Scale of reading fluency in Spanish: measuring the components of fluency / Escala de fluidez lectora en español: midiendo los componentes de la fluidez

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to design and validate a rating scale to measure reading fluency. As well as speed and accuracy, different dimensions of prosody were taken into account (volume, intonation, pauses and phrasing), aspects hardly considered in reading assessment. In addition, a measure of reading quality was included. 122 Spanish primary-school children (74 in Year 2 and 48 in Year 4) read aloud a narrative text. Using inter-rater criteria, children’s reading was assessed with this new rating scale (Scale of Reading Fluency in Spanish, SRFS) (Escala de Fluidez Lectora en Español, EFLE) and with the Multidimensional Fluency Scale (Rasinski, 2004). Standardized reading comprehension and prosodic reading tests were used as criterion measures. Results show acceptable reliability and validity coefficients. We conclude that SRFS appears to be a useful instrument for using in education and research contexts.     

The development of early literacy in Steiner‐ and standard‐educated children

Background. There is evidence that children who are taught to read later in childhood (age 6–7) make faster progress in early literacy than those who are taught at a younger age (4–5 years), as is current practice in the UK. Aims. Steiner‐educated children begin learning how to read at age 7, and have better reading‐related skills at the onset of instruction. Therefore, it is hypothesized that older Steiner‐educated children will make faster progress in early literacy than younger standard‐educated controls. Samples. A total of 30 Steiner‐educated children (age 7–9) were compared to a matched group of 31 standard‐educated controls (age 4–6). Method. Children were tested for reading, spelling, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge at three time points during their first year of formal reading instruction and again at the end of the second year. Results. There were no significant differences between groups in word reading at the end of the first and second year or reading comprehension at the end of the second year; however, the standard group outperformed the Steiner group on spelling at the end of both years. The Steiner group maintained an overall lead in phonological skills while letter knowledge was similar in both groups. Conclusions. The younger children showed similar, and in some cases, better progress in literacy than the older children; this was attributed to more consistent and high‐quality synthetic phonics instruction as is administered in standard schools. Consequently, concerns that 4‐ to 5‐year‐olds are ‘too young’ to begin formal reading instruction may be unfounded.     

The pattern of reading deterioration in dementia of the Alzheimer type: Observations and implications

Thirteen patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) were tested for their ability to read aloud and to read with comprehension. Reading aloud was preserved in all but the most severely impaired cases and was found to be relatively independent of intellectual deterioration. Reading comprehension declined progressively with increasing dementia severity and correlated well with quantitative mental status assessments. The results suggest that the pattern of reading deterioration may aid in the clinical identification of DAT, that the disturbance of reading comprehension is a linguistic deficit rather than a product of visual-perceptual disturbances, and that the alexia is more consistent with an instrumental loss than a de-developmental model of dementia.     

Examining the Effects of Skill Level and Reading Modality on Reading Comprehension

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of reading skill and reading modality (oral versus silent) on reading comprehension. A normative sample of sixth-grade students (N = 74) read texts aloud and silently and then answered questions about what they read. Skill in word reading fluency was assessed by the Test of Word Reading Efficiency, Second Edition (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 2012), and students were identified as either normal or at-risk readers based on those scores. A 2 (reading skill) X 2 (reading modality) mixed factorial ANOVA was conducted. Results revealed that both normal and at-risk readers demonstrated better comprehension of text read orally as compared to text read silently. The middle school curriculum requires independent silent reading, yet students may enter middle school without the literacy skills they need to be successful. These findings suggest that students transitioning to middle school may benefit from additional pedagogical support in silent reading comprehension.     

Learning to read changes children's phonological skills: evidence from a latent variable longitudinal study of reading and nonword repetition

Individual differences in nonword repetition are associated with language and literacy development, but few studies have considered the extent to which learning to read influences phonological skills as indexed by nonword repetition performance. We explored this question using a latent variable longitudinal design. Reading, oral language and nonword repetition were assessed in 215 children at age 6 years and one year later at age 7. Reading at 6 years predicted growth in nonword repetition between 6 and 7 years, independent of the effects of oral language skills and the autoregressive effect of nonword repetition at 6 years, but nonword repetition was not a longitudinal predictor of the growth of reading. These findings demonstrate that learning to read has a powerful effect on children's language processing systems. We consider how learning to read might influence speech processing, and discuss the implications of our findings for theoretical accounts of reading disorder.     

