re 5120: psychological bases of reading re 5120: psychological bases of reading summer 2010

RE 5120: Psychological Bases of Reading

Summer 2010

Psychological Bases of Reading

• This course examines current theories of reading processes, supporting research, and implications for teaching reading.

• Course topics will include research on word recognition, phonemic awareness and decoding, beginning reading, vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, and fluency.

Components of Reading

RC= D X LCAccording to the Simple View of Reading, as one’s decoding skills go down so does his/her reading comprehension (RC) no matter the strength of their language comprehension (vocabulary). Likewise, as one’s language comprehension (LC) goes down so does his/her reading comprehension (RC) no matter the decoding ability. (Simple View of Reading; Hoover & Gough, 1990)

Sources of Variance in Reading: Deficits in reading comprehension may be due to deficits in any one or a combination of the following:

Alphabetics: Underdeveloped decoding skills may cause the reading problem. This is the case for beginning readers. Vocabulary: Inadequate vocabulary knowledge may the problem for those who come from low-literate homes. Fluency: Efficient and rapid reading rate is needed for reading with comprehension. Developmentally, transitional readers who have grasped the sound layer of English but are negotiating the pattern layer of English lack fluency. A large-scale training study by Kuhn et al. (2005) aims to increase fluency in transitional readers. Comprehension Processes: Integrating information, making inferences and predictions are some of the comprehension processes that are general to both listening and reading; they are domain-general processes. Working memory deficits are usually implicated. Studies by Oakhill and colleagues in England have identified that 10% of readers may experience comprehension problems in the absence of problems in lower level skills (e.g., decoding, fluency).

The Science of Word Reading • What is the Bouma effect? • What is the word superiority effect?• What is the duration of a typical fixation? • Where in the word do we fixate? • What is the typical letter-span of a fixation? • What kind of words are usually fixated? Why? • How long is the perceptual span? • What is the average saccade length?

Word Shape Model• Words are read as complete patterns rather

than the sum of their letters; • According to this model, the pattern of

ascending, descending, and neutral characters, e.g., , or the envelope, e.g., , created by the outline of the word allows word recognition.

• According to the model, we do not process the letters but the word by its shape.

• Word Superiority Effect (Cattell, 1886; Reicher, 1969; Woodworth, 1938) is used to support this model.

• Cattell presented letter and word stimuli to subjects for a very brief period of time (5-10ms), and found that subjects were more accurate at recognizing the words than the letters.

• He concluded that this is because whole words are the units that we recognize.

• Reicher replicated Cattell’s findings in 1969. Reicher found that subjects were more accurate at recognizing d when it was in the context of word than when in the context of orwd.

• Further evidence for this model is that lowercase text is easier to read because it allows for the shapes of words (Woodworth, 1938) . Uppercase letters do not allow for ascending and descending shapes; letters in an uppercase word are all neutral resulting in a monotonic shape, e.g., SHAPE vs. shape.

Word Shape Model

Word Shape Model • Studies where subjects were asked to proofread texts with misspellings provide

further support for the Word Shape model. • Subjects were asked to carefully read passages of text for comprehension and at the

same time mark any misspelling they found in the passage. • The passage had been carefully designed to have an equal number of two kinds of

misspellings: misspellings (tesf) that are consistent with the shape of the target word (test) shape, and misspellings (tesc) that are inconsistent with the target word’s shape.

• Haber & Schindler (1981) and Monk & Hulme (1983) found that misspellings consistent with the target word’s shape were twice as likely to be missed as misspellings inconsistent with the shape of the target word.

• Target word: test Error Rate • Misspelling with consistent word shape (tesf) 13%• Misspelling with inconsistent word shape (tesc) 7%

Serial Letter Recognition• Recognizing a word in the mental lexicon is like looking up a

word in a dictionary (Gough, 1972). The process is not one of recognizing words by their shapes.

• The evidence to support the model comes from a study by Sperling (1963).

• Sperling showed participants strings of random letters, asking if a particular letter was contained in the string.

• He found that if participants were given 10 milliseconds (ms) per letter, they could successfully complete the task.

• For example, if the target letter was in the fourth position and the string was presented for 30ms, the participant couldn’t complete the task successfully, but if string was presented for 40ms, they could complete the task successfully.

• Gough noted that a rate of 10ms per letter would be consistent with a typical reading rate of 300 words per minute.

• This model predicts that the shorter a word the faster its recognition. A short word has fewer letters to process than a long word.

• However, the model cannot explain the Word Superiority Effect, which assumes that words are recognized more accurately than single letters when presented in a very brief period of time.

• The serial letter recognition model would expect that a word with four letters should take four times as long to recognize as a letter in isolation.

Serial Letter Recognition (SLR)

Remember that Cattell presented letter and word stimuli to subjects for a very brief period of time (5-10ms), and found that subjects were more accurate at recognizing the words than the letters.

Parallel Letter Recognition (PLR)

• Just like the SLR model, this model postulates that letter information is used to recognize the words.

• Unlike SLR, this model assumes that letters within a word are recognized simultaneously (in parallel), not serially.

Evidence for PLR Model from Eye Movement Research

• There are three zones of visual identification: (a) fixation point, (b) fixation point plus 3-4 letters, (c) fixation point plus 15 letters. These three zones constitute the perceptual span.

• Readers collect information from all three zones during a fixation.

• In Zone a, we fixate our eyes on a point to the left of the middle of the word. We have clear vision of 3 letters to the left and 3 letters to the right of this fixation point.

• Zone b is where the first few letters of the next word are recognized.

• Zone c is where the length and shape of upcoming words is identified and the best location for the next fixation point is determined.

Perceptual Span • The perceptual span is like a tunnel into the visual periphery

within which visual information is acquired and used during eye fixations.

• Perceptual span has been found to be very limited. Average perceptual span of English readers is about four letters to the left of fixation and 14 letters to the right (McConkie & Rayner, 1976).

• Only letters in within eight character positions to the right of the fixation can be distinguished. Beyond that point, in Zone c, letters become indistinguishable and only word boundary and word shape information is obtained (Tsai, C.-H., 2001).

Evidence for PLR Model from Eye Movement Research Cont’d

• Our perceptual span is roughly 15 letters (Zones a, b, and c).

• While readers are recognizing words in zone a (i.e., center of fixation), they are also using additional information further out to guide their reading.

• After we recognize the word in zone a and have determined the fixation point in the next word, we jump (saccade) our eyes to the next word. Average saccade length is 7-9 letters.

Zone a Zone b

Zone c

Fixation point

Processing Unit is the Letter• Mounting research has refuted the assumptions of the Word

Shape Model: • The word superiority effect is caused by familiar letter

sequences and not word shapes. • Reading lowercase text is faster than uppercase text because

of practice. If you practice reading uppercase text, uppercase text will become easy to read as well.

• Letter shape similarities rather than word shape similarities cause mistakes in the proofreading task.

• And pseudowords also suffer from decreased reading speed with alternating case text.

Neural Networks: How the Brain Works

• Neurons pass information to one another through synaptic connections.

• When a neuron becomes “excited” via information by another neuron, it will become active; when it receives inhibition from another neuron, its activation will decrease.

• Learning is based on the modification of connections between neurons: When the information coming from a synapse is important, the connection between the two neurons will become physically stronger, and when information from a synapse is less important the synapse will weaken or even die off. Neural networks gave rise

to Connectionist Models of Reading, e.g., Adams’s

model.

Connectionist Models of Reading • In the figure to the right, a Connectionist Model is at work

processing a word that starts with the letter T.• First, features in the letter are extracted: a horizontal and a

vertical line. • The feature nodes in the model pass activation to letters (at the

next level of Letter Detectors) that have either a horizontal or a vertical line. Letters A, T, G are activated.

• Because letter T receives the most activation from feature detectors, it wins over the other letters (i.e., A, G, and S) by inhibiting their activation.

