Expository Text Comprehension in the Primary Grade Classroom.

This study investigates the effectiveness of an instructional program designed to teach 2nd graders how to comprehend compare-contrast expository text. Along with introducing new content (animal classification), the program emphasizes text structure via clue words, a sequence of questions, and a graphic organizer, and via the close analysis of specially constructed exemplar paragraphs. The authors compared the program with (a) more traditional instruction that focused only on the new content and (b) a no instruction control; 128 7- and 8-year-olds participated. Classroom teachers provided the instruction. The program improved students' ability to comprehend compare-contrast texts. Students were able to demonstrate transfer to uninstructed compare-contrast texts though not to text structures other than compare-contrast. Moreover, the text structure instruction did not detract from their ability to learn new content. The results provide evidence, heretofore lacking, that explicit instruction in comprehension is feasible and effective as early as the 2nd grade. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instructional approaches that significantly increase reading comprehension.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of the most widely used literacy instructional approaches on the reading comprehension of Grade 2–6 students. Participants (N = 660) were enrolled in 4 districts in the United States; 53% were male (n = 348) and 47% were female (n = 312); 51% were Caucasian (n = 338), 23% were African American (n = 149), 21% were Hispanic (n = 138), and 5% represented other ethnic backgrounds (n = 35). Sixty-two percent came from low to low-middle socioeconomic status schools, and 38% came from middle to high socioeconomic status schools. The study was a quantified experimental versus controlled group comparison. Analyses of variance were used to determine the differences between literacy scores. Two-level hierarchical linear modeling analyses were used to examine the effects of school variables on academic achievement. The highest comprehension scores for all populations occurred through three approaches. When struggling readers received 20 min of instruction with 1 of these 3 approaches, their literacy growth was equal to or greater than that of their peers. Implications are that treatments using classroom books produced significantly higher comprehension scores than workbook practice or extending basal treatments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Code-oriented instruction for kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties: A randomized field trial with paraeducator implementers.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of code-oriented supplemental instruction for kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties. Paraeducators were trained to provide 18 weeks of explicit instruction in phonemic skills and the alphabetic code. Students identified by their teachers meeting study eligibility criteria were randomly assigned to 2 groups: individual supplemental instruction and control. Students were pretested in December, midtested, and posttested in May-June of kindergarten. At posttest, treatment students significantly outperformed controls on measures of reading accuracy, reading efficiency, oral reading fluency, and developmental spelling. Treatment students had significantly higher linear growth rates in phonemic awareness and alphabetic knowledge during the kindergarten treatment. At a 1-year follow-up, significant group differences remained in reading accuracy and efficiency. Ethical challenges of longitudinal intervention research are discussed. Findings have policy implications for making supplemental instruction in critical early reading skills available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individualizing a web-based structure strategy intervention for fifth graders' comprehension of nonfiction.

In the study, we investigated effects of 2 different versions of a web-based tutoring system to provide 5th-grade students with strategy instruction about text structure, which was an intervention to improve reading comprehension. The design feature assessed varied in individualization of instruction (individualized or standard). The more individually tailored version was developed to provide remediation or enrichment lessons matched to the individual needs of each student. Stratified random assignment was used to compare the effects of 2 versions of the 6-month web-based intervention. Students in the individualized condition made greater improvements from pretest to posttest on a standardized reading comprehension test (d = 0.55) than did students in the standard condition (d = 0.30). Students receiving more individualized instruction demonstrated higher mastery achievement goals when working in the lessons than did students receiving the standard instruction (d = 0.53). Students receiving more individualized instruction showed greater improvement in using signaling, better work in lessons, and more positive posttest attitudes toward computers than did students receiving standard instruction. Students in both conditions improved their recall of ideas from texts and their use of the text structure strategy and comparison signaling words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading comprehension of scientific text: A domain-specific test of the direct and inferential mediation model of reading comprehension.

