Effects of Reading Ability on Children's Comprehension Evaluation and Regulation

1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Zabrucky ◽  
Hilary Horn Ratner
Keyword(s):  
Reading Ability ◽  
Verbal Report ◽  
Sixth Grade ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Comprehension Monitoring ◽  
Verbal Reports ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
On Line ◽  
Good And Poor Readers ◽  
Multidimensional Process

Good and poor readers in the sixth grade ( M age = 11.92 years) were videotaped reading inconsistent stories presented one sentence at a time. Children's comprehension evaluation was assessed with on-line (reading times) and verbal report measures; comprehension regulation was assessed by examining look-backs during reading. All children read inconsistencies more slowly than consistent control information but good readers were more likely than poor readers to look back at inconsistencies during reading, to give accurate verbal reports of passage consistency following reading, and to recall text inconsistencies. Results highlight the importance of using multiple comprehension monitoring measures in assessing children's abilities and of treating comprehension monitoring as a multidimensional process.

scholarly journals Effects of Passage Type on Comprehension Monitoring and Recall in Good and Poor Readers

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Zabrucky ◽  
Hilary Horn Ratner
Keyword(s):  
Error Detection ◽  
Sixth Grade ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Comprehension Monitoring ◽  
Verbal Reports ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Look Back ◽  
On Line ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

An error detection paradigm was used to assess the effects of passage type on students' comprehension monitoring and recall of texts. Good and poor readers in the sixth grade ( M age =12 years, 0 months) read inconsistent expository and narrative passages presented one sentence at a time. On- and off-line measures (reading times and verbal reports of passage inconsistencies) were used to examine students' comprehension evaluation, and look-backs to inconsistencies during reading were used to measure comprehension regulation. Although all students detected problems on-line, good readers were better able to verbally report on passage consistency following reading. Passage type affected regulation of understanding with students more likely to look back at inconsistencies in narratives but not expository passages. Students were more likely to reread expository passages, however, when passages did not contain problems and were less able to recall expository passage information. Implications for instruction and directions for future research are discussed.

The Effect of Prior Knowledge on the Question Answering of Good and Poor Readers

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty C. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Question Answering ◽  
Reading Level ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Fifth Grade ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Fifth Grade Students ◽  
New Information ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

The purpose of this investigation was to compare the question answering of good and poor readers when their prior knowledge for the answers to questions was determined before reading to be accurate, inaccurate, incomplete, or missing. Fifty-six fifth-grade students with equivalent I.Q.'s, but varying in reading ability and extent of general prior knowledge for the passage topics, participated in the study. Subjects read an expository passage written on their approximate instructional reading level. The results indicated that poor readers did not use prior knowledge to the same extent as did good readers. This was especially true when students were learning new information. The results also suggest that poor readers have difficulty answering text implicit questions even if they possess adequate prior knowledge for passage topics.

Reading and Listening to Expository Text

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalind Horowitz ◽  
S. Jay Samuels
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Oral Reading ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Expository Text ◽  
Sixth Grade ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Poor Reading ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

Poor reading comprehension may result from a general comprehension problem, a decoding problem, or a combination of these problems. Using a counterbalanced design, 38 good and poor sixth-grade readers read aloud and listened to easy and hard texts. Immediately after reading and listening, students orally retold what they had read or heard. Their recalls were scored for number of idea units produced. Results indicated no difference in listening comprehension between good and poor readers for either easy or hard texts, but a significant difference in oral reading comprehension in favor of good readers on both easy and hard texts. The finding of no difference in listening suggests that the poor readers in this sample did not have a general comprehension problem, while their poor oral reading performance indicates that they did have a decoding problem. These findings support a more complex comprehension process model of listening and reading than has typically been described in the literature.

Picture-Naming Interference with Good and Poor Readers

1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Guttentag
Keyword(s):  
Picture Naming ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Third Grade ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Pictures And Words ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

22 third grade children of high and low reading ability ( ns = 11) were tested for their ability to name pictures while trying to ignore words or nonword strings of letters printed inside the pictures. Nonoverlapping sets of pictures and words were used as stimuli to avoid the possibility of sensitizing subjects to the particular words used in the experiment (Neisser, 1976). Both groups experienced mote interference from intra-category than extra-category words, indicating that they processed the words automatically. Only the good readers experienced more interference from pseudowords than consonant strings, suggesting that poor readers are less sensitive than good readers to orthographic regularity.

Grammatical knowledge of third grade good and poor readers

2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVA E. WALTZMAN ◽  
HELEN S. CAIRNS
Keyword(s):  
Reading Ability ◽  
Sentence Type ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Third Grade ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Grammatical Knowledge ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Reading Groups ◽  
Good And Poor Readers ◽  
And Control

The relationship between grammatical knowledge and reading ability in third grade good and poor readers was investigated. Two aspects of grammar – binding and control – were assessed to determine whether poor readers had syntactic deficits. These principles both relate to the interpretation of pronominal elements. Interpretations were assessed through a sentence–picture matching task in which picture depictions of all the possible interpretations of pronominal elements in verbally presented sentences were included. The only sentence type that differentiated the two reading groups was performance on sentences related to one of the binding principles, Principle B. Since obedience to Principle B probably involves pragmatic as well as syntactic principles, this finding suggests another way that good readers may differ from poor readers.