• Letter T then sends activation to all words that start with the letter T and sends inhibition to all the other words, such as ABLE, CART.

• This process continues simultaneously with the other letters in the input word TRIP. Letter R sends activation to all words with R in the second position, letter I to all words with I in the 3rd position, and letter P to all words with P in the final position after they are detected by their features. The word with most activation wins over the competitors by inhibiting their activation

• Information about what letters go together activates (excites) letters that are more frequently used with the letter T, e.g., the letter H, the letter R, or a vowel. Letter T will never activate letter Q because they never occur together in English.

Connectionist Models of Reading

Discussion Points

• According to Larson, what should be the unit of processing? Letter or word?

• What is the best explanation to the processing of letters? Serial or parallel processing?

• What is at stake with a word-shape model of reading instruction?

• Should we teach typical eye-movements (of a reader) to struggling readers?

Modeling the Connections (Adams

The figure on the left depicts the processing that occurs for letter T. Feature detectors identify the feature that make up this letter. Separate features in the letter activate separate associated letters. The vertical line sends activation to both letters N and T. The horizontal line also sends activation to letters G, S, and R which are written with a horizontal line in this typeset. The activated letters send inhibition to all other letters. It is at this point that connections between the activated letters and their corresponding sounds in the phonological processor are made.

• As all the letters in the word are processed, letter order/position guides processing, e.g., letter Q never occurs following letter T. Therefore, letter T will never activate letter Q. As the words TRIP, TAKE, TIME, CART, ABLE, TRAP are activated, their meanings are activated in the Meaning Processor along with their full pronunciations in the Phonological Processor.

Modeling the Connections (Adams 2004)

Gough’s Model

• A bottom-up information processing model; • Depicts reading as processing from lower

order to higher order stages. • [SEE MODEL FIGURE]

LaBerge and Sameuls Model

• Another bottom-up model of reading; • [SEE MODEL FIGURE]

LaBerge and Sameuls Model • With exposure and practice, the visual features in stimuli like

letters become unitized and then perceived as a single unit. • As these units accumulate and letter perception becomes

increasingly automatic, attention to early visual coding processes decreases.

• This decrease allows attentional resources to be reallocated to other areas.

• Attention is limited capacity; therefore, a behavior (e.g., decoding) must be automatic for it to be conducted simultaneously with another behavior (reading comprehension).

Repeated Readings: Outgrowth of the Automaticity Model

(Figure from Samuels, 1997, p. 378)

•Repeated Readings was designed by Samuels based on the Automaticity Model. •With corrective feedback, a reading disabled child trained in Repeated Readings. •Over five sessions, it took him fewer sessions to reach the criterion of 85 words per minute. Over the sessions, not only did he start reading a passage at a higher rate, he also started reading the passages with fewer errors.

Why Is Reading Interactive?

• Bottom up models can’t explain how we can read degraded word stimuli.

• We can’t complete processing the word because the final letter is degraded. It can be an R or a K.

• A variety of processors must converge on the visual information simultaneously, rather than in a linear process.

• The simultaneous processing of syntactic, semantic, orthographic, and lexical information allows for higher and lower level processes to simultaneously interact on the visual input.

• The result is the most probable word: WORK

• Figure in the right shows the early activation equally rising for the k and r letter nodes.

• This is because the visual feature information supports both of those letters, while the d letter node is unsupported.

• Early in processing, the letter nodes are only receiving activation from the visual feature nodes, but later activation is provided by the word nodes.

Reading Words: Interactions

• Word reading is neither solely bottom-up nor top-down.

[SEE MODEL FIGURE]

Adams (2004)• Parts of the reading system are not discrete like

the parts of a car. • We cannot proceed by completing each one in

isolation and then fastening it to another. • The parts of the reading system must grow

together. They must grow to and from one another.

• Subcomponents of reading develop interconnectedly.

• Development in one cannot proceed without development in the other.

• Connectionist models posit that learning progresses as the learner comes to respond to the relationships among patterns or events.

• Overlearned relations among the letters of a word enable the word's recognition.

• Connectionist models are neither top-down nor bottom-up; all relevant processes are simultaneously active and interactive; all simultaneously issue and accommodate information to and from one another.

Adams (2004)

• Just like a car which does not fire well and stops unpredictably every few seconds, a reader who cannot transform print (gas) into mental energy and execute mental operations on it will operate inefficiently with consequent failures in comprehension and overall reading.

• Unless the processes involved in individual word-recognition operate properly, nothing else in the system can either (p. 1219).

Research Concepts

• Independent Variable: what the experimenter changes or enacts in order to do the experiment

• Dependent Variable: what changes when the independent variable changes - the dependent variable depends on the outcome of the independent variable

Example* • Does amount of time (4 vs. 8 hr) per day of full

sunlight affect growth rate of plants?

*Adapted from http://www.cool-science-projects.com/independent-and-dependent-variables.html

Example Experiment • Independent Variable: Amount of sunlight per day (4 hr vs. 8 hr) • Dependent Variable: Growth rate of plants • Is there anything else that could influence the dependent variable? • There may be extraneous factors might affect the change in Dependent Variable

independently of or in interaction with the Independent Variable, e.g., amount of water that each plant receives.

Control Variables

• If left uncontrolled, extraneous variables could mess up your experiment by making your results false or unreliable.

• Control variables must be carefully monitored and kept equal in your experiments.

• You have to make sure that each plant got the same amount of water as every other plant in the experiment.

Discussion QuestionsIdentify the following in the Perfetti & Hogaboam (1975) study and add your answers to your Perfetti & Hogaboam Research Summary on your blog. – Independent Variable(s): Reading comprehension skill (skilled

vs. less skilled readers)– Dependent Variable: Vocalization latency (time it takes to

read words and nonwords projected on a screen.– Control Variable(s): All real words were known to the

subjects. Word knowledge was controlled.

Perfetti & Hogaboam Review

• Real words and nonwords were randomly presented through a shutter on a screen. When the shutter was opened, the stimulus appeared. A digital timer started. When the subject named the stimulus, the timer stopped and the shutter closed. Just like in the following slides.

effete

Ehri and Wilce (1979)• The lexicon consists of abstract

word units having several different identities: phonological identities (how words sound and are articulated); syntactic identities (grammatical roles in sentences); and semantic identities (meanings).

• These identities are acquired as children learn to speak.

Mental Lexicon

• In the course of learning to read, one other identity is added to the lexicon: orthographic identities, which are represented as visual images.

The Amalgam for the word CAT

• The term amalgamation refers to processes by which the various identities are combined to form a single unit in lexical memory.

the phoneme /ae/

the phoneme /k/

the phoneme /t/

Meaning unit for legs

Meaning unit for fur

Meaning unit for animal

The sound meow

Adding Spelling (CAT) to the Amalgam that Already Exists in the Lexicon

• A beginning reader adds the orthographic identity (spelling) of the word to the amalgam that already exists for that word in the lexicon. The existing amalgam includes phonological and semantic identities.

the phoneme /ae/

the phoneme /k/

the phoneme /t/

Meaning unit for legs

Meaning unit for fur

Meaning unit for animal

The sound meow

The letter k

The letter a

The letter t

The Amalgamation Theory Cont’d

• Orthographic identities must also merge with syntactic and semantic identities so that images symbolize them as well.

• Printed word learning is complete when a word’s orthographic image has been formed in lexical memory and this image has been amalgamated with its phonological, syntactic, and semantic identities.

May 26, 2010

The Amalgamation Theory Cont’d

The Study

• The current study examined the process by which orthographic forms are established as images symbolizing sounds in memory in beginning readers.

• Does spelling aides help learning of non-sense words?

The Study

Identify the following in the Ehri & Wilce (1979) study: – Independent Variable(s)– Dependent Variable– Control Variable(s)

Ehri & Wilce (1979)

• Subjects: 24 first graders; 24 second graders; 24 males; 24 females.