Reading comprehension is strongly associated with academic achievement, including science achievement. A better understanding of reading comprehension processes in science text might hold promise for improving science achievement in the long run. We tested the fit of the direct and inferential mediation (DIME) model of reading comprehension (Cromley & Azevedo, 2007) with 737 students in an introductory biology course required for majors. Participants completed multiple choice measures of biology-specific prior-topic knowledge, inference, reading strategy use, reading vocabulary, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension in small groups in our laboratory. Using structural equation modeling to test the fit of the DIME model to the data, we found excellent fit indices for all models. However, the original DIME model fit significantly worse than the measurement model, and a modified model that included a path from reading vocabulary to reading strategy use fit significantly better. Results from the modified model suggest that comprehension interventions for undergraduate students with biology majors might use preteaching to build topic knowledge. We discuss the need for future experimental studies to confirm the vocabulary-reading strategies link. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contribution of spelling instruction to the spelling, writing, and reading of poor spellers.

The contribution of supplemental spelling instruction to spelling, writing, and reading was examined. Second-grade children experiencing difficulties learning to spell participated in 48 20-min sessions designed to improve their spelling skills. In comparison with peers in a contact control condition receiving mathematics instruction, students in the spelling condition made greater improvements on norm-referenced spelling measures, a writing-fluency test, and a reading word-attack measure following instruction. Six months later, students in the spelling treatment maintained their advantage in spelling but not on the writing-fluency and reading word-attack measures. However, spelling instruction had a positive effect at maintenance on the reading word-recognition skills of children who scored lowest on this measure at pretest. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Letter differentiation and rate of comprehension in reading.

375 adults were given 90 sec. to read passages of about 450 words printed in 1 of 7 typefaces equated for size. They had then to answer 10 open-ended questions on the content. Of the typefaces without serifs Gill Medium, the letters of which were judged by typographical experts to be fairly strongly differentiated, was comprehended reliably faster than Grotesque 215 and 2 versions of Univers, in which the letters were judged to be less well differentiated (p     

Segmentation in reading and film comprehension.

When reading a story or watching a film, comprehenders construct a series of representations in order to understand the events depicted. Discourse comprehension theories and a recent theory of perceptual event segmentation both suggest that comprehenders monitor situational features such as characters’ goals, to update these representations at natural boundaries in activity. However, the converging predictions of these theories had previously not been tested directly. Two studies provided evidence that changes in situational features such as characters, their locations, their interactions with objects, and their goals are related to the segmentation of events in both narrative texts and films. A 3rd study indicated that clauses with event boundaries are read more slowly than are other clauses and that changes in situational features partially mediate this relation. A final study suggested that the predictability of incoming information influences reading rate and possibly event segmentation. Taken together, these results suggest that processing situational changes during comprehension is an important determinant of how one segments ongoing activity into events and that this segmentation is related to the control of processing during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Improvement in reading rate under independent and difficult text levels: Influences on word and comprehension skills.

Improving reading rate can be difficult for poor readers. In this experiment, we investigated the impact of improvement in reading rate on other aspects of reading, including word recognition, decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension. Poor readers in Grades 2 or 4 (N = 123) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: practice reading text at their independent reading level (92%–100% word reading accuracy), practice reading text at a difficult reading level (80%–90% accuracy), or an untreated control. Students in practice conditions read aloud to an adult listener who assisted with difficult words. Before, midway, and following 20 weeks of treatment, we assessed improvement in reading rate, word recognition, decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension across conditions and determined the impact of improved rate on comprehension. We found significant differences favoring the treatment groups in rate, word recognition, and comprehension, but not in decoding or vocabulary. We found no significant differences in growth between levels of text difficulty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of music on reading comprehension of junior high school students.

This quantitative study was an investigation of the effect of lyrical music on reading comprehension by adolescents. Existing research has produced results that range from concluding such distraction may be detrimental to finding it could be helpful. The reading comprehension subtest of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, 4th edition (MacGinitie, MacGinitie, Maria, & Dryer, 2000) was administered to 334 7th- and 8th-grade students. Testing was conducted under two conditions: a nonmusic environment, and with accompanying music comprising Billboard Magazine's (2006) top hit singles. Following the music portion of the test, students completed a survey to assess any preference for or against listening to music while studying. Results of an analysis of variance showed performance declined significantly when listening to music. A point biserial correlation illustrated a pronounced detrimental effect on comprehension for students exhibiting a stronger preference for listening to music while studying. Results are important for understanding influences on study habits, with the goal of helping educators and school psychologists design support systems tailored to the needs of adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Turning around reading achievement: Predictors of high school students' academic resilience.

