Comparisons of Learning Ease and Transfer Propensity in Poor and Average Readers

Abstract

Assisted and unassisted performance of 14 average readers (7 boys and 7 girls between 9.67 and 13 years of age) and 14 children with learning disabilities (10 boys and 4 girls between 10.8 and 13 years of age) were compared on a reading comprehension task--stating the main idea in expository paragraphs in which the topic sentence was either first, last, or missing. Children were trained to find the main idea in one- and two-paragraph texts and took pre- and posttests in which they were asked to write the main ideas contained in one-, and six- to eight-paragraph texts. The main ideas contained in these texts either were explicitly stated (topic sentence first or last) or were implicit (topic sentence missing). Children's performance improved from pre- to posttest, although the effect of topic sentence placement was evident at both test times (performance on topic-sentence-first paragraphs was better than on topic-sentence-last paragraphs, which was, in turn, better than performance on topic-sentence-missing paragraphs). Although average achieving children and children with learning disabilities did not differ on static pre- and posttest measures, they did differ in how easily they learned to find the main idea under different topic sentence placement conditions. Children with learning disabilities required significantly more instruction than average readers to reach mastery criterion on nonideal text structures. Implications of the findings are discussed from both assessment and pedagogical perspectives.