• Materials: Four sets of CVC oral responses• Set 1: jad, wek, sim, lut• Set 2: vap, bem, tib, huk• Set 3: mav, rel, kip, guz• Set 4: pab, des, nif, fug

Counterbalancing Material Sets

Each set was counterbalanced across the conditions resulting in 4 lists.

List 1 List 2 List 3 List 4Squiggle (Sq) jad, wek, sim,

lutpab, des, nif, fug

mav, rel, kip, guz

vap, bem, tib, huk

Initial Letter (Let)

vap, bem, tib, huk

jad, wek, sim, lut

pab, des, nif, fug

mav, rel, kip, guz

Initial Letter + Spelling (Spel)

mav, rel, kip, guz

vap, bem, tib, huk

jad, wek, sim, lut

pab, des, nif, fug

Initial Letter + Misspelling (Mis)

pab, des, nif, fug

mav, rel, kip, guz

vap, bem, tib, huk

jad, wek, sim, lut

Counterbalancing Order of Tasks in Each List

• Sublists are created to counterbalance the order of tasks across subjects, e.g., List 1:

List 1 Sublists

Subject A Subject E Subject I Subject M1a 1b 1c 1d

Sq Mis Spel LetLet Sq Mis Spel Spel Let Sq Mis Mis Spel Let Sq

Counterbalancing

• A method of controlling for the effects of an extraneous variable by ensuring that its effects are equal in all conditions.

• To control for Practice Effect

Assigning Subjects to Lists

• List 1: Subj A; Subj E; Subj I; Subj M … (n = 12) • List 2: Subj B; Subj F; Subj J; Subj N … (n = 12) • List 3: Subj C; Subj G; Subj K; Subj O … (n = 12) • List 4: Subj D; Subj H; Subj L; Subj P … (n = 12)

Subjects were randomly assigned to the lists created, with an equal number of subjects for each list. Subject A was assigned to List 1, Subject B to List 2, Subject C to List 3, Subject D to List 4, and so on.

Procedures for Subject A: Squiggles

Subject A starts the list (List 1) with Squiggles, followed by Initial Letters, Initial Letters Plus Spellings and Initial Letters Plus Misspellings.

List 1Squiggles jad, wek, sim,

Initial Letters vap, bem, tib, huk

Initial Letters + Spellings

mav, rel, kip, guz

Initial Letters + Misspellings

pab, des, nif, fug

Subject A

Procedures for Subject A: SquigglesTrial 1: • Subject A is shown squiggles for each sound

one at a time. • As a card is shown, its sound is pronounced:

– this squiggle stands for /jad/

• Subject A repeats the sound. Subsequent (Test ) Trials: • Each squiggle is shown.• Subject A is given 5 seconds to recall the

sound for the squiggle.• If unsuccessful, the correct response is

provided. • Test trials continue up to a maximum of 15

trials or when all four sounds are correctly recalled on two successive trials.

mav, rel, kip, guz

pab, des, nif, fug

Subject A

Trial 1: Squiggles

“This squiggle stands for /jad/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /jad/.

Trial 1: Squiggles

“This squiggle stands for /wek/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /wek/.

Trial 1: Squiggles

“This squiggle stands for /sim/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /sim/.

Trial 1: Squiggles

“This squiggle stands for /lut/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /lut/.

Test Trials (Up to 15): Squiggles

“What does this squiggle stand for?”

• Subject is given 5 seconds to

recall the sound /jad/ for the squiggle.

• If unsuccessful, the correct response is provided.

• Test trials continue up to a maximum of 15 trials

• Subject is given 5 seconds to recall the sound /wek/ for the squiggle.

• Subject is given 5 seconds to recall

the sound /sim/ for the squiggle.• If unsuccessful, the correct

response is provided. • Test trials continue up to a

maximum of 15 trials.

• Subject is given 5 seconds to recall the

sound /lut/ for the squiggle.• If unsuccessful, the correct response is

provided. • Test trials continue up to a maximum

of 15 trials.

Procedures for Subject A: Initial Letters

mav, rel, kip, guz

pab, des, nif, fug

Subject A

Trial 1: • Subject A is shown initial letters for

each sound one at a time. • As a card is shown (e.g., with the letter

V), its sound is pronounced: – The letter V stands for /vap/

• Subject A repeats the sound. Subsequent (Test ) Trials: • Each letter is shown.• Subject A is given 5 seconds to recall

the sound for the letter.• If unsuccessful, the correct response is

provided. • Test trials continue up to a maximum of

15 trials or when all four sounds are correctly recalled on two successive trials.

Trial 1: Initial Letters

“This letter stands for /vap/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /vap/.

“This letter stands for /bem/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /bem/.

“This letter stands for /tip/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /tip/.

“This letter stands for /huk/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /huk/.

Test Trials (Up to 15): Initial Letter

“What does this letter stand for?”

recall the sound /vap/ for the letter.

• Subject is given 5 seconds to recall the sound /bem/ for the letter.

the sound /tip/ for the letter.• If unsuccessful, the correct

the sound /huk/ for the letter.• If unsuccessful, the correct

Procedures for Subject A: Initial Letters + Spellings

List 1Squiggle (Sq) jad, wek, sim,

vap, bem, tib, huk

mav, rel, kip, guz

pab, des, nif, fug

Subject A Trial 1: • Subject A is shown initial letters and correct

spellings for each sound one at a time. • As a card is shown (letter M and spelling

MAV), its sound is pronounced: – The letter M stands for /mav/

• Subject A repeats the sound. Subsequent (Test ) Trials: • Each letter is shown WITHOUT THE SPELLING

AID (e.g., MAV).• Subject A is given 5 seconds to recall the

sound for the letter.• If unsuccessful, the correct response is

provided. • Test trials continues up to a maximum of 15

trials or when all four sounds are correctly recalled on two successive trials.

Trial 1: Initial Letters + Spelling

“This letter stands for /mav/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /mav/.

“This letter stands for /rel/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /rel/.

R - REL

“This letter stands for /kip/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /kip/.

K - KIP

“This letter stands for /guz/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /guz/.

G - GUZ

Test Trials (Up to 15): Initial Letter + Spelling

recall the sound /mav/ for the letter.

• Subject is given 5 seconds to recall the sound /rel/ for the letter.

the sound /kip/ for the letter.• If unsuccessful, the correct

the sound /guz/ for the letter.• If unsuccessful, the correct

Procedures for Subject A: Initial Letters + Misspellings

List 1Squiggle (Sq) jad, wek, sim,

vap, bem, tib, huk

mav, rel, kip, guz

pab, des, nif, fug

Subject A

Trial 1: • Subject A is shown initial letters and

misspellings for each sound one at a time.

• As a card is shown (e.g., with letter P and misspelling PES), its sound is pronounced:

– The letter P stands for /pab/

• Subject A repeats the sound. Subsequent (Test ) Trials: • Each letter is shown WITHOUT THE

MISSPELLING.• Subject A was given 5 seconds to recall

the sound for the letter.• If unsuccessful, the correct response is

provided. • Test trials continue up to a maximum of

15 trials or when all four sounds are correctly recalled on two successive trials.

Trial 1: Initial Letters + Misspellings

“This letter stands for /pab/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /pab/.

P - PES

“This letter stands for /des/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /des/.

D - DIF

“This letter stands for /nif/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /nif/.

N - NUG

“This letter stands for /fug/.”

– Subject repeats the sound /fug/.

F - FAB

Test Trials (Up to 15): Initial Letters + Misspellings

recall the sound /pab/ for the letter.

• Subject is given 5 seconds to recall the sound /des/ for the letter.

the sound /nif/ for the letter.• If unsuccessful, the correct

the sound /fug/ for the letter.• If unsuccessful, the correct

Data Analysis

• An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted to assess effects of several Independent Variables (IVs) on the Dependent Variable (DV).

