"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all." - -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass1

In the opening quotation for this column, Lewis Carroll and Humpty Dumpty pontificate on the power of language, meaning, and the individual's capacity to create and/or interpret meaning. As Carroll's Alice navigates through a mad-tea-party world and encounters novel situations and characters, a reader of this story is thrust into Alice's position of comprehending situations or contexts without the aid of background knowledge. In addition, Carroll's readers are continually encouraged to examine word meaning through the unique looking-glass Lens, and as such they continue to develop and expand their understanding of language that is then used to comprehend written text. Indeed, the wise Humpty Dumpty directs readers to consider how vocabulary can have both literal and valuable abstract inferential significance, and the use of this linguistic knowledge may lead one to comprehend or understand at a deeper level.

Just as Alice and the reader are forced to "read between the lines" to comprehend Humpty Dumpty's message, as children develop into mature readers, they need to rely on language knowledge and skills and other factors, such as world knowledge, to comprehend and create individualized meaning from written text. In this issue of Topics in Language Disorders (TLD), Issue Co-Editors Shelley Gray and Laida Restrepo (2016) have compiled articles on "Listening and Reading Comprehension" to lead readers through the complexities and challenges associated with developing and assessing the language and reading skills necessary for meaningful and functional listening and related reading comprehension.

The issues to be contemplated in this series of articles include an examination of theories and factors associated with listening and text comprehension. One prominent theory reviewed in these articles is the simple view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990). This model denotes that reading comprehension is the product of word-level reading and linguistic comprehension. By specifying these as two distinct factors, the simple view separates word-level reading recognition from linguistic comprehension and it links text-level reading comprehension directly to language or listening comprehension. Although this model is helpful in raising awareness of linguistic comprehension as a key determiner of reading comprehension, a problem with simple explanations is that they can obscure other components of complex constructs. Recognizing this, Tunmer and Chapman (2012) modified the simple view of reading to incorporate vocabulary. Going further, comprehension theories should account for the understanding of the meaning of content vocabulary that one hears or reads, in the form (sentences, passages) that it is presented, and the usage context in which it is provided, as well as demonstrating how all are related and imperative for deep comprehension. Moreover, one's own experiences and previous exposure to topics and ideas influence meaning to become an individual and personal entity and experience. Thus, to truly consider the intricacies involved with comprehending spoken or written text, it is equally important to (a) assess and facilitate language understanding through a mode such as listening comprehension to establish a measure of foundational skills, (b) establish word-level reading abilities in order to access written text, and (c) focus on higher level skills and strategies (e.g., predictions, inferencing, and summarization) as well as related confounding variables (e.g., background knowledge and motivation) associated with issues of deeper comprehension.

This issue of TLD addresses topics related to listening and reading comprehension where the aforementioned levels of awareness and information are considered and issues of development, assessment, and facilitation in children with typical and impaired language and literacy skills are explored. Kim and Phillips (2016) discuss the links between listening and reading comprehension and provide a model for how to facilitate the early development of these skills in prekindergarten. Alonzo, Yeomans-Maldonado, Murphy, Bevens, & Language and Reading Research Consortium (LARRC) (2016) shed light on the multiple and complex language and memory factors related to poor comprehension in second-grade children who are transitioning from the learning-to-read to reading-to-learn phase in development. Additionally, Barth et al. (2016) explore how middle school students with reading difficulties can be taught strategies, such as the use of key words and summarization of main ideas through a text-based discussion model to improve listening and reading comprehension. Finally, Sabatini, O'Reilly, Halderman, and Weeks (2016) discuss the challenges of assessment of listening and reading comprehension and provide evidence for the alternative method of Scenario-Based Assessment to evaluate and explore early comprehension abilities.

Through these four articles, we expect readers to gain a new level of appreciation for the complexities and interdependent nature of language, listening, and reading comprehension that continue to reflect the perpetual rabbit hole of discovery that researchers (and Alice) have just begun to fully explore. We particularly want to thank the two Issue Co-Editors, Laida Restrepo and Shelley Gray, for their active leadership in putting together this fine, intellectually stimulating, and practically useful issue of TLD. Its interdisciplinary contributions and merging of theory, research, and practice fit beautifully into the best traditions of the journal.

-Julie A. Wolter, PhD, CCC-SLP

Associate Editor

-Nickola W. Nelson, PhD

Editor-in-Chief

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