In a national, longitudinal database, factors were examined that enabled public school students on a path toward failure to significantly improve reading achievement by high school graduation. Youths who faced the proximal risk of low achievement during the transition to high school were vulnerable to continued low achievement or failure; yet, a small number improved reading proficiency from failing the basic level to passing the intermediate or advanced levels. Being Caucasian, being female, having an internal locus of control, and taking an academic curriculum in high school independently predicted academic resilience. The role of student socioeconomic status in predicting resilience was explained by psychological and school environment variables. The path between locus of control and resilience was partly mediated by high school curriculum; the path between 8th-grade educational aspirations and resilience was fully mediated by curriculum. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Testing and refining the direct and inferential mediation model of reading comprehension.

A significant proportion of American high school students struggle with reading comprehension. Theoretical models of reading comprehension might help researchers understand these difficulties, because they can point to variables that make the largest contributions to comprehension. On the basis of an extensive review of the literature, we created a new model of reading comprehension, the direct and inferential mediation (DIME) model. The model hypothesizes relationships among background knowledge, inferences, reading comprehension strategies, vocabulary, and word reading and addresses the direct and mediated effects of these 5 predictors on comprehension. The authors tested the fit of the model and 3 variations of the model to data from 175 students in 9th grade. The DIME model explained 66% of the variance in comprehension. Vocabulary and background knowledge made the largest contributions to comprehension, followed by inference, word reading, and strategies. Analyses of participants scoring below the 30th percentile on comprehension showed these students to have low scores on all of the measures. The authors suggest that vocabulary and background knowledge interventions might be the best way to begin improving the academic reading comprehension of students like those in the sample. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What's meaning got to do with it: The role of vocabulary in word reading and reading comprehension.

There is at present no clear consensus as to the nature of the relations between oral vocabulary and specific literacy skills. The present study distinguished between vocabulary breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge to better explain the role of oral vocabulary in various reading skills. A sample of 60 typically developing Grade 4 students was assessed on measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary breadth, depth of vocabulary knowledge, decoding, visual word recognition, and reading comprehension. Concurrent analyses revealed that each distinct reading skill was related to the vocabulary measures in a unique manner. Receptive vocabulary breadth was the only oral vocabulary variable that predicted decoding performance after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence. In contrast, expressive vocabulary breadth predicted visual word recognition, whereas depth of vocabulary knowledge predicted reading comprehension. The results are discussed in terms of interrelations between phonological and semantic factors in the acquisition of distinct reading skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Story retell: A fluency-based indicator of reading comprehension.

This article presents a fluency-based measure of reading comprehension. A part of the Vitals Indicators of Progress (VIP) system, the measure outlined here represents an alternate form to the retell-fluency measure in the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy System (DIBELS). Measures of retell fluency provide an efficient, fluency-based tool for teachers to use in identifying the handful of children whose oral reading fluency may not adequately represent comprehension. When used in tandem with oral fluency measures, retell measures provide a vehicle for more reliably targeting classroom and school-level resources and for maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of early reading instruction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of connectives on young readers' processing and comprehension of text.

Connectives are cohesive devices that signal the relations between clauses and are critical to the construction of a coherent representation of a text's meaning. The authors investigated young readers' knowledge, processing, and comprehension of temporal, causal, and adversative connectives using offline and online tasks. In a cloze task, 10-year-olds were more accurate than 8-year-olds on temporal and adversative connectives, but both age groups differed from adult levels of performance (Experiment 1). When required to rate the “sense” of 2-clause sentences linked by connectives, 10-year-olds and adults were better at discriminating between clauses linked by appropriate and inappropriate connectives than were 8-year-olds. The 10-year-olds differed from adults only on the temporal connectives (Experiment 2). In contrast, online reading time measures indicated that 8-year-olds' processing of text is influenced by connectives as they read, in much the same way as 10-year-olds'. Both age groups read text more quickly when target 2-clause sentences were linked by an appropriate connective compared with texts in which a connective was neutral (and), inappropriate to the meaning conveyed by the 2 clauses, or not present (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings indicate that although knowledge and comprehension of connectives is still developing in young readers, connectives aid text processing in typically developing readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences and similarities in the shift from computation to retrieval during reading comprehension.