• IVs: grade (first vs. second); sex (male vs. female); type of learning task (squiggles vs. initial letters vs. spellings vs. misspellings)

• DV: number of trials required to learn the sounds on the paired-associate learning task

Results• Only a main effect of learning task observed: F(3, 96) = 45.43, p

< .01. This means that the Independent Variable of type of learning task (squiggles vs. initial letters vs. spellings vs. misspellings) had an effect on the Dependent Variable.

• It was found in the following analyses that: Spel > Let > Sq = Mis

Results• Sounds accompanied by adjunct spelling aids were

learned significantly faster than sounds prompted by initial letters without spellings, and these in turn were recalled significantly better than sounds with squiggle prompts or with misspelling study aids. The difference between the squiggle and misspelling means was not significant.

• Among 2nd graders, 94% of the errors in learning squiggle-sound pairs involved either a failure to respond or production of the wrong blend of sounds.

Correlations Between PA Conditions & Print Processing Tasks • All correlations were significant (p < . 05).

• The correlations between spelling-aided sound learning scores and the various measures of printed language (i.e., correlations between Variable 3 and Variables 5-8) were all substantially higher than the correlations between scores in the other Paired Associate tasks and the printed language measures (i.e., Variables 1, 2, and 4 with Variables 5-8).

These are correlations between how students did on the spelling aids condition of the Paired-Associate

Learning Task and four other reading-related tasks given to the same

children. The goal was to show that attention to spelling is strongly related to how kids do on other

reading related tasks like spelling, decoding, recognizing real and

misspelled words. In other words, the faster the performance on the

Spelling Aids condition, the higher the print processing skills.

Results Cont’d• In conclusion, when children learn to read,

they acquire an orthographic mnemonic system. This system is activated spontaneously when word sounds are seen mapped in print, and it serves as a means of gluing print to sounds and storing words as sight words in memory.

What does it mean to read words by sight? What does reading by sight look like?

The Stroop Task

The Stroop Task • In the Stroop Task, the task is to name the color. Subjects are

instructed not to read the word. • When the word spells the color of its ink, the task is easy. For

example, RED, BLUE, GREEN, etc. This is the congruous condition.

• When the word spells a different color than the color of its ink, subjects experience interference. For example, RED, BLUE, GREEN, etc. This is the incongruous condition. Naming the color of words in the incongruous condition takes twice as long as naming the colors in the congruous condition. This is called the Stroop Effect.

• It is believed that automatic word recognition interferes with the naming of colors in the incongruous condition and consequently slows down one’s response in naming the color of the ink.

Using the Stroop Effect to Understand the Role of Context in Word Recognition

• In Warren’s (1974) study, subjects experienced Stroop Effect when the colored ink spelled a word that had just been heard a few seconds earlier in context. Subjects were asked to name the color of the target word as is done in a Stroop Task.

• If a color-naming task is preceded by a sentence context that automatically primes a response other than the relevant color, then the time to name the color should increase.

• In other words, if subjects read a sentence context followed by a target word which is highly related to the previous context, subjects should automatically engage in the processing of the target word and experience interference in naming the color of the word.

June 2, 2010

Beck and McKeown (2007)

• There is a strong relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension (Davis, 1944, 1968; Singer, 1965; Thurstone, 1946).

• Increasing vocabulary through reading is significantly diminished for less able readers (p. 254)

• Depth of word knowledge affects verbal ability; how much you know about a word.

• Depth of word knowledge allows connections to be made between meanings and flexibility in accessing and using word meaning in novel contexts.

Vocabulary’s Relation to Reading Comp in College Students (Ari,2010)

Number of Subjects

Mean Number of Vocabulary Words Identified Correctly Std. Deviation

poor college readers 30 36.5667 7.60074

good college readers 15 55.3333 12.46519

In my dissertation, there was a statistically reliable difference between good and poor readers (t[43] = -6.271, p < .001) on the number of vocabulary words they answered correctly. The good readers on average knew 18.766 more words than the poor readers.

Study 1 • A Between-subjects, quasi-experimental,

pretest-posttest, treatment-control group design• N---O---X---O• N---O--------OBetween Subjects Design--Every participant is only subjected to a single treatmentAdvantages: •very little contamination by extraneous factors, e.g., fatigue, practice; controls for boredom, fatigue, and practice effects. Disadvantages: •requires a large number of participants

Study 1• Examined the extent to which children learned a set of sophisticated (Tier

2) words that were taught them through Rich Vocabulary Instruction in comparison to children who did not receive the Rich Vocabulary Instruction.

• The final sample consisted of 98 kindergarten and first grade students in a low-SES school district.

• 52 students were in experimental classrooms and 46 in comparison classrooms.

• All children were African American and met eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch.

• School district was identified by federal agencies as low-performing and was threatened with state takeover.

Materials• Text Talk was used to teach vocabulary. • Text Talk (McKeown & Beck, 2001) was designed to advance students’

thinking capabilities. • Development of students' language and vocabulary is one of the primary

goals through discussion of stories that are beyond the reading levels of students (as in Text Talk).

• Texts were chosen that enabled grappling with ideas and required students to be actively engaged in constructing meaning from the stories read.

• Texts that provided complex events, subtle expressions of ideas, presentation of unfamiliar ideas and topics were used in the lessons for vocabulary instruction.

• The books were chosen among those that exhibited a story line. • Tier 2--sophisticated words of high utility-- words were selected from

the books. From this list, three words were chosen on the basis of their applicability to children's daily lives.

Rich Vocabulary Instruction • Vocabulary Instruction, which took place after a story,

followed the steps below: – Contextualize the word for its role in the story– Explain the meaning of the word– Have students repeat the word so that they could create a

phonological representation of it; – Provide examples of the word’s use in contexts other than the one

used the story; – Have children make judgments about the examples; – Have children construct their own examples; – Reinforce the word’s phonological and semantic representations. – Charts of words from several stories were posted on the wall.

Comparison Group

• Participated in daily read-alouds as part of the school reading curriculum.

• Books used with comparison students were similar to those used with the Rich Vocabulary Instruction students with strong story lines and high-quality language.

Pretest Assessment • Experimental and comparison groups did not differ in

verbal knowledge as assessed with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, F(1,84)= ,069, p = .793.

• Kindergarten experimental and comparison groups did not differ in their knowledge of the target words.

• First-grade experimental and comparison groups did not differ in their knowledge of the target words.

• The target words were tested using a multiple-choice test in which children were asked to decide which picture portrayed a situation described by a target word.

Timeline

• Pretests (PPVT and multiple choice test of target wrods) administered in February;

• Experimental groups received Rich Vocabulary Instruction and Control groups received regular class instruction in March & April;

• Posttest administered one week after the completion of vocabulary instruction (sometime in May).

Results• Within grade level, children in the instructed group learned more of

the words. • The difference in the mean gains of kindergarten experimental and

control groups was 3.58, which was significant at F(1, 45) = 15.93, p = .000.

• The difference in the mean gains of first-grade experimental and control groups was 1.93, which was significant at F(1, 51) 7.25, p .010

There were 7.46 more words to learn for kindergarteners and 6.11 words for first graders.

Results Cont’d

• There was significantly more vocabulary learning in the experimental groups than the control groups.

• One reason experimental students did not learn more of the 22 words is that instruction may not have been adequate.

• Other studies of Rich Vocabulary Instruction used a greater amount of time than this study.

Study 2• Was designed to determine the extent to which increased

instruction time would enhance vocabulary learning. • A Within-subjects, quasi-experimental, pretest and posttest

design. • N---O---X---O

Within-subject Designs---Every single participant is subjected to every single treatment, including the control.Advantages: requires fewer participants; lowers the possibility of individual differences skewing the results.Disadvantages: practice and fatigue effects

Study 2

• Rich Vocabulary Instruction was provided for all words.

