Print exposure across the reading life span

Simon P Tiffin-Richards,Sascha Schroeder,Lorenz Grolig

doi:10.1007/s11145-019-10014-3

Abstract

Leisure reading is a main contributor to print exposure, which is in turn related to individual differences in reading and language skills. The Author Recognition Test (ART) is a brief and objective measure of print exposure that has been used in reading research since the 1990s. Life span studies have reported contradicting results concerning age differences in print exposure, possibly due to the use of ART versions that differed regarding authors’ mean publication year. We investigated effects of participant age and authors’ mean publication year, literary level, and circulation frequency on author recognition probability between adolescence and old age (N = 339; age 13–77 years). An explanatory item response analysis showed that participant age and circulation frequency were positively related to recognition probability. Mean publication year was negatively related to recognition probability, indicating that recent authors who have been widely read for only a few years were less often recognized than classic authors who have been widely read for several decades. The relation between participant age and recognition probability was moderated by author variables. For classic authors, the recognition probability increased between adolescence and old age. By contrast, for recent authors, the recognition probability increased only between adolescence and middle age. Our results suggest that the mean publication year is a key author variable for the detection of print exposure differences between young, middle-aged and older adults. We discuss implications for author selection when updating the ART and for measuring print exposure in age-diverse samples.

Highlights

According to meta-analyses, print exposure is positively related to the language and reading skills of children, adolescents, and young adults (Mol & Bus, 2011)
The second aim of this study is to investigate how author mean publication year, literary level, and circulation frequency are related to author recognition probability, and whether this relation changes between adolescence and old age
Our analyses indicate that (a) there is a positive, curvilinear relation between age and print exposure, and that this curve reaches a plateau around age 45 which slightly drops off again after age 65, (b) authors’ mean publication year is negatively related to author recognition probability, with classic authors more likely to be recognized than recent authors, and (c) that age moderates the effects of mean publication year, literary level, and circulation frequency

Summary

Introduction

According to meta-analyses, print exposure is positively related to the language and reading skills of children, adolescents, and young adults (Mol & Bus, 2011). The frequency of leisure reading is an important source of differences in print exposure. To assess relative differences in the amount of leisure reading, print exposure checklists with author names or book titles are often used. Print exposure checklists only take a few minutes to administrate. They contain foil items that control for social desirability in participant responses. Age-specific print exposure checklists have been developed for preschool children (e.g., Grolig, Cohrdes, & Schroeder, 2017), school children (e.g., Schroeder, Segbers, & Schröter, 2016) and college students (e.g., Stanovich & West, 1989). Studies have reported heterogeneous results regarding differences in exposure to written texts between young and older adults. The first aim of this study is to investigate how print exposure accumulates across the reading life span

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion