more effective when they focus on enhancing intrinsic reading motivation and the use of reading strategies.