Previous research has established that 1 mechanism underlying speed-ups in task performance with practice involves a shift from computational processing to retrieval of information encoded earlier in practice. To what extent do young and older adults differ in shifts from computation to retrieval with practice in reading comprehension? Young and older adults read short stories containing an unfamiliar noun–noun combination (e.g., bee caterpillar) followed by disambiguating information indicating the combination’s meaning (either the normatively dominant meaning or an alternative subordinate meaning). Stories were presented either once or repeatedly across practice blocks. In Experiment 1, both age groups shifted from computation to retrieval with practice for the repeated items. However, older adults were slower to shift (e.g., older adults showed slower convergence of reading times for repeated subordinate and dominant items). Results of Experiment 2 suggested that the slower shift was due to age differences in bias against using retrieval rather than associative learning differences. The authors compare age differences in retrieval shifts in reading versus other tasks and discuss implications for age differences in the regulation of reading comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computerized instruction and the learning process.

Discusses developments in the field of computer assisted instruction (CAI), focusing on the Stanford Project, initiated in 1964 under a grant from the Office of Education to develop and implement a CAI program in initial reading and mathematics. A progress report deals with the reading program with particular reference to the past school year, when for the first time a sizable group of students received a major portion of their daily reading instruction under computer control. The first year's operation must be considered essentially as an extended debugging of both the computer system and the curriculum materials. Nevertheless, some interesting comments can be made on the basis of this experience regarding both the feasibility of CAI and the impact of such instruction on the overall learning process. Parts of the project addressed include the CAI reading curriculum, problems in implementing the curriculum, and some results from the first year of operation with first grade students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of adolescent reading comprehension in language 1 and language 2: A longitudinal analysis of constituent components.

This study investigated the relationship between reading comprehension development of 389 adolescents in their dominant language (Language 1 [L1], Dutch) and a foreign language (Language 2 [L2], English). In each consecutive year from Grades 8 through 10, a number of measurements were taken. Students' reading comprehension, their linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and grammar knowledge) and processing efficiency (speed of word recognition and sentence comprehension) in both languages, and their metacognitive knowledge about reading were assessed. The relative strengths of the effects of these components of reading were analyzed to distinguish among 3 hypotheses about the relationship between L1 and L2 reading comprehension: the transfer hypothesis, the threshold hypothesis, and the processing efficiency hypothesis. The transfer hypothesis predicts a strong relationship between L1 and L2 reading comprehension and a strong effect of metacognitive knowledge on L2 reading comprehension, whereas the threshold and processing efficiency hypotheses predict a more important role of language-specific knowledge and processing skills. Results support the transfer hypothesis, although language-specific knowledge and fluency also contribute to L2 reading performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computerized instruction and the learning process: Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by Richard C. Atkinson (American Psychologist, 1968[Apr]). The last sentence of the first column on page 231 should read as follows: (b) Items for which the correct answer is an adjective are more difficult to comprehend than items in which the correct answer is a noun or verb; similarly, verbs are more difficult than nouns. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 2005-10451-001). Discusses developments in the field of computer assisted instruction (CAI), focusing on the Stanford Project, initiated in 1964 under a grant from the Office of Education to develop and implement a CAI program in initial reading and mathematics. A progress report deals with the reading program with particular reference to the past school year, when for the first time a sizable group of students received a major portion of their daily reading instruction under computer control. The first year's operation must be considered essentially as an extended debugging of both the computer system and the curriculum materials. Nevertheless, some interesting comments can be made on the basis of this experience regarding both the feasibility of CAI and the impact of such instruction on the overall learning process. Parts of the project addressed include the CAI reading curriculum, problems in implementing the curriculum, and some results from the first year of operation with first grade students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictors of reading comprehension for struggling readers: The case of Spanish-speaking language minority learners.

This longitudinal study examined the process of English reading comprehension at age 11 years for 173 low-achieving Spanish-speaking children. The influence of growth rates, from early childhood (age 4.5 years) to pre-adolescence (age 11 years), in vocabulary and word reading skills on this complex process were evaluated with structural equation modeling. Standardized measures of word reading accuracy and productive vocabulary were administered annually, in English and Spanish, and English reading comprehension measures were administered at age 11 years. Latent growth curve analyses revealed that English skills accounted for all unique variance in English reading comprehension outcomes. Further, expected developmental shifts in the influence of word reading and vocabulary skills over time were not shown, likely on account of students' below-grade-level reading comprehension achievement. This work underscores the need for theoretical models of comprehension to account for students' skill profiles and abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)