• Additional instruction (More Rich Vocabulary Instruction) was designed to provide students with more encounters with a subset of words.

Study 2: More Rich Vocabulary Instruction

• 36 kindergarteners and 40 first graders in the same school district as Study 1.

• Students received Rich Vocabulary Instruction on 6 words per week for a total of 7 weeks of instruction.

• They received more of the same instruction, More Rich Vocabulary Instruction, on three of the six words.

• There also were two review cycles in which the More Rich Instruction words appeared again following the 4th and 7th weeks of instruction.

More Rich Instruction

• Day 1: Story read and discussed• Day 2: Rich Instruction for the first 3 words• Day 3: Rich Instruction for remaining 3 words• Days 4 & 5: More Rich Instruction on the latter

3 words (Day 3 words). • More Rich Instruction words appeared again

in two review cycles: after 4th week of instruction and after 7th week of instruction.

More Rich Vocabulary Instruction

• More Rich Instruction words received instruction for a total of 6 days: 3 days during initial instruction and 3 days during review.

• 6.6 min was estimated to be spent per word in Rich Instruction compared to 27.6 min per word in the More Rich Instruction condition.

• 5 encounters were calculated for Rich Instruction versus 20 encounters with More Rich Instruction words.

Pre and Posttests

• Study 1 picture task administered in one session.

• A verbal test administered in 6 sessions

Results • Kindergarten and first graders gained significantly on

both the verbal task and the picture task greater in the More Rich Vocabulary condition than the Rich Vocabulary condition. Kindergarten students learned

about 6 more words in More Rich Instruction than Rich Instruction

condition as assessed on both the Verbal and Picture tests.

First graders learned about 3 more words in the More Rich Instruction condition than Rich instruction as assessed on both the Verbal and Picture tests.

June 5, 2010

Working Memory

Daneman & Carpenter (1980)

• Good readers require fewer processes than poor readers to perform exactly the same computation.

• Better readers are faster at processing information.

Issues with Word and Digit Span

• Standard digit span (Guyer & Friedman, 1975; Hunt, Frost, & Lunneborg, 1973) or a probe digit span test (Perfetti & Goldman, 1976) showed no systematic differences between good and poor readers.

• Traditional short term memory tests of digit and word span tasks do not tax the processing component of working memory.

Reading Span Test

• Subject is given a set of sentences to read; • At the end of the set, s/he attempts to recall

the final word of each sentence. • The number of sentences in a set is

incremented from trial to trial • The subject’s reading span is the maximum

number of sentences s/he could read while maintaining perfect recall of the final words.

Daneman & Carpenter (1980)

• Subjects. 20 undergraduates. • Measures. The subjects were given 4 tests:

– (a) a reading span test to measure their working memory span,

– (b) a traditional word span test, – (c) a reading comprehension test that asked

questions about facts and (d) pronominal references.

Results • The reading span test was correlated significantly .90 with the pronoun

reference test and .72 with the fact retrieval task. • Its correlation with the global assessment reading comprehension (Verbal

SAT) was also significant: r = .59. • The word span task correlated non-significantly only .33, .37, and .35 with

the reading tests respectively.

Results Cont’d• An analysis of variance

with four spans and six distances revealed a significant reading span main effect, F(3,16) =

• 27.56, p < .01, a significant main effect of distance, F(3,80) = 37.10, p < .01, and a significant interaction effect between reading span and distance, F(15,80) = 2.10, p < .05.

Number of Subjects

Mean Score on the Reading Span Test Std. Deviation

poor college readers30 42.3074 12.14625

good college readers 15 52.6000 12.79397

Working Memory’s Relation to Reading Comp in College Students (Ari,2010)

In my dissertation, there was a statistically reliable difference between good and poor readers (t[43] = -2.633, p < .05) in their performance on the RSPAN test. The good readers on average recalled 10.29 more words than the poor readers.

June 9, 2010

Context Effects

• The ability to use context during reading has been assumed to increase with age and reading ability (Gibson & Levin, 1975).

West and Stanovich (1978)

• The study investigated developmental changes in sentence context on word recognition.

West and Stanovich (1978)• Efficiency in processing print has been generally

attributed to two factors: (a) within word redundancy (b) between word redundancy (i.e., contextual facilitation).

• Word recognition is facilitated by within word redundancy: degraded words can be recognized using word and letter information that are processed in parallel.

• Whole language proponents have epitomized between-word facilitation (context effect) as the primary process of reading in contextual reading (Goodman, 1970; Smith, 1971).

Context Effects in Word Recognition• Previous research found that context

facilitates the recognition of words that are related to the context of the sentence (Schuberth & Eimas, 1977).

• In Schvaneveldt, Ackerman, and Semlear (1977), younger children showed a somewhat larger context effect and poor readers made relatively greater use of the context.

• Negative correlations were found between children's vocabulary, spelling, and reading tests scores and their use of context in word recognition: the higher the vocabulary, spelling, and reading scores, the lower the tendency was to use context in recognizing words in the context of a sentence.

Context Effects in Word Recognition

Subjects

• 48 fourth graders• 48 sixth graders • 48 college students

The Word Reading Task • How does use of context change by age? • Subjects were asked to read target words as rapidly as

possible under three conditions: a. With the prior display of a sentence context that was

congruous with the target word:The dog ran after the cat.

b. With the prior display of a sentence context that was incongruous with the target word:

The girl sat on the cat.

c. Without the prior display of a sentence context the cat.

Procedures• Subjects were asked to read aloud contexts that appeared on the screen in front

of them• Approximately 0.5 sec after the subject pronounced the last word of the context,

which was always “the,” a target word appeared.• Subjects were instructed to read the target word as rapidly as possible when it

appeared.• Their reading of the target word was timed and used as the Dependent Variable.

Congruous Condition

The dog ran after the cat.

In-congruous Condition

The girl sat on the cat.

No-Context Condition

the cat.

Results• A two-way Analysis

of Variance indicated a highly significant effect of age, F(2,141) = 54.56, p < .001; context condition, F (2,282) = 49.90, p < .001; and age x context condition interaction, F (4,282) = 4.62, p < .001.

Results Cont’d• The significant age effect indicates that overall sixth

graders were faster than fourth graders, and college readers were faster than both fourth and sixth graders.

• The significant context condition effect was due to the faster reading times in the congruous condition than the no-context condition for all age groups.

• The interaction effect revealed that within each context condition, the mean length of reading time was significantly larger for younger readers.

Context Facilitation

• A Context Facilitation Index was calculated by taking the difference between congruous context and no-context conditions.

• A significant negative correlation was found between Wide Reading Achievement Test (WRAT) scores and the context facilitation index (all subjects: r = - .35, p < .001).

• The results indicate that the higher the reading skills of subjects, the less they rely on context in recognizing words.

Discourse ProcessingReading is constructing a coherent mental model from the text. The model is well-integrated and is free from inconsistencies (Just & Carpenter, 1980; Gernsbacher, 1990; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978).

Picture from: http://www.seo-blog.com/images/hidden-text-example-3.gif

Cognitive Processes

Word-level Processes

(Perfetti & Hart, 2001, p. 70)

•Word level processes comprise the basic lower order processes in reading. •The more efficient word-level processes are, the greater is the capacity that is allocated for higher order processes involved in constructing sentence and discourse meaning.

(WITHDRAW, HE,MONEY, BANK)

Surface level structureHe withdrew money from the bank.

Sentence-level Processes

Proposition

▬ After they are processed, sentences are not represented in the mind as they appear on the page.

▬ Sentences are represented as meaning units called propositions.

▬ A meaning unit is extracted from the sentence and used in comprehension processes over the text.

