Normal Variation in Reading Acquisition

1986 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 691-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Wise Berninger
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Normal Variation ◽  
Word Decoding ◽  
Linguistic Skills ◽  
Whole Word ◽  
Reading And Spelling

Visual, linguistic, reading, and spelling tests were administered to the same 45 children at the end of kindergarten and of first grade. Normal variation, i.e., diversity not related to pathology, was found in the visual and linguistic skills and was shown to be related to reading and spelling achievement for a sample of suburban children of similar socioeconomic status. Individual differences in three visual skills—selective attention to letter information (RT), memory for a component letter (accuracy), and memory for a whole word (accuracy)—and two linguistic skills—phonemic analysis and vocabulary understanding—were reliable over the first year of formal reading instruction and had concurrent validity in that they were correlated with achievement in word decoding/encoding at the end of kindergarten and of first grade. Of these five skills, phonemic analysis accounted for more variance in achievement (52% to 64%, depending upon achievement measure) than any other single skill. Significantly mote variance in achievement was accounted for when both a visual skill (memory for a sequence) and a linguistic skill (phonemic analysis) were considered than when either alone was at end of first grade. The predictive validity of quantitatively defined “disabilities” (at or more than a standard deviation below the mean) was investigated; disabilities in both visual and linguistic skills at the end of kindergarten were associated with low achievement in word decoding/encoding at the end of first grade. Two pairs of identical twin girls (each co-twin taught by a different teacher) were not mote congruent on several achievement measures than two pairs of unrelated girls, taught by the same teacher and matched to each other and a twin pair on verbal ability and age. Normal variation in acquisition of word decoding/encoding probably results from an interaction between genetic individual differences in cognitive skills and the processes of assimilation and accommodation during environmental transactions proposed by Piaget.

scholarly journals Impact of Classroom-Based Fluency Instruction on Grade One Students in an Urban Elementary School

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Timothy V. Rasinski ◽  
Randy Yates ◽  
Kelly Foerg ◽  
Kelly Greene ◽  
David Paige ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Reading Fluency ◽  
Small Sample Size ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Reading Performance ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Word Decoding ◽  
Comparable Group ◽  
Fluency Instruction ◽  
Grade One

The present exploratory study examined the effect of the implementation of a reading fluency instruction protocol on the reading performance of early first grade students in an urban school. Previous research has tended to examine the effects of fluency instruction after students have achieved some degree of competency in word recognition, usually toward the end of first grade and beyond. The fluency instruction provided in this study included repeated and assisted reading and was delivered daily over a ten-week period in the first semester of the school year by classroom teachers. The reading performance of students in the fluency instruction group (n = 51) was compared with a comparable group of first grade students (n = 27) who did not receive the fluency instruction, though the total number of minutes devoted to daily reading instruction and home reading was equal between groups. Descriptive analyses of pre- and post-testing data suggest that the first grade students receiving the fluency instruction made substantive, but not statistically significant, gains in reading achievement over the comparison group of students not receiving fluency instruction. The results suggest that dedicated and systematic fluency instruction may be appropriate for students before high levels of word decoding are achieved and that fluency instruction may be an effective instructional protocol as early as the beginning of first grade. Given the acknowledged limitations, including small sample size, further research into fluency instruction in early first grade is recommended.

scholarly journals Evidence for complementary effects of code- and knowledge-focused reading instruction

2021 ◽  
pp. 026565902110142
Author(s):  
Meghan Vollebregt ◽  
Jana Leggett ◽  
Sherry Raffalovitch ◽  
Colin King ◽  
Deanna Friesen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Listening Comprehension ◽  
Nonsense Word ◽  
Dialogic Reading ◽  
Written Expression ◽  
Word Decoding ◽  
School Year ◽  
One Year

There is growing recognition of the need to end the debate regarding reading instruction in favor of an approach that provides a solid foundation in phonics and other underlying language skills to become expert readers. We advance this agenda by providing evidence of specific effects of instruction focused primarily on the written code or on developing knowledge. In a grade 1 program evaluation study, an inclusive and comprehensive program with a greater code-based focus called Reading for All (RfA) was compared to a knowledge-focused program involving Dialogic Reading. Phonological awareness, letter word recognition, nonsense word decoding, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, written expression and vocabulary were measured at the beginning and end of the school year, and one year after in one school only. Results revealed improvements in all measures except listening comprehension and vocabulary for the RfA program at the end of the first school year. These gains were maintained for all measures one year later with the exception of an improvement in written expression. The Dialogic Reading group was associated with a specific improvement in vocabulary in schools from lower socioeconomic contexts. Higher scores were observed for RfA than Dialogic Reading groups at the end of the first year on nonsense word decoding, phonological awareness and written expression, with the differences in the latter two remaining significant one year later. The results provide evidence of the need for interventions to support both word recognition and linguistic comprehension to better reading comprehension.

Raise your hand if you’re spatial

Gesture ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Autumn B. Hostetter ◽  
Martha W. Alibali
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Spatial Visualization ◽  
Semantic Fluency ◽  
Spatial Skills ◽  
Verbal Skill ◽  
Spatial Skill ◽  
Phonemic Fluency ◽  
Representational Gestures ◽  
Gesture Production

Individuals differ greatly in how often they gesture when they speak. This study investigated relations between speakers’ verbal and spatial skills and their gesture rates. Two types of verbal skill were measured: semantic fluency, which is thought to index efficiency with lexical access, and phonemic fluency, which is thought to index efficiency with organizing the lexicon in novel ways. Spatial skill was measured with a visualization task. We hypothesized that individuals with low verbal skill but high spatial visualization skill would gesture most often, due to having mental images not closely linked to verbal forms. This hypothesis was supported for phonemic fluency, but not for semantic fluency. We also found that individuals with low phonemic fluency and individuals with high phonemic fluency produced representational gestures at higher rates than individuals with average phonemic fluency. The findings indicate that individual differences in gesture production are associated with individual differences in cognitive skills.

