Neuropsychological Correlates of Reading Disability in Nigerian Primary School Children: Implications for Assessment and Intervention

This doctoral study investigates the neuropsychological correlates of reading disability in Nigerian primary school children, examining how phonological processing, working memory, rapid automatised naming, and executive functioning contribute to reading difficulties in Nigerian languages and English, and deriving implications for culturally responsive assessment and intervention. Reading disability research has been dominated by studies in alphabetic language contexts, with far less attention to the neuropsychological profiles of struggling readers in bi- or multilingual contexts where children learn to read in a second language with different orthographic properties. Nigeria presents a uniquely complex case, with children reading in English while speaking diverse first languages with distinct phonological structures. The study employs a neuropsychological battery including standardised and researcher-developed tasks across phonological awareness, working memory, rapid automatised naming, and reading achievement dimensions, administered to eight hundred primary school children including one hundred and sixty identified with reading disability, from six states representing all geopolitical zones. Structural equation modelling and latent profile analysis are applied to identify cognitive profiles and examine how they relate to reading outcomes in English and in children's dominant Nigerian languages. The study generates original neuropsychological data on Nigerian reading disability, identifying both universal and culture-specific contributors to reading difficulty. Findings inform the development of a culturally adapted reading disability assessment battery and a phonologically-grounded intervention approach for Nigerian primary schools. Keywords: reading disability, neuropsychological correlates, Nigeria, bilingual reading, primary school.