Asthma and Reading Skills

Children with asthma score lower on measures of reading achievement than non-asthmatic children twelve months after starting school, according to a study performed in New Zealand, and the reason does not appear to be due to school days missed. 

The New Zealand team, led by head researcher Dr. Kathleen A Liberty, of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, studied 298 children who were enrolled in school on their fifth birthday.  Of these, 55 (18.5%) had asthma.

In the first grade, or when children start reading, they read out loud. Some experts believe that children with asthma have trouble learning how to control their breathing while reading out loud.

According to the study, “Just over 18 percent of the children had asthma when they started school.  At the end of the year, 51 percent of those children were at least six months behind in reading words, and 55 percent lagged in reading sentences.  That compared with 33 percent and 38 percent of children without asthma.”

On the other hand, the study showed that there were no significant differences between asthmatic and non-asthmatic children at follow-up regarding their achievement in math skills, which are usually written.

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