Influence of Test Anxiety on Measurement of Intelligence

2003 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Oostdam ◽  
Joost Meijer
Keyword(s):  
Test Anxiety ◽  
Test Performance ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Measurement Model ◽  
Stressful Situation ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Junior Secondary ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Low Performance

In this study a measurement model for a test anxiety questionnaire was investigated in a sample of 207 Dutch students in the first grade of junior secondary vocational education. The results of a confirmatory factor analysis showed that a model for test anxiety with three factors for worry, emotionality, and lack of self-confidence is associated with a significantly better fit than a model comprised of only the first two factors. The relations of the three test anxiety factors to scores on intelligence tests for measuring verbal ability, reasoning, and spatial ability were examined. The results indicated that test anxiety appears to be transitory: the negative relation between test anxiety and test performance promptly fades away. Finally, we examined whether a distinction can be made between highly test anxious students with low performance due to worrisome thoughts (interference hypothesis) or low ability (deficit hypothesis). Results do not support the deficit hypothesis because the scores of all highly test anxious students increased in a less stressful situation.

Mutualistic coupling of vocabulary and non-verbal reasoning in children with and without language disorder

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Louise Griffiths ◽  
Rogier Kievit ◽  
Courtenay Norbury
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
Change Score ◽  
Developmental Theory ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Verbal Reasoning ◽  
Coupling Parameters ◽  
Rates Of Growth

Mutualism is a developmental theory that posits positive reciprocal relationships between distinct cognitive abilities during development. It predicts that abilities such as language and reasoning will influence each other’s rates of growth. This may explain why children with Language Disorders also tend to have lower than average non-verbal cognitive abilities, as poor language would limit the rate of growth of other cognitive skills. The current study tests whether language and non-verbal reasoning show mutualistic coupling in children with and without language disorder using three waves of data from a longitudinal cohort study that over-sampled children with poor language at school entry (N = 501, 7-13 years). Bivariate Latent Change Score models were used to determine whether early receptive vocabulary predicted change in non-verbal reasoning and vice-versa. Models that included mutualistic coupling parameters between vocabulary and non-verbal reasoning showed superior fit to models without these parameters, replicating previous findings. Specifically, children with higher initial language abilities showed greater improvement in non-verbal ability and vice versa. Multi-group models suggested that coupling between language and non-verbal reasoning was equally strong in children with language disorder and those without. This indicates that language has downstream effects on other cognitive abilities, challenging the existence of selective language impairments. Future intervention studies should test whether improving language skills in children with language disorder has positive impacts on other cognitive abilities (and vice versa), and low non-verbal IQ should not be a barrier to accessing such intervention.

An analysis of individual differences in arithmetic

1964 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 471-473
Author(s):  
Oscar T. Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Grade Level ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Sixth Grade ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Level 1 ◽  
Level 2

It is common knowledge among teachers of arithmetic that individual pupil differences in the elementary school are very pronounced at every grade level. It is equally apparent that the range of individual differences increases from grade level to grade level. Wrightstone has stated that these differences may be as great as three to four years in the first-grade, five to six years in the fourth-gmde, and seven to eight years at the sixth-grade level.1 Beck, Cook and Kearney have observed, however, that normally in “arithmetic reasoning and computation the range is … between six and seven years at the sixth-grade level.”2

Non-verbal Measures of Ability Within the Context of Ability Assessment

1984 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-59
Author(s):  
Helga A. H. Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Standardized Tests ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
Personal Attitude ◽  
Ability Tests ◽  
Ability Testing

To provide a framework for our discussion of the use of non-verbal ability tests, I would like to precede my paper by a few general remarks concerning ability testing in the 1980s. Everything I am going to say does, in fact, apply to non-verbal tests, the same as it applies to other types of tests; and it certainly applies to the battery of non-verbal ability tests, the NAT, which the ACER will publish during the next 12 months.We cannot ignore the controversy which is going on around us. No one operates in a vacuum. No matter what our present personal attitude to the use of tests in assessment might be, nothing we do can be perceived in isolation from present, and for that matter past, debate in the field.We are finding ourselves at a point in time where there is widespread concern and often fierce debate about the use of standardized tests for the assessment of individual differences and the evaluation of programs.

Effectiveness of a Supplemental Early Reading Intervention Scaled up in Multiple Schools

2010 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 394-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn A. Denton ◽  
Kim Nimon ◽  
Patricia G. Mathes ◽  
Elizabeth A. Swanson ◽  
Caroline Kethley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Reading Intervention ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Reading Difficulties ◽  
Early Reading ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Supplemental Reading ◽  
Early Reading Intervention ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Typical School

This effectiveness study examined a supplemental reading intervention that may be appropriate as one component of a response-to-intervention (RTI) system. First-grade students in 31 schools who were at risk for reading difficulties were randomly assigned to receive Responsive Reading Instruction (RRI; Denton, 2001; Denton & Hocker, 2006; n = 182) or typical school practice (TSP; n = 40). About 43% of the TSP students received an alternate school-provided supplemental reading intervention. Results indicated that the RRI group had significantly higher outcomes than the TSP group on multiple measures of reading. About 91% of RRI students and 79% of TSP students met word reading criteria for adequate intervention response, but considerably fewer met a fluency benchmark.

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