Selective reading: Attention to the "unattended" lines.

Previous research on selective reading indicates that upon direct questioning Ss are usually unable to recall words that appear in irrelevant lines. In 3 experiments with male 6th graders (n = 24) and college freshmen (n = 31), a procedure was developed to examine the influence of the unattended lines on memory for the words in attended lines in selective reading. In each study, q of the Ss were given a set of selective reading passages to be read aloud. In the irrelevant lines of each passage were wrong answers to the questions which followed that story. The remainder of the Ss in each experiment read control passages without irrelevant lines. Results show that although Ss in the selective reading condition could not recall the words in the irrelevant lines, their answers to the questions following each passage were influenced by that "unattended" material. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Blood lead concentrations and iron deficiency in Canadian aboriginal infants

Aboriginal Cree infants living in northern Quebec who were 9 months of age were screened for anemia, iron deficiency and elevated blood lead concentrations. Of the 314 infants who were eligible to participate, 274 (87.3%) were screened for anemia, 186 had blood lead concentration measured and 141 of the latter group had iron status determined. The median blood lead concentration was 0.08 micromol/l (range 0.01-1.00 micromol/l). The 25, 50 and 75 percentiles for blood lead concentration were 0.05, 0.08 and 0.12 micromol/l, respectively. The prevalence of elevated blood lead concentrations (> 0.48 micromol/l) was 2.7% (95% Cl 0.36-5.0). Among infants who had blood lead measured, the prevalence of anemia (hemoglobin < 110 g/l) was 25.0% and 7.9% of infants had iron-deficiency anemia (hemoglobin < 110 g/l and serum ferritin < 10 microg/l). Anemic infants had a higher mean geometric blood lead concentration than did babies without anemia (0.11 micromol/l vs. 0.07 micromol/l, P = 0.003). Likewise, infants with iron-deficiency anemia had a significantly higher mean geometric blood lead concentration than infants without iron deficiency anemia (0.16 micromol/l vs. 0.07 micromol/l, P = 0.001). There was a significant negative correlation between blood lead and hemoglobin concentrations (r = -0.203, P = 0.006) and between blood lead and serum ferritin concentrations (r = -0.245, P = 0.003). Infants who were fed traditional food (fish, fowl and game) did not have a significantly different mean geometric blood lead concentration, hemoglobin concentration or serum ferritin concentration than infants who did not eat traditional food. Few infants (5.3%) ate traditional food daily.     

Differential utilization of syntactic and semantic information by skilled and less skilled readers in the intermediate grades.

Administered to 270 4th–6th graders the Culture Fair Intelligence Test and the Comprehension subtest of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests. Matched pairs of skilled and less skilled readers then read aloud a variety of material in cloze procedure format and printed in geometric transformations. The extent to which the syntactic and semantic constraints of the text guided their performance was assessed. Both on the cloze procedure and the transformed texts, skilled readers made greater use of grammatical and contextual information. Furthermore, there was no significant improvement across grade levels in the proportions of syntactically and semantically appropriate responses. The stability of differences between skilled and less skilled readers suggests the possibility that differential utilization of syntactic and semantic cues by beginning readers might contribute to differences among them in the development of reading skill. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A picture is not always worth a thousand words: Pictures as distractors in reading.

Conducted 2 studies with a total of 32 2nd graders and 66 3rd graders to examine the influence of pictures in the periphery on children's speed and accuracy of reading. In both studies, Ss were required to read sets of words under each of 3 conditions: with no pictures, with related pictures, and with unrelated pictures. The 2 studies differed in the age of the Ss (2nd vs 3rd graders) and in the location of the pictures (behind vs above the words). In both studies, the results consistently show the following: (a) The words were read more slowly whenever pictures were present. (b) Unrelated pictures produced more interference than related pictures. (c) The magnitude of both of these effects was inversely related to reading ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive-motivational characteristics of children varying in reading ability: Evidence for learned helplessness in poor readers.

Employing a cognitive-motivational analysis, the present investigation sought to determine some specific self-perceptions that might contribute to motivational and performance deficits observed in children with reading difficulties. 72 5th-grade boys of relatively good, average, and poor reading ability were assessed on tasks in which success and failure were manipulated. Consistent with predictions, poor readers displayed characteristics indicative of learned helplessness and low self-concepts of ability. These included significantly lower initial estimates of success, less persistence, attribution of failures to lack of ability and of successes to factors beyond personal control, and greater decrements in expectancy of success following failure. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading ability and text difficulty as influences on second graders' oral reading errors.

Assessed the influence of reading ability and difficulty of material on the types of oral reading errors made by 81 second-grade children. The results show that, overall, the proportion of graphically similar errors increased as material became more difficult, while the proportions of grammatically acceptable and semantically appropriate errors decreased. The interactions between reading ability and difficulty level were also significant, however, indicating that poor readers showed less change in all types of errors than good or normal readers. These results may be attributable to a greater flexibility in the reading strategies used by more skilled readers. Methodological implications of these findings for the reinterpretation of past research and for the design of future studies are discussed. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infection and anemia in Canadian aboriginal infants.

The prevalence of anemia in Aboriginal children is high, but, given the high burden of infection in these children, the extent to which anemia is due to iron deficiency and/or infection is unclear. To determine the contribution of iron deficiency to anemia, we screened 144 Aboriginal infants (70 boys, 74 girls) who were free from infection. The prevalence of anemia (hemoglobin <105 g/L) was 18.8%; caregivers reported that 53.5% of infants had had an infection in the two weeks before screening. Anemic infants were more likely than non-anemic infants to have had an infection before screening (74.1% versus 48.7%, p = 0.02), and anemic infants had a higher prevalence of iron deficiency revealed by low serum iron concentrations (<7 micromol/L) (73.7% versus 38.3%, p <0.01). Iron deficiency measured using serum ferritin concentration tended to be less marked in infants who had had an infection (13% versus 30.3%, p = 0.06); this is probably because serum ferritin is a positive acute-phase protein. This study indicates the difficulty of isolating the contribution of infection to anemia from the separate effects of dietary iron deficiency.