Which symptom reflects a struggle with word recognition?

Struggling with word recognition is a core characteristic of reading difficulties, particularly in students with dyslexia or related reading disorders. Difficulty reading exception words—those that do not follow regular phonetic patterns—is a clear symptom of challenges in word recognition. These words, often referred to as sight words, require a reader to recognize them quickly and accurately without relying on phonetic decoding strategies. When a learner has poor word recognition abilities, they are likely to struggle with these irregular words, impacting their overall reading fluency and comprehension.

Additionally, recognizing sight words is essential for developing confidence and competence in reading, as these words frequently appear in texts. Other choices, while relevant to literacy development, do not specifically denote struggles with word recognition. For instance, trouble forming symbols pertains more to writing or grapheme-phoneme associations, memory span issues relate to working memory used in processing information, and advanced reading comprehension indicates a proficiency that contradicts a struggle with word recognition. Thus, difficulty reading exception words directly reflects a struggle with word recognition.