Reading comprehension problems in children with dyslexia are widely interpreted as a secondary consequence of poor decoding. The broader language and cognitive skill weaknesses in this group, that could be linked to poor comprehension, have received less attention than processes related to decoding. This thesis investigated reading and listening comprehension in children with dyslexia and also their broader language and verbal working memory (WM) skills. The main results showed that the children with dyslexia were poorer than chronological-age (CA) controls, but not reading-age (RA) controls, on measures of reading and listening comprehension. These findings suggest that reading comprehension difficulties in this group are not necessarily the result of poor decoding, since these difficulties also extended to listening comprehension. The children with dyslexia were also poorer than CA controls on measures of broader language skills (vocabulary, grammar, and the higher-order discourse skills of inference making, comprehension monitoring and understanding of story structure), verbal WM, attention, and exposure to print. In addition, there were indications that problems with inhibitory processes could be related to the WM deficits characteristic of this group. Again, their performance was very similar to RA controls on these measures. Taken together, these findings suggest that reading comprehension in children with dyslexia will be determined not only by their decoding ability but also the extent of their weaknesses in language and verbal WM. Parallels can also be drawn between the difficulties evident in this group and those experienced by poor comprehenders. Thus, children with dyslexia are likely to benefit from interventions that emphasise strategies to promote both comprehension and decoding.