Computer‐assisted reading intervention with a phonics approach for children using cochlear implants or hearing aids

The present study examined computer‐assisted reading intervention with a phonics approach for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children in Sweden using cochlear implants or hearing aids, or a combination of both. The study included 48 children, 5, 6 and 7 years of age. Sixteen children with normal hearing (NH) served as a reference group. The first purpose of the study was to compare NH and DHH children's reading ability at pre and post‐intervention. The second purpose was to investigate effects of the intervention. Cognitive and demographic factors were analyzed in relation to reading improvement. Results showed no statistically significant difference for reading ability at the group level, although NH children showed overall higher reading scores at both test points. Age comparisons revealed a statistically significant higher reading ability in the NH 7‐year‐olds compared to the DHH 7‐year‐olds. The intervention proved successful for word decoding accuracy, passage comprehension and as a reduction of nonword decoding errors in both NH and DHH children. Reading improvement was associated with complex working memory and phonological processing skills in NH children. Correspondent associations were observed with visual working memory and letter knowledge in the DHH children. Age was the only demographic factor that was significantly correlated with reading improvement. The results suggest that DHH children's beginning reading may be influenced by visual strategies that might explain the reading delay in the older children.     

Reading voices and hearing text: talker-specific auditory imagery in reading

A series of experiments was conducted to determine if linguistic representations accessed during reading include auditory imagery for characteristics of a talker's voice. In 3 experiments, participants were familiarized with two talkers during a brief prerecorded conversation. One talker spoke at a fast speaking rate, and one spoke at a slow speaking rate. Each talker was identified by name. At test, participants were asked to either read aloud (Experiment 1) or silently (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) a passage that they were told was written by either the fast or the slow talker. Reading times, both silent and aloud, were significantly slower when participants thought they were reading a passage written by the slow talker than when reading a passage written by the fast talker. Reading times differed as a function of passage author more for difficult than for easy texts, and individual differences in general auditory imagery ability were related to reading times. These results suggest that readers engage in a type of auditory imagery while reading that preserves the perceptual details of an author's voice.     

Relationship between intellectual status and reading skills for developmentally disabled children

The relationship between WISC-R Full Scale IQ and scores on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests were explored for 80 developmentally disabled children. While the children's reading skills correlated moderately and significantly with intellectual status, abstract reading skills, e.g., word comprehension, correlated more highly with Full Scale IQ than did concrete ones, e.g., word identification. The development of concrete learning patterns by such children was discussed, with an emphasis on the emotional importance of these learning styles to the children and their families.     

This time it’s personal: the memory benefit of hearing oneself

The production effect is the memory advantage of saying words aloud over simply reading them silently. It has been hypothesised that this advantage stems from production featuring distinctive information that stands out at study relative to reading silently. MacLeod (2011) (I said, you said: The production effect gets personal. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 1197–1202. doi:10.3758/s13423-011-0168-8) found superior memory for reading aloud oneself vs. hearing another person read aloud, which suggests that motor information (speaking), self-referential information (i.e., “I said it”), or both contribute to the production effect. In the present experiment, we dissociated the influence on memory of these two components by including a study condition in which participants heard themselves read words aloud (recorded earlier) – a first for production effect research – along with the more typical study conditions of reading aloud, hearing someone else speak, and reading silently. There was a gradient of memory across these four conditions, with hearing oneself lying between speaking and hearing someone else speak. These results imply that oral production is beneficial because it entails two distinctive components: a motor (speech) act and a unique, self-referential auditory input.     

BEGINNING READERS' MOTIVATION FOR READING IN RELATION TO PARENTAL BELIEFS AND HOME READING EXPERIENCES

Sixty-five 6-year-olds (first graders) from different sociocultural backgrounds and their mothers participated in a study examining children's motivation for reading in relation to parental beliefs and home literacy experiences. Each child completed an individually administered Motivations for Reading Scale that assessed several theoretical dimensions of reading motivation, including enjoyment/interest in reading, perceived competence as a reader, and sense of the value of reading. Parents were interviewed regarding their beliefs about reasons for reading, their beliefs about their child's interest in learning to read, and their ratings of the frequency of their child's experiences with printed materials. Results revealed that the beginning readers had generally positive views about reading and that no differences in motivation were associated with income level, ethnicity, or gender. Empirical support was provided for the distinctness of the dimensions of value, enjoyment, and perceived competence. Parental identification of pleasure as a reason for reading predicted children's motivation for reading, as did parents' reports that their child took an active interest in learning to read. Children's motivation for reading was not associated with frequency of storybook reading or library visits, but frequent use of basic skills books (ABC books) was negatively associated with motivation. The study demonstrated the importance of looking beyond quantitative indices of home literacy experiences in accounting for the development of motivation for reading; parents who believe that reading is pleasurable convey a perspective that is appropriated by their children, either directly through their words or indirectly through the nature of the literacy experiences they provide.     

