This study aimed to answer two questions: what type of reading contributes to more successful text processing and understanding, and what are the main characteristics of silent and oral reading for Russian-speaking secondary school children. Results show that while reading orally, participants with reading disorders comprehend the text poorly. They have a limited amount of attentional resources available for any given cognitive tasks, and thus, the greater the amount of attention they paid to text processing, the less is available for text understanding. However, in silent reading, the same participants demonstrate good comprehension if they read slowly, i.e. make more fixations and regressions. Their cognitive resources are spent on text comprehension, which is eventually what reading is aimed at.