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Although children with specific reading disorder (RD) have often been compared to typically achieving children on various phonological processing tasks, to our knowledge no study so far has examined whether the structure of phonological processing applies to both groups of children alike. According to Wagner and Torgesen (1987), phonological processing consists of 3 distinct constructs: phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and the phonological loop (PL) of working memory. The present study examined whether this phonological processing model which was originally developed for English orthography is also applicable to a more transparent language such as German. Furthermore, we tested whether the structure of phonological processing is invariant across typically achieving children and children with RD. Therefore, 209 German-speaking 3rd graders (100 typical learners and 109 children with RD) completed a comprehensive test battery assessing PA, RAN, and PL. Using confirmatory factor analyses, we compared the latent structure of these phonological processing skills across both groups. The study yielded 3 important findings: First, Wagner and Torgesen’s (1987) model transfers to the German language and its orthography with transparent grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences. Second, the tripartite structure of phonological processing was evident across both groups (factorial invariance). Third, group invariance was also found for the measurement and structural components of the model (measurement invariance). These findings suggest that the nature of phonological processing is invariant across typically achieving children and children with RD acquiring the transparent orthography of German. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
