MOCCA College: An assessment of inferential narrative and expository comprehension

MOCCA-C is an assessment of adult reading ability designed for early diagnosis of reading problems, for formative assessment in reading intervention planning, for assessment of reading improvement over time, and for assessment of reading intervention outcomes. It uses both narrative and expository reading passages and it currently has four forms. Two goals of this research were to compare narrative and expository passages on (a) their difficulty and (b) their ability to discriminate between good and poor readers. An additional goal was to assess whether narrative and expository passages measure the same or different comprehension dimensions. A final goal was to assess the reliability of forms. We randomly assigned students to forms with between 274 – 279 college students per form. Across the several forms, results suggest that narrative passages are easier and better discriminate between good and poor readers. However, both narrative and expository passages measure a single dimension of ability. MOCCA-C scores are reliable. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Metacontrast masking as a measure of change detection: Children with poor reading fluency show impaired change detection for both letters and shapes

Developmental dyslexia, a specific learning difficulty in reading, manifests as effortful decoding of words and as such is commonly associated with reduced phonemic awareness. However, its underlying cause remains elusive, with magnocellular visual processing, temporal auditory processing, visual attentional deficits and cerebellar dysfunction all gaining some traction. More recent theories have concerned visual attention span, measuring the parallel attentive capacity of the sensory visual system. However the VA span task as implemented requires reports, both conscious recall and recognition of letters, that activate many cortical areas beyond sensory visual cortex. Change detection, in contrast, does not require the conscious recognition of items, but simply awareness that the stimulus has changed, or not, again testing visual attention in a parallel fashion, but avoiding the complications of higher order cognitive processes. Thus, we investigated change detection in 33 good and poor readers with ages of around 10 yr, using a gap paradigm. Groups of 4 letters or 4 shapes were presented for a fixed time (0.7 s), followed after a 0.25 s gap, by a second similar group, each item surrounded by an annular frame filled with dynamic random noise of variable contrast. Detection performance was manipulated by varying the contrast of these meta-contrast mask frames, yielding a threshold contrast of the frames at which participants could just detect change. In two separate experiments, letters and rectangular shapes were used as target items, in order to test whether previous findings of superior change detection in good compared with poor readers was a result of greater automaticity in letter recognition of the good readers. The results indicate that the good readers were able to detect change at higher levels of masking distraction for both the letter and shape targets, indicating that this difference is not specifically related to to the training of graphemic or lexical information but more likely reflects a difference in alerting or pre-recognition stages of visual processing. Together, the results provide further support of the notion that there is a low level attentional performance difference between dyslexic and normal reading children. Thus, the results further bring transient spatial attention directly into the spotlight as an ability critical for learning to read.

Initial and Later Procedural Learning Rates of Implicit Sequences in Good and Poor Readers of English

Children with developmental disorders of reading are argued to have procedural learning deficits, such as incompetency to learn sequences. However, the evidence is weak. Learning in procedural system undergoes at least two well-known phases, initial acquisition and later offline consolidation. And, offline sequence learning is less studied in children with reading difficulties. In the present study, we present data on initial and later learning rates of implicit sequences in a group of children with (n=22) and without (n=22) reading difficulties in English whose native language is Kannada, a structurally distinct language to English. Our population is unique and were never studied on their procedural learning. They are unique in the sense that they receive extensive literacy exposure in English (which is their L2) from very early age, however, their oral fluency in L2 and text exposure in L1 are limited. We ran an implicit serial reaction time task to test their learning rates of 10- item visuo-spatial sequences on both initial and later sessions (> 24 & < 48 hours). Findings showed that poor readers showed slower learning rates only on later learning phase, where as their learning rate on initial learning phase was comparable to good readers. Further, learning slopes did not predict literacy scores in either of the groups. The importance of examining the learning processes holistically in children with reading difficulties and the findings’ potential contribution to informing the theories arguing procedural learning deficits are discussed.

Cortical Auditory-Evoked Potential and Behavioral Evidence for Differences in Auditory Processing between Good and Poor Readers

Background: The relationship between auditory processing (AP) and reading is thought to be significant; however our understanding of this relationship is somewhat limited. Previous studies have investigated the relation between certain electrophysiological and behavioral measures of AP and reading abilities in children. This study attempts to further understand that relation. Purpose: Differences in AP between good and poor readers were investigated using electrophysiological and behavioral measures. Study Sample: Thirty-two children (15 female) aged 9–11 yr were placed in either a good reader group or poor reader group, based on the scores of a nationally normed reading test in New Zealand. Research Design: Children were initially tested using an automated behavioral measuring system that runs through a tablet computer known as “Feather Squadron.” Following the administration of Feather Squadron, cortical auditory-evoked potentials (CAEPs) were recorded using a speech stimulus (/m/) with the HEARLab® Cortical Auditory Evoked Potential Analyzer. Data Collection and Analysis: The children were evaluated on eight subsections of the Feather Squadron, and CAEP waveform peaks were visually identified and averaged. Separate Kruskal–Wallis analyses were performed for the behavioral and electrophysiological variables, with group (good versus poor readers) serving as the between-group independent variable and scores from the Feather Squadron AP tasks as well as CAEP latencies and amplitudes as dependent variables. After the children’s AP status was determined, the entire group was further divided into three groups: typically developing, auditory processing disorder + reading difficulty (APD + RD), and RDs only. Statistical analyses were repeated for these subgroups. Results: Poorer readers showed significantly worse scores than the good readers for the Tonal Pattern 1, Tonal Pattern 2, and Word Double Dichotic Right tasks. CAEP differences observed across groups indicated comorbid effects of RD and AP difficulties. N2 amplitude was significantly smaller for the poor readers. Conclusions: The current study found altered AP in poor readers using behavioral Feather Squadron measures and speech-evoked cortical potentials. These results provide further evidence that intact central auditory function is fundamental for reading development.