A comparison of comprehension and production abilities of good and poor readers

1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva G. Bar-Shalom ◽  
Stephen Crain ◽  
Donald Shankweiler
Keyword(s):  
Reading Disability ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Production Task ◽  
High Error Rate ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

ABSTRACTResearch from several sources indicates that reading disability is often associated with difficulty in comprehending some complex spoken sentences, including those with relative clauses. The present study exploits a new methodology, elicited production, to identify the source of comprehension difficulties of poor readers. Both the elicited production task and a conventional act-out task were employed in a study of 30 children (aged 7-8), who were selected for reading ability. On the act-out task, the poor readers displayed a high error rate on two relative clause structures (SO and OO relatives), as had been found by Mann, Shankweiler, and Smith (1984), but these structures were elicited from the poor readers as successfully as from the good readers (on more than 80% of trials).

Sensitivity to Orthographic Structure as a Function of Grade and Reading Ability

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Allington
Keyword(s):  
Reading Ability ◽  
Zero Order ◽  
School Experience ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Achievement Level ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Direct Function ◽  
Grade Levels ◽  
The One ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

Good and poor readers at two grade levels were presented with zero-order and fourth-order approximations of English words. They were directed to select the one item in each pair that was most wordlike. Results show significant differences were found between older poor readers and younger good readers whose reading ability was equivalent. These results were interpreted as providing support for the hypothesis that orthographic sensitivity is a direct function of reading achievement level, not age or school experience in general.

scholarly journals Verbal Reports as Measures of Comprehension Evaluation

1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
DeWayne Moore ◽  
Karen Zabrucky
Keyword(s):  
Grade Level ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Verbal Report ◽  
Sixth Grade ◽  
Performance Measure ◽  
Verbal Reports ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Lower Ability ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Passage Reading

The present study assessed several commonly used measures of children's comprehension evaluation ability. Third and sixth grade higher and lower ability readers (N= 120) read texts that either contained an inconsistency or did not. Following each passage reading, six measures of comprehension evaluation were obtained: one performance measure and five commonly used verbal report measures. The results revealed that different verbal report measures are not comparable measures of children's comprehension evaluation ability. The verbal report measures were differently affected by grade level, reading ability, and text variables. Moreover, the verbal report measures did not all relate equally to comprehension evaluation performance and relationships between verbal reports and performance were stronger for higher ability readers and young readers. The results suggest that caution is needed in interpreting studies using verbal report measures in isolation to assess children's evaluation skills, and that the use of poorly defined verbal report measures may be one factor contributing to inconsistent findings concerning the development of such skills.

The association between comprehension of spoken sentences and early reading ability: the role of phonetic representation

1984 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 627-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia A. Mann ◽  
Donald Shankweiler ◽  
Suzanne T. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Early Reading ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Processing Strategies ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Good And Poor Readers ◽  
Phonetic Representation

ABSTRACTWhen repeating spoken sentences, children who are good readers tend to be more accurate than poor readers because they are able to make more effective use of phonetic representation in the service of working memory (Mann, Liberman & Shankweiler 1980). This study of good and poor readers in the third grade has assessed both the repetition and comprehension of relative-clause sentences to explore more fully the association between early reading ability, spoken sentence processing and use of phonetic representation. It was found that the poor readers did less well than the good readers on sentence comprehension as well as on sentence repetition, and that their comprehension errors reflected a greater reliance on two sentence-processing strategies favoured by young children: the minimum-distance principle and conjoined-clause analysis. In general, the pattern of results is consonant with a view that difficulties with phonetic representation could underlie the inferior sentence comprehension of poor beginning readers. The finding that these children place greater reliance on immature processing strategies raises the further possibility that the tempo of their syntactic development may be slower than that of good readers.

Spatial Coding in the Processing of Anaphor by Good and Poor Readers: Evidence from Eye Movement Analyses

1988 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 693-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne S. Murray ◽  
Alan Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Reading Ability ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Spatial Coding ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Inspection Strategy ◽  
Good And Poor Readers ◽  
Skilled Group

An experiment that examined the way in which young readers deployed eye movements while reading sentences and while answering questions containing either a pronominal or noun anaphor is reported. To evaluate the possible causal role played by differences in inspection strategies between readers of above- and below-average reading skill, a third“age control” group of younger children was also tested. This group was matched on absolute reading ability with the less skilled group of older children, and on relative reading ability (i.e. reading quotient) with the more skilled group. Differences in inspection strategy were apparent between the groups of good and poor readers. Good readers launched more selective reinspections, whereas the poorer readers were more inclined to engage in“backtracking” and appeared to make less use of the displayed text. In every case there was a marked similarity in the behaviour of the good readers and the“age controls”. These results suggest that the ability to code the spatial location of words in a sentence, and, where necessary, to use this information to launch accurately targetted selective reinspections of previously read text, plays a crucial role in the development of skilled reading performance.

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