Behavioral and social development of children born extremely premature: 5-year follow-up

A cohort of extremely prematurely born children and matched term controls was assessed at 5 years of age. The parents completed a questionnaire on their behavioral and social development. The purpose was to illuminate whether the children's general intellectual ability and parental sensitivity were associated with behavioral and social development. The index children exhibited more hyperactive behavior and had poorer social skills than the controls. Lower Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) was associated with outward reacting and hyperactive behavior and poorer social skills. Sensitive parenting was associated with less outward reacting and less hyperactive behavior. When controlling for differences in FSIQ and parental sensitivity, the index children persisted to have an increased risk of exhibiting hyperactive behavior but not poorer social skills. The index children with normal intellectual development, however, did not exhibit more behavioral problems or poorer social skills than the control children did.     

Parent language with toddlers during shared storybook reading compared to coviewing television

This study compares parent language directed at their toddlers while coviewing toddler-directed television and while storybook reading. Participants were 15- or 30- month-old children and their parent. A quantitative analysis of parent language revealed that it is more frequent, rich, and complex during reading relative to television viewing regardless of child age; although parents used more complex language and more diverse words with older children. The difference between media held even when the storybook text read aloud was not considered in the analysis. Consistent with the results of earlier research, shared book reading produces more and richer verbal interactions with toddlers than coviewing television and is thus more likely to positively influence early language development.     

Comprehension in "hyperlexic" readers

Mentally retarded children who can read aloud written words better than one would expect from their Mental Age are often called hyperlexic. The reading comprehension thought to be impaired in such children was investigated in four experiments. Mentally retarded advanced decoders, including autistic and nonautistic children, were compared with younger nonretarded children matched for Mental Age and Reading Age. Experiment 1 established that mildly mentally retarded readers could match sentences to pictures as well as could be expected from their verbal ability. This was the same whether they read the sentences or heard them. Experiment 2 demonstrated that only the more able retarded subjects, but not the less able ones, used sentence context in a normal way in order to pronounce homographs. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that these same more able children could extract meaning at both sentence and story level, and their performance was indistinguishable from that of normal controls. Hence, it is doubtful whether these advanced decoders should be called hyperlexic. In contrast, the readers of relatively low verbal ability performed much worse than their normal controls. Although they could be induced under certain conditions to read sentence-by-sentence rather than word-by-word, they did not do so spontaneously. Furthermore, they did not make use of already existing general knowledge in order to answer questions about the stories they had read. The ability to comprehend in terms of large units of meaning seems to be specifically impaired in these low verbal ability fluent readers. We suggest that it is this impairment that marks true hyperlexia. Since there were no differences between autistic and nonautistic readers on any of our tasks, we conclude that hyperlexia is not an autism-specific phenomenon.     

Semantic involvement in reading aloud: evidence from a nonword training study

The current research uses a novel methodology to examine the role of semantics in reading aloud. Participants were trained to read aloud 2 sets of novel words (i.e., nonwords such as bink): some with meanings (semantic) and some without (nonsemantic). A comparison of reading aloud performance between these 2 sets of novel words was used to provide an indicator of the importance of semantic information in reading aloud. In Experiment 1, in contrast to expectations, reading aloud performance was not better for novel words in the semantic condition. In Experiment 2, the training of novel words was modified to reflect more realistic steps of lexical acquisition: Reading aloud performance became faster and more accurate for novel words in the semantic condition, but only for novel words with inconsistent pronunciations. This semantic advantage for inconsistent novel words was again observed when a subset of participants from Experiment 2 was retested 6-12 months later (in Experiment 3). These findings provide support for a limited but significant role for semantics in the reading aloud process.     

汉语阅读障碍的语音加工及正字法加工缺陷的实验研究

本研究对汉语阅读障碍的加工缺陷进行探讨,期望有助于揭示语言加工的普遍性与特殊性,以及阅读障碍的成因,并可为后期的干预提供帮助。研究采用改编的言语认知测验对阅读水平匹配组与阅读障碍组和生理年龄匹配组进行比较后发现,阅读障碍组在语音意识和正字法加工任务上的成绩均明显差于生理年龄控制组和阅读水平匹配组;阅读障碍组在快速命名和语音记忆任务上的成绩不如生理年龄匹配组,仅达到阅读水平匹配组水平。因此,汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童存在语音意识和正字法加工缺陷,这两种缺陷可能是阅读障碍儿童面临的最主要的两大缺陷;阅读障碍儿童在快速命名和语音记忆上的不足可能是发展迟滞所致。同时,大多数的汉语阅读障碍儿童存在不止一种的认知缺陷。阅读障碍儿童在语音意识和正字法加工上存在缺陷的比例最高。     