▬ Less skilled readers slower to suppress inappropriate meanings (Gernsbacher et al., 1990);

▬ Less skilled readers are delayed in constructing sentence representation (Long et al., 1997; Long et al., 1994).

Discourse-level Processes

A discourse is coherent only if its propositions are connected at the microstructure, and if these propositions are organized globally (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978, p. 365).

(ibid, p. 378)

(ibid, p. 379)

(Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978, p. 377)

The Inconsistency Paradigm

The Inconsistency Paradigm is used to observe some of the discourse processes that take place during reading. (Albrecht & O’Brien, 1993; Baker, 1979; 1985; Baker & Anderson, 1982; Hakala & O’Brien, 1995; Long & Chong, 2001; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992; Myers, O’Brien, Albrecht, & Mason, 1994; O’Brien & Albrecht, 1992; Plumb, Butterfield, Hacker, & Dunlosky, 1994)

Welcome to the story comprehension experiment. In this experiment, you will be asked to read 24 short stories and to answer some simple questions about them. The stories will be presented one line at a time on your computer screen. When you have read and comprehended a line of text, press the space bar and the next line will appear. Continue reading and pressing the space bar until you reach the end of each story. At that time, you will see the word QUESTION appear on the screen. This is a signal that a question about the story will soon appear. When the question appears, press the YES key if it is true about the story you just read, and press the NO key if it is not true about the story. Please keep your thumbs resting on the keyboard and your index fingers on the YES and NO keys.

**It is important that you read at your normal pace and that you answer the comprehension questions as accurately as possible.**

Sample Trial

Bill had always enjoyed walking inthe early morning and this morningwas no exception. During his walks,he would meet his neighbor Dave andthey would walk together.Bill had just celebrated his eighty-firstbirthday. He didn't feel as strong as hewas twenty years ago. In fact, he beganusing a cane as he hobbled along on hismorning walks. Bill could not walk aroundthe block without taking numerous breaks.Bill and Dave had been friends for quitesome time. While walking today they weretalking about how hot it had been. Forthe past three months there had been

record breaking high temperatures andno rain. Soon there would be mandatorywater rationing. As Bill was talkingto Dave, he saw a young boy who waslying in the street hurt.Bill quickly ran and picked the boy up.He carried him to the side of the road.While he helped the boy, Dave went intohis house to call the boy's mother andan ambulance. Bill kept the boy calmand still until help arrived.QUESTIONDid Bill hate walking in the morning?

The Inconsistency Paradigm Sample PassageBill had always enjoyed walking inthe early morning and this morningwas no exception. During his walks,he would meet his neighbor Dave andthey would walk together.Bill had just celebrated his eighty-firstbirthday. He didn't feel as strong as hewas twenty years ago. In fact, he beganusing a cane as he hobbled along on hismorning walks. Bill could not walk aroundthe block without taking numerous breaks.Bill and Dave had been friends for quitesome time. While walking today they weretalking about how hot it had been. Forthe past three months there had beenrecord breaking high temperatures andno rain. Soon there would be mandatorywater rationing. As Bill was talkingto Dave, he saw a young boy who waslying in the street hurt.Bill quickly ran and picked the boy up.He carried him to the side of the road.While he helped the boy, Dave went intohis house to call the boy's mother andan ambulance. Bill kept the boy calmand still until help arrived.

The Inconsistency Effect

Consistent target sentence Inconsistent target sentence

(Albrecht & O’Brien, 1993)

Consistent target sentence Inconsistent target sentence

The Inconsistency Effect by Reading Skill

Global LocalConsis. Inconsis. Consis. Inconsis.

Skilled readers Y X Y X

Less skilled readers Y X Y X

(Long & Chong, 2001)

Morris & Gaffney (in press)

• Fluency has been a neglected goal of reading instruction (Allington, 1983; Rasinski, 2006).

• National Reading Panel (2000) identified fluency one of the five pillars of reading instruction.

• Fluency is a concern for readers beyond first grade.

• Above first grade, students need to read text with sufficient speed and rhythm.

• A 7th grader reading 3rd grade level. • Has a history of a Seizure Disorder (controlled by

medication) • Diagnosed as having an Attention Deficit Disorder

(controlled by medication). • Has high average verbal comprehension. • Has average working memory, • Has low average perceptual reasoning. • Has extremely low processing speed.

Luke Cont’d

• Read at a late-first grade level at 5th grade. • Had difficulties with decoding and rate

(<60wpm). • Received multisensory phonics program (Wilson

Reading System, 1996) at 5th and 6th grade. • Improved his decoding skills considerably but

read at a slow rate by the end of 6th grade (<70wpm) on 3rd grade material.

Main Results

• Luke made slight gains in sight vocabulary; his WRI-timed scored improved from 65% to 70% on 3rd-grade WRI list and 45% to 65% on the 4th-grade list. over a year.

• Luke made accuracy gains of 95% to 97% on 3rd-grade passages and 94% to 97% on 4th-grade passages.

• Luke improved 27 wpm on 3rd-grade material and 23 wpm on 4th-grade material.

June 12, 2010

Beware of The Bears

• Text Talk Lesson

Vocabulary Gains (Ari, 2010)

3 X 2 Mixed Factorial Design

Vocabulary Study

33.4 40

Repeated Readings

38.55 42.27

Ari (2010) Vocabulary Gains

Note. * p < . 05

Context Effects

• The ability to use context during reading has been assumed to increase with age and reading ability (Gibson & Levin, 1975).

West and Stanovich (1978)• Context Facilitation Index (CFI): No-Context

Reading Time – Congruous Context Reading Time.

Subject No Context RT Congruous Context RT CFI WRAT

A 300ms 250ms 50ms 80

B 350ms 250ms 100ms 70

C 400ms 250ms 150ms 50

In the table above, as one’s WRAT goes up, his/her CFI goes down. In other words, the more skilled a reader, the less use s/he makes of the context in recognizing a word.

Skilled and Less Skilled College Readers’ Fluency

with Print vs. Conversation

Ari, 2007

In a nutshell: Corpus linguistics

• study of corpora (Hunston, 2002);• investigates applications of language—

language in use;

Corpus (plural Corpora)

• A principled collection of natural language data (Hunston, 2002). – MICASEP: Academic Spoken Corpus– CANCODE: Cambridge and Nottingham

Corpus of Discourse in English – BNC: British National Corpus– ANC: American National Corpus– GSU Undergraduate Writing Corpus

Available Software: Web Concordancer

Frequent Phrases

Fill in the blanks with a phrase* Learning English as a second

language is a difficult challenge. ___________, almost every research study shows that you need to use English as much as possible. __________ the more you use English, the better you will learn it. The is no disagreement about it.

(to begin with)

(this is obvious)

First of all

It is clear that

Fi of a

I is cl that

(* Adapted from Schmitt, Dornyei, Adolphs, Durow, 2004, p. 72)

Fill in the blank with a phrase

*Speaker A: I’ve been watching the news report and they say that (1)________ the international debts of poorer countries might be cancelled.

1.a.there’s a good chance thatb.there’s a great chance thatc. there’s a good likelihood thatd.there’s a great likelihood that e.I DON’T KNOW

Fill in the blank with a phrase

*Speaker B: Really? I don’t think so. (2)________, the international banks do not want to cancel the debt because it would cost them too much money

2.a.As far as I knowb.As far as my knowledge c.By my knowledged.By my information e.I DON’T KNOW

Phrases

• First of all• It is clear that• There is a good chance

that• As far as I know

Q: In terms of language processing what could be said about these phrases? A: They seem to be stored in and retrieved from memory as single holistic units (Pawley & Syder, 1983; Schmitt et al., 2004; Wray, 2002).

