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Reading Comprehension Skill (reading + comprehension_skill)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	60%

Selected Abstracts

The role of two reading strategies in text comprehension: An eye fixation study in primary school children

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 2 2008
Menno Van Der Schoot
This study examined whether 10,12-year-old children use two reading strategies to aid their text comprehension: (1) distinguishing between important and unimportant words; and (2) resolving anaphoric references. Of interest was the question to what extent use of these reading strategies was predictive of reading comprehension skill over and above decoding skill and vocabulary. Reading strategy use was examined by the recording of eye fixations on specific target words. In contrast to less successful comprehenders, more successful comprehenders invested more processing time in important than in unimportant words. On the other hand, they needed less time to determine the antecedent of an anaphor. The results suggest that more successful comprehenders build a more effective mental model of the text than less successful comprehenders in at least two ways. First, they allocate more attention to the incorporation of goal-relevant than goal-irrelevant information into the model. Second, they ascertain that the text model is coherent and richly connected. [source]

Sources of variance in curriculum-based measures of silent reading

PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS, Issue 4 2003
Rachel Brown-Chidsey
Curriculum-Based Measurement silent reading (CBM-SR) items have been found to be reliable and valid for measuring reading comprehension skills This generalizability study reports the findings from administration of three CBM-SR passages to fifth through eighth grade students in one school district. Using Repeated Measures Analyses of Variance (RMANOVA) procedures, the statistical probability of performance on the CBM-SR task as a differential indicator of reading comprehension skill was found to be significant among students in different grade levels and between students who did and did not receive special education services. Follow-up analyses were conducted using generalizability theory to estimate the amount of variance in CBM-SR scores from individual score differences, grade levels, and special education status. The results indicated that on two of the passages, variability in CBM-SR scores came primarily from grade level differences in scores on the tasks, while on the third passage, the differences were most attributable to individual differences in scores, regardless of grade level or special education services. Implications for the use of CBM-SR items for routine assessment of students' reading skills are discussed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 40: 363,377, 2003. [source]

Comprehension skill and word-to-text integration processes

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2008
Charles Perfetti
We examine comprehension skill differences in the processes of word-to-text integration, the connection of the meaning of a word, as it is read, to a representation of the text. We review two ,on-line' integration studies using event related potentials (ERPs) to provide fine-grain temporal data on the word-to-text processes of adult readers. The studies demonstrate indicators for word-to-text integration and show differences in these indicators as a function of adult reading comprehension skill. For skilled comprehenders, integration processes were reflected in N400 indicators when a critical word had an explicit link to a word in the prior text and by both N400 and P300 indicators when its meaning was a paraphrase of a prior word. When forward inferences were required for subsequent word-to-text integration, effects for skilled comprehenders were not reliable. Less skilled comprehenders showed delayed and less robust ERP effects, especially when meaning paraphrase was the basis of the integration. We discuss the significance of skill differences in integration processes with a focus on the use of context-dependent word meaning as a possible source of these differences. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

First- to second-language reading comprehension: not transfer, but access1

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 1 2007
Catherine Walter
compréhension de l'écrit; apprentissage des langues; mémoire de travail The ,transfer' of reading comprehension skills from a first language (L1) to a second language (L2) has long been discussed in the literature. This study challenges the transfer metaphor, proposing instead a notion of access. Studies based on Gernsbacher's Structure Building Framework (SBF) show that reading comprehension draws on general, amodal cognitive processes. It follows that L1-literate learners of an L2 already have comprehension skills: their need is to access these skills from the L2. To examine whether the SBF predicts L2 readers' performance, two groups of French learners of English performed an anomaly detection task. Results corresponded to the predictions of the SBF. The difficulty of lower-intermediate readers in accessing their comprehension skills was also linked to capacity problems in L2-based working memory. Le ,transfert' de la compétence de compréhension de l'écrit de la première langue (L1) à la seconde (L2) est étudié depuis longtemps. Cet article conteste la métaphore de transfert, proposant à sa place une notion d'accès. Plusieurs études basées sur le Système de Construction de Structures (SCS) de Gernsbacher démontrent que la compréhension de l'écrit se base sur des processus non liés à une mode d'appréhension spécifique. Il s'ensuit que les apprenants sachant lire en comprenant en L1 doivent déjà posséder la faculté de compréhension; il s'agit d'y accéder à partir de la L2. Pour examiner si le SCS prédit la performance des apprenants de L2, deux groupes d'apprenants d'anglais de langue maternelle française exécutèrent une tâche de détection d'anomalies. Les résultats correspondent aux prévisions du SCS. De plus, la difficulté des apprenants du niveau pré-intermédiaire à accéder à leur compétence de compréhension a été reliée à des problèmes de capacité de la mémoire de travail basée en L2. [source]