How Do Low-Literacy Adults Read and How Much Do They Retain? a Reading-Time and Recall Study

We examined word-by-word reading time (RT) among low-literacy adults as they read grade-level appropriate texts. Relative to intact-literacy controls, low-literacy adults were more sensitive to length and word-frequency in RT allocation, and less to conceptual content. Those with good performance, however, allocated disproportionate effort to conceptual processing, especially at wrap-up.