"I GET PROUD WHEN I READ": FIRST-GRADERS TALK ABOUT READING

This interpretive research addressed five first-graders' perceptions of reading and of being readers, asking the questions: What does reading or being a reader mean to a group of children who are at the end of first grade? What are they see as its purpose? How do they view themselves as readers? The data is presented in the form of narratives describing the children and their views, followed by a discussion of the children's reading identities and purposes for reading as condensed into five categories: practice, people, power, pleasure, and performance. Practice, a main purpose for the children, entailed reading longer words and books, learning more words, and developing decoding skills. Reading as a social process included connections to people, both while being taught to read and when sharing texts with others. Mastery of reading provided varied feelings of power and control either over general textual ideas or over the words themselves. Pleasure and humor were emphasized in relation to children's reading, while instrumental motives were attributed to adults and to teacher-directed activities. Performance allowed for a display of knowledge and skills, but brought fear of ridicule for some. The children's rich perceptions of the reading process and of themselves as readers can guide educators as they support children in becoming strong, positive, and lasting readers. More in-depth qualitative research needs to be done on children's perceptions of reading at all levels of schooling, especially with beginning and struggling readers.     

The relationship between knowing a word and reading it aloud in children’s word reading development

This experiment examined the item-level relationship between 7-year-olds’ ability to read words aloud and their knowledge of the same words in the oral domain. Two types of knowledge were contrasted: familiarity with the phonological form of the word (lexical phonology), measured by auditory lexical decision, and semantic knowledge, measured by a definitions task. Overall, there was a robust relationship between word knowledge and reading aloud success. The association was stronger when words contained irregular spelling-sound correspondences. There was no evidence that a deeper or more semantic knowledge of words was more closely related to reading aloud success beyond the association between reading success and familiarity with the phonological form of the same words. This finding is not compatible with models that see semantics as contributing directly to the reading aloud process, at least during the relatively early stages of reading development. More critical was whether or not a word was considered a lexical item, as indexed by auditory lexical decision performance.     

Effects of Different Listening-While-Reading Rates on Comprehension in Secondary Students with Reading Deficits

Abstract

Effects of instructing students to read silently as another person reads aloud (listening-while-reading) on comprehension in secondary students with learning disabilities were examined. Two separate treatment conditions were implemented. During student rate listening-while-reading, (SLWR), experimenters read aloud at rates that approximated each student's oral reading rate. During fast rate listening-while-reading, (FLWR), experimenters increased their reading rates. A silent reading (SR) control condition was also implemented. Following each intervention the students answered five literal and five inferential questions. SLWR resulted in lower inferential accuracy than FLWR and SR. Discussion focuses on future research and implications for accommodating secondary students with reading skills deficits in general education classrooms.     

Longitudinal relationships between speech perception,phonological skills and reading in children at high‐risk of dyslexia

Speech perception deficits are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises learning to read is scant. We assessed the hypothesis that phonological skills, specifically phoneme awareness and RAN, mediate the relationship between speech perception and reading. We assessed longitudinal predictive relationships between categorical speech perception, phoneme awareness, RAN, language, attention and reading at ages 5½ and 6½ years in 237 children many of whom were at high risk of reading difficulties. Speech perception at 5½ years correlated with language, attention, phoneme awareness and RAN concurrently and was a predictor of reading at 6½ years. There was no significant indirect effect of speech perception on reading via phoneme awareness, suggesting that its effects are separable from those of phoneme awareness. Children classified with dyslexia at 8 years had poorer speech perception than age‐controls at 5½ years and children with language disorders (with or without dyslexia) had more severe difficulties with both speech perception and attention control. Categorical speech perception tasks tap factors extraneous to perception, including decision‐making skills. Further longitudinal studies are needed to unravel the complex relationships between categorical speech perception tasks and measures of reading and language and attention.     

HOW AFRICAN AMERICAN MOTHERS ASSIST THEIR EARLY ADOLESCENT DAUGHTERS WITH READING TASKS

Three African American mothers and their daughters participated in three, 30-minute reading sessions. During each session, daughters read narrative text for 15 minutes and expository text for the other 15 minutes. Categories of interaction emerged from those reading sessions. Results revealed nine mother interaction reading categories and seven daughter interaction categories. Irrespective of the type of reading, the categories were linked to the transmission, maturational, and transactional points of view. Implications provide suggestions for helping parents develop reading experiences that foster positive reading behaviors for their children.