Advent of Computers in the Study of Phrases

IntuitionFrequent Phrases Frequency

Lexical bundles: co-occurring words identified by a computer software (Biber et al., 1999)

Available Software: kfNgram• Figure 1. The Main Interface of kfNgram

Available Software: kfNgram

• Figure 2. Output Window Displaying 4-word Lexical Bundles in the First Half of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Biber et al. (1999)

LEXICAL BUNDLESI don’t know what I think it wasI want to beI said I woulddo you know whatthe end of thethe absence of a the ability of thethe way in which

PhrasesFirst of allIt is clear thatThere is a good chance thatAs far as I know

Any difference?

Lexical Bundle Facts: Part 1 Frequency; Multi-text occurrence; Cut-off points arbitrary; Frequent lexical bundles likely to

be unanalyzed stored chunks; part of a language user’s communicative repertoire (Biber et al., 2004).

• Not idiomatic (semantically);• Structurally incomplete (syntactically); have

no linguistic status: i.e., the end of the• Have structural correlates: NP, VP, PP• Performs discourse functions; discourse

framing devices, i.e. stance, reference.

Lexical Bundle Facts: Part 2

Registers are Situational varieties of language significantly associated with particular lexico-grammatical choices (Biber et al., 1998; Biber and Conrad, 1999)

Biber et al.’s (1999, 2004) Cross-register Research

• Conversation (C)• Academic Prose (AP)• Fiction• Textbooks

interviews, broadcasts, medical reports, scientific prose, professional letters, etc. (Lee 2001; Biber, et al. 1994)

Which register? C

____________________________________

AP____________________________________

in the context of

I did not know what

in such a way

don’t know what to

you want me to

it is important to

Which register?C

____________________________________

AP____________________________________

in the case of I think it was

as a result of the

have a look at

I said I would

the extent to which

Conversation

I don’t know what I think it wasI want to beI said I wouldhave a look at do you know what

Personal pro + VP

Verb phrase

Yes-no question frag.

Structure

Academic Prose

the end of thethe absence of a the ability of thethe way in whichthe extent to whichas a result of thein the case of in the face of

NP + of-phrase frag.

NP + post-modifier frag.

PP + embedded of-phrase

Structure

Distribution of Lexical Bundles Across Structural Types

(Biber et al., 2004, p. 382)

Functional TaxonomyPrimary functions: 1.Stance: attitudes;

assessments of certainty

2.Referential Expressions: Reference to physical, abstract entities, or textual context

I don’t know if it will mean… I don’t think so because I think…you have to doit is important to

For those of you who came late…And that’s one of the problems…the rest of thea lot of the

Distribution of Lexical Bundles Across Functional Categories

(Biber et al., 2004, p. 397)

Corpus Linguistics & Psychology

Measuring college readers’ familiarity with print using lexical bundles

Phrase matching experiment• Three-Factor mixed design:

a. within-subjects: register (conversation vs. print)b. within-subjects: bundle (lexical vs. regular) c. between-subjects: reading level(i.e., passers vs. repeaters)

• GSU undergrads: Passers & repeaters• Hypotheses:

a. Passers should display formula effect in print & conversation.

b. Repeaters should show formula effect only in conversation.

Research Design & HypothesesPrint Conversation

Lexical Bundles

Regular Bundles

Lexical Bundles

Regular Bundles

Non-struggling Readers

y x y xStruggling

Readers y x y x

Hypotheses: Non-struggling readers should exhibit formula effect in both print and conversation. Struggling readers should show formula effect only in conversation, not in print.

Design: 2 (non-struggling vs. struggling readers) X 2 (print vs. conversation) X 2 (lexical vs. regular bundles)

Independent Variables: discourse (print vs. conversation); phrases (lexical vs. regular bundles); reading skill (struggling vs. non-struggling readers). Dependent Variable: Reading time of phrases on the computer screenControl Variable: random presentation of phrases.

Phrase-Matching task Three Screens from the Pilot Study: Left and Middle Screens Displaying Pairs of Matching

Bundles; Right Screen Displaying a Pair of Non-Matching Bundles

one of the most

one of the new

at the table

on the table

All lexical (left screen) and regular (middle screen) bundles were matching. YES was the correct answer for the matching pairs in the left and middle screens; NO was the correct answer for the non-matching pair in the right screen. The first bundle in the pairs appeared 500 milliseconds before the second bundle. The two bundles stayed on the screen until the participant pressed the YES or NO key. Right/wrong answers as well as response times (in milliseconds) were recorded for each participant.

Instrument

• DMDX• A free software to present linguistic stimulus

& record response times;• Developed by K. Forster at U. of Northern

Arizona.

ResultsResearch Design and Reaction Time Means

Print Conversation

Lexical Bundles

Regular Bundles

Lexical Bundles

Regular Bundles

Non-struggling

(n=14)894,216 990,208 844,524 933,042

Struggling (n=14) 1194,586 1199,209 1103,871 1191,815

The three main effects were significant: (a) discourse at F(1, 26)= 10.762, p.<0.005 (b) bundle at F(1, 26)= 11.296, p.< 0.005, and (c) reading skill at F(1, 26)= 8.061, p.< 0.009, with non-struggling students performing 257 milliseconds (ms) faster (collapsing across the register and bundle factors). No significant interaction effects: discourse*bundle, bundle*reading skill, discourse*student, discourse*bundle*reading skill.

Results Cont’d

Bundle*student interaction effect in print has an effect size of partial eta squared .085, although this interaction is not significant—this effect size is in the mid-to-large range (small= .02; middle= .06; large= .14). The power for this interaction is only .321—very low.

Findings• Non-struggling readers display formula effect (i.e., respond

to lexical bundles faster than regular bundles) in both print and conversation;

• Struggling readers display formula effect only in conversation.

• Struggling readers recognize frequent bundles in conversation faster than regular bundles, but not in print.

• For Struggling readers frequent and infrequent bundles in print are not different.

• Non-struggling readers are overall faster at recognizing bundles, even in conversation, than their repeating peers.

Limitations• Sample selection: groups may not be very

different from each other.• Task design: participants may have only

matched words one by one on the screen, rather than bundles.

• Experiment setting: Psycholinguistic studies are conducted in quieter places; this study was conducted in library and main food court.

The Mnemonic Power of PrintThe contribution of Word Spellings

for Vocabulary Learning and Instruction

(Rosenthal & Ehri, 2008)

Picture courtesy of www.pppst.com

How is automaticity achieved? • Spellings of words become

connected to their pronunciations and meanings in memory.

• Knowledge of the grapheme-phoneme system provides the glue that connects graphemes in written spellings to phonemes in spoken words.

• This information is stored as amalgams representing individual words in memory, as diagramed in the right.

Would new vocabulary items be read by sight?

Ehri (1980, 1992, 2005) and others have shown that all words can be read by sight (from memory) without recourse to decoding when practiced--not just high frequency or irregularly spelled words. Once their pronunciations and meanings become amalgamated, new vocabulary words may also be read by sight; they become sight words as well.

The study • Low-frequency nouns were taught to 2nd and 5th graders. • Students rehearsed the pronunciations and meanings of the

words over several trials. • During the initial study trial, the words were introduced. • All subsequent trials tested their recall of the words.• After each recall attempt, correct responses were provided. • Meanings of words were taught through pictures, definitions,

and multiple sentences containing the words and clarifying their meanings and use.

• Trials continued until students reached a criterion or a maximum number of trials.

Treatment vs. control

• In the treatment condition, words were accompanied by spellings during study periods (i.e., when the words were introduced and after each recall attempt).

• In the control condition, students learned spoken words without spellings.

Results: 2nd-graders• It was easier to recall meanings

than pronunciations of the words.

• Recall was superior when spellings were seen than when they were not seen.

• This advantage held for the recall of meanings as well as the recall of pronunciations.

• In recalling pronunciations, the benefit of seeing spellings grew larger over trials.

Results: 2nd-graders cont’d

Pronunciations and meanings of vocabulary words were learned better on the one-day delayed posttests when students were exposed to spellings of the words than when they only practiced speaking the words.

