Development of an Abbreviated Adult Reading History Questionnaire (ARHQ-Brief) Using a Machine Learning Approach

Several crucial reasons exist to identify whether an adult has had reading disorder (RD) and to predict a child’s likelihood of developing RD. The Adult Reading History Questionnaire (ARHQ) is among the most commonly used self-reported questionnaires. High ARHQ scores indicate an increased likelihood that an adult had RD as a child, and that their children may develop RD. This study focused on whether a subset of ARHQ items (ARHQ-brief) could be equally effective in assessing adults’ reading history as the full ARHQ. We used a machine learning approach, lasso (known as L1 regularization), and identified 6 of 23 items that resulted in the ARHQ-brief. Data from 97 adults and 47 children were included. With the ARHQ-brief, we report a threshold of 0.323 as suitable to identify past likelihood of RD in adults with a sensitivity of 72.4% and a specificity of 81.5%. Comparison of predictive performances between ARHQ-brief and the full ARHQ showed that ARHQ-brief explained an additional 10%–35.2% of the variance in adult and child reading. Furthermore, we validated ARHQ-brief’s superior ability to predict reading ability using an independent sample of 28 children. We close by discussing limitations and future directions.

The effect of book format and parent language dominance on shared book reading in bilingual families

Shared book reading - an adult reading to a child - supports children’s language development (e.g. Sénéchal, Pagan, & Leve, 2008). Most of what we know about shared book reading comes from studies of monolingual families, but shared book reading in bilingual families is different than in monolingual families. First, bilingual families must divide their book-reading time and resources between two languages. Second, bilingual parents may not be equally comfortable reading in both of their languages, which may influence how much and how well they read in each language. One recent study found that in bilingual families, parents own more books and read to their children more often in their stronger language (Gonzalez-Barrero et al., 2021). This could further disadvantage children’s oral language development in their weaker language. Bilingual books - books that tell a story in two languages - could be a useful tool to address this problem as they may provide additional support for reading in a weaker language. Yet little is known about how bilingual families engage with this format. This project addresses this gap by directly observing French-English bilingual parents and their preschool-aged children during shared reading with traditional single-language books and bilingual books. Shared reading interactions will be transcribed, coded and analyzed to assess the quantity and quality of parent-child interactions when reading 1) a bilingual or traditional single-language book and 2) in a stronger or weaker language.

A-119 PPVT Impacted by Neuropathology in Moderate to Severe TBI

Objective Estimating premorbid intellectual functioning after brain injury is a critical element of determining cognitive decline. However, little research has been conducted on how Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-IV) performs in adults after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Given that PPVT measures receptive vocabulary, it has potential to serve as a hold measure test. The objective was to explore characteristics of PPVT in TBI relative to a commonly used proxy of premorbid function (Wechsler Test of Adult Reading, WTAR). Method Sixty-one adults with moderate to severe TBI underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation and structural neuroimaging. Principal components analyses were used to create cognitive composite scores. Pearson’s correlations were conducted to explore the relationships between PPVT/WTAR standard scores (SS) and neuropathology (white matter integrity as whole brain functional anisotropy [FA]). The relationships between PPVT/WTAR SSs and cognitive constructs were similarly examined. Results PPVT was significantly related to FA (r = 0.34, p = 0.014). However, there was no relationship between WTAR and neuropathology. PPVT was significantly related to age (r = 0.38, p = 0.006), so this variable was controlled for in associated analyses (NB. WTAR was not related to age). PPVT was found to be significantly related to contextualized and noncontextualized memory, attention, executive function, and processing speed (all ps < 0.05). In contrast, WTAR was only significantly related to contextualized memory, attention, and executive function. Conclusions PPVT appears to be impacted by neuropathology, indicating that it may not be appropriate as a hold measure after TBI. This may be explained by PPVT’s significant relationship with fluid intelligence domains known to be impacted after neurologic insult.

Editorial: Teaching children’s literature in the university: New perspectives and challenges for the future

Children’s literature is an area of frequent scholarship, reflecting its influential position in telling stories, developing literacy, and sharing knowledge in many cultures. At its best, children’s literature is transformative in the lives of children and their adult reading companions, and as such plays an important role in society. Indeed, in the last several decades, children’s literature has become an important focus of teaching and research in centres for literature and literary criticism, education, and library/information sciences in universities across the world. Much has been written about the historical undervaluing of children’s literature and research in this area (e.g., Nikolajeva, 2016). While there is considerable literature concerning the teaching of children’s literature in primary and secondary classrooms (e.g., Bland & Lütge, 2012; Arizpe & Styles, 2016; Ommundsen et al., 2021), there has been relatively little scholarship on the pedagogy involved in teaching children’s literature in a university setting with two notable exceptions. Teaching Children’s Fiction edited by Robert Butler (2006) presents eight chapters by experienced children’s literature teachers and scholars, mostly from Britain, concerning intellectual and educational traditions in children’s literature studies and teaching, sharing and discussion of teaching practices, and providing resources for teachers in this field. A Master Class in Children’s Literature, edited by April Bedford and Lettie Albright (2011), offers chapters in which children’s literature professors from across the United States of America share and reflect on their practice in relation to the structures of children’s literature courses, the characteristics and elements of children’s literature, and future trends and challenges in the teaching of children’s literature.

Effective spelling training is not enhanced by tDCS in adults

The aim of this study was to test the effects of tDCS on adult reading and spelling abilities. Experiment 1 examined whether tDCS improved adults' performance on reading and spelling tests. We found no evidence that left temporal tDCS stimulation improved word spelling, word reading accuracy, or word reading fluency compared to sham stimulation. Experiment 2 tested the effect of left-temporal tDCS stimulation on spelling training in adults. There was no evidence for a facilitatory effect of tDCS on spelling training despite its large and significant effects on adults' ability to spell difficult words. These results, paired with previous studies, argue against the use of tDCS as an intervention for poor reading and spelling until we identify a tDCS paradigm that reliably improves reading and spelling skills.

Can a Questionnaire Be Useful for Assessing Reading Skills in Adults? Experiences with the Adult Reading Questionnaire among Incarcerated and Young Adults in Norway

Background: Good screening tools can be of immense value in educational counselling for adults. We report two studies where we explored the factor structure and discriminative power of the Adult Reading Questionnaire (ARQ) in different samples of young adults at risk for reading impairments. Method: The ARQ was designed to screen for literacy skills with low resource requirement. The instrument includes 11 questions regarding reading and writing skills and 6 questions regarding attention deficits and hyperactivity. The first study included of 246 undergraduate students. One-third of the sample were under assessment of specific learning impairments/dyslexia. The second study included 1475 incarcerated adults, where 1 in 4 reported specific reading impairments. Results: Principal Component Analyses (PCA) with varimax rotation returned four components for the participants in Study 1: Reading skills, Reading habits, Attention, and Hyperactivity. For the incarcerated sample in Study 2, the analysis returned three components, as the Attention and Hyperactivity items were combined. Conclusion: The ARQ is useful for identifying individuals at risk for dyslexia with acceptable measures of sensitivity and specificity, as well as for identifying those who report difficulties with reading and writing but have not been assessed for their difficulties earlier. The increased prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) seen among incarcerated adults must be considered when screening for reading problems as it may confound the scores on reading questionnaires.