Results: 5th-graders• Two groups were identified among 5th

graders on the basis of a word knowledge test: high reader and low readers.

• Higher readers outperformed lower readers.

• Recall of pronunciations was better when words were learned with spelling aids than without spelling aids. This was true for both groups.

• The size of the advantage of spellings was much larger for higher than for lower readers; it grew larger and larger over the first 3 trials for the higher readers.

• The size of the advantage over trials was more similar for lower readers after the first trial.

• It may be that higher readers’ better knowledge of grapho-phonemic and of larger syllabic spelling units (than lower readers) gave the higher readers an advantage in forming connections to store multisyllabic words in memory.

Results: 5th-graders cont’d• Higher readers outperformed

lower readers in recalling definitions.

• Spellings benefited recall for both reader groups during the first 3 trials, after which a ceiling effect was observed.

• These findings show that fifth graders learned vocabulary words better when they saw spellings of the words than when they only spoke the words.

Results: 5th-graders cont’d• Students were able to spell

many more of the words they had seen than those they had not seen, indicating they had stored the spellings in memory.

• Higher readers showed larger benefits than lower readers.

• Even though lower readers had weaker orthographic knowledge, they still had enough knowledge to benefit from spellings in learning vocabulary words.

Conclusions• Fifth graders learned the pronunciations and meanings of new

vocabulary words better when they were exposed to their spellings than when they only spoke the words.

• Students with stronger orthographic knowledge benefited more from seeing spellings than students with weaker orthographic knowledge—Support for Matthew Effects

• When students are exposed to the spellings of new vocabulary words, grapho-phonemic connections are activated. This better secures pronunciations of words in memory.

• Spellings themselves become bonded to pronunciations in memory and secure pronunciations earlier during the course of learning.

• Better secured pronunciations provide a stronger base for learning meanings.

Conclusions Cont’d• Spellings helped both second and fifth graders, indicating

that the effect of spellings is not limited developmentally to the period of beginning reading or to more advanced levels but extends over all levels of reading, at least during the elementary grades.

• When teachers encounter, pronounce, and explain new vocabulary words to their students, they should take time to display the spellings of the words, for example, when they are reading a story aloud to the whole class.

• When students encounter new vocabulary words in their independent reading, according to present findings, they should stop and not only figure out the meanings of the words but also decode and pronounce their spellings.

Three Aspects of Reading (Walczyk, 1994)

1. Subcomponent processes: identifying letters and recognizing words.

2. Limited pools of resources: Attention and working memory.

3. Metacognitive strategies: setting appropriate goals, choosing a strategy to attain the goal, monitoring progress, taking remedial action if not successful.

Sources of Variance in Reading Success

• Verbal working memory span may be too small.

• Decoding skills may be inefficient.

• Metacognitive deficits may hinder comprehension.

• Difficulty of the text and unfamiliar vocabulary may cause problems in reading comprehension.

Compensatory-Encoding Theory• Children can be taught metacognitive strategies

for overcoming poorly automated word recognition skills.

• Metacognitive strategies may help a child with a small verbal working-memory span.

• Perhaps the child does not chunk ideas into larger semantic units but can be encouraged to do so.

• One aspect of reading may compensate for a deficiency elsewhere.

Resource Accounts of Reading• Effortful (control) processes require the allocation

of resources (working memory and attention). • Attention and working memory are capacity-

limited but can be directed flexibly by the reader. • Automatic processing is effortless, highly efficient,

and makes minimal demands on attention. • An automatic process is encapsulated (modular) if

it is uninfluenced by higher level processes. Think of the Stroop effect.

Resource Theory• If word recognition is truly encapsulated then knowing the

context in which a word appears (what the passage is about) should provide little facilitation of word recognition.

• Recall that West and Stanovich (1978) found a negative correlation between reading skill and context use.

• If subcomponents are inefficient (decoding, resolving anaphors), resources (attention) will be shunted from comprehension activities to the processing of subcomponents.

• Thus the reader may forget the main idea especially if she must reallocate attention often.

Interactive Theory• Automatic and control processes interact in reading routinely.• Reading often proceeds on “auto-pilot”; automatic, efficient

reading subcomponents process text while making minimal demands on capacity-limited attentional and working-memory resources. These resources can be allocated to text comprehension.

• Occasional “glitches” in subcomponents may force attention to be reallocated from comprehension activities. This slows the speed of comprehension and may impair the quality of comprehension.

• On certain occasions, resources may not adequate to fix the problem. This happens when readers lack background knowledge for a text.

Components of Verbal Efficiency • Letter, recoding (visual to acoustic code) and word identification

reach early asymptote (Perfetti, 1985). Most children become automatic in these subcomponents by 2nd grade.

• Lexical access• Semantic-memory access may increase over the course of

reading development.• Syntactic analysis• Resolution of anaphors• Proposition integration • Working memory capacity increases with age as does ability to

focus and sustain attention (Case, 1985).

Semantic Access

• Upon reading a word, those with more efficient access to semantic information, can resolve anaphors more quickly, make inferences, and so on, before information is lost from working memory.

Metacognitive Competencies

• Problem Definition: define goal in reading; • Strategy Selection: select a strategy for attaining

the goal (e.g., skimming); • Comprehension Monitoring; • Regulation: in the case of a failure, redefine the

reading goal or select a another strategy. • Poor readers fall short of good readers in each of

these four aspects of metacognitive competencies (Baker & Brown, 1984).

Development in Metacognitive Competencies

• As readers mature, they show improvements in each of the four aspects of metacognition.

• At any age, better readers are more able in each of the aspects (Brown, 1980; Baker & Brown, 1984).

• Older and better readers view reading as problem solving; have a larger repertoire of available strategies for meeting cognitive goals. In the face of a difficult text, they will slow reading rate, pause to check comprehension, and if failure occurs are mor likely to regulate their reading etc. (Markman, 1979).

• Poor and younger readers view reading as decoding and are not actively engaged in text modeling.

Is Metacognition Trainable?

• Bransford, Stein, Vye, Franks, Auble, Mezynski, and Perfetto (1982) presented unsuccessful 5th graders with texts written without bridging transitions.

• The students did not spontaneously generate bridging inferences while successful students did.

• When the unsuccessful 5-th graders were taught to generate bridging inferences, their memory for text improved.

• Palincsar & Brown (1984) trained Middle-school students with good decoding but deficient comprehension strategies in finding the main idea and monitoring their comprehension. Significant gains were observed in 8 weeks of training.

• Markman (1979) and Baker (1979) found that, when forewarned, students were more likely to detect inconsistencies.

Is Metacognition Trainable?

Compensatory-Encoding Theory• Theory accounts for what happens when reading

occurs under pressure (i.e., when taking a test). • By 4th and 5th grade, children’s metacognitive

competencies approach those of adults. And they start using compensatory mechanisms to compensate for inefficient subcomponents and limited resources.

• For example they adjust their reading rate, pause appropriately, and look back.

• Under no-pressure conditions and when reading difficult text, readers are free to use compensatory mechanisms.

• For readers who do not use compensatory mechanisms, metacognitive strategy training is necessary.

• Time limitations and performance pressure make it difficult to use compensatory strategies—thus stronger correlations between subcomponent efficiencies and comprehension measures.

Compensatory-Encoding Theory

Ari (2010) MARSI Pretest

MARSI+ (maximum score=5) mean (SD) [range]

Wide Reading 3.48 (.601) [2.63, 4.67]

Repeated Readings 3.55 (.718) [2.30, 4.57]

Vocabulary Study 3.10 (.769) [1.83, 4.17]

Comparison Group 3.55 (.718) [2.30, 4.57]

Course Evaluation

• I will post a link to the online course evaluation form shortly.

re 5120: psychological bases of reading re 5120: psychological bases of reading summer 2010

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