Lower Reading Scores Research Articles

O papel da categoria conhecimento nos processos de compreensão leitora

Perfetti et al (1996) classify the reading comprehension components in two main categories: the process and the knowledge categories. Lexical processes, working memory capacity, inference making and comprehension monitoring are situated in the first one, whereas word knowledge and domain knowledge are placed in the second one. This paper aims at showing the relevance of the types of knowledge that make up the second category to the overall reading comprehension process. In order to do so, the strategies used by adult readers with high reading scores were compared with the strategies used by adult readers with low reading scores, while answering vocabulary-related items of a reading test.

Academic Achievements of Children in Immigrant Families

Utilizing data on approximately 16,000 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Kindergarten Cohort and a rich set of mediating factors on 16 immigrant groups, this paper examined the associations between children’s immigrant generation status and their academic performance. The changes in academic achievements during kindergarten and first-grade were also examined to explore the varying learning paces exhibited by children from different countries of origin. Results indicate that, compared to third and later generation non-Hispanic white children, children of Latin American regions tended to have lower reading and math scores, while children of Asian regions tended to have higher reading and math scores. In addition, although children of immigrants may have either higher (e.g., children from East Asia) or lower scores (e.g., children from Mexico) by first-grade compared to third and later generation non-Hispanic white children, the former generally learned skills at faster paces, thus widening (e.g., for children from East Asia) or narrowing (e.g., for children from Mexico) academic achievement gaps. Child and family characteristics accounted for a large share of the differences in children’s academic achievements. Home, school, and neighborhood environments may also matter but to a lesser extent. Research implications are discussed. Keywords: academic achievements; immigrants; immigrant generation status; neighborhood characteristics; school environments.

Effects on Reading Performance of Indention Patterns in a Chinese Sign

This study investigated the effects of the use of indention in a public Chinese sign which can provide the reader with cues for the appropriate eye direction for reading a sign which facilitates reading. The between-subjects design had repeated observations on the indention design. The right or left column was indented in a Chinese sign of only two columns. 144 college students in Taiwan who served as subjects were divided into two groups by their reading comprehension and shown stimuli in a tachistoscope. Analysis showed that an indented design significantly reduced reading time but did not change accuracy rate. This result was consistent with the results of Duchnicky and Kolers' 1983 study and indicated that a reader can maintain accuracy while reducing reading time when reading a text designed with different kinds of indention layout. These results might aid designers of Chinese warning signs, especially for readers with lower reading scores.

Time Estimation and Performance on Reproduction Tasks in Subtypes of Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

This study compared Hispanic children (ages 7 to 11) with combined type (CT, n = 33) and inattentive type (IT, n = 21) attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a control group (n = 25) on time-estimation and time-reproduction tasks. The ADHD groups showed larger errors in time reproduction but not in time estimation than the control group, and the groups did not differ from each other on their performance on this task. Individual differences could not be accounted for by oppositional-defiance ratings and low math or reading scores. Although various measures of executive functioning did not make significant unique contributions to time estimation performance, those of interference control and nonverbal working memory did so to the time-reproduction task. Findings suggest that ADHD is associated with a specific impairment in the capacity to reproduce rather than estimate time durations and that this may be related to the children's deficits in inhibition and working memory.

What Effect Does Classroom Separation Have on Twins' Behavior, Progress at School, and Reading Abilities?

We investigated the effects of classroom separation on twins' behavior, progress at school, and reading abilities. This investigation was part of a longitudinal study of a nationally-representative sample of twins (the E-risk Study) who were assessed at the start of school (age 5) and followed up (age 7). We examined three groups of twins: pairs who were in the same class at both ages; pairs who were in separate classes at both ages; and pairs who were in the same class at age 5, but separated by age 7. When compared to those not separated, those separated early had significantly more teacher-rated internalizing problems and those separated later showed more internalizing problems and lower reading scores. Monozygotic (MZ) twins showed more problems as a result of separation than dizygotic (DZ) twins. No group differences emerged for externalizing problems, ADHD or prosocial behaviors. The implications of the findings for parents and teachers of twins, and for school practices about separating twins, are discussed.

Simulation of artificial vision: I. Eccentric reading of isolated words, and perceptual learning

Simulations of artificial vision were performed to assess “minimum requirements for useful artificial vision”. Retinal prostheses will be implanted at a fixed (and probably eccentric) location of the retina. To mimic this condition on normal observers, we projected stimuli of various sizes and content on a defined stabilised area of the visual field. In experiment 1, we asked subjects to read isolated 4-letter words presented at various degrees of pixelisation and at various eccentricities. Reading performance dropped abruptly when the number of pixels was reduced below a certain threshold. For central reading, a viewing area containing about 300 pixels was necessary for close to perfect reading (>90% correctly read words). At eccentricities beyond 10°, close to perfect reading was never achieved even if more than 300 pixels were used. A control experiment using isolated letter recognition in the same conditions suggested that lower reading performance at high eccentricity was in part due to the “crowding effect”. In experiment 2, we investigated whether the task of eccentric reading under such specific conditions could be improved by training. Two subjects, naive to this task, were trained to read pixelised 4-letter words presented at 15° eccentricity. Reading performance of both subjects increased impressively throughout the experiment. Low initial reading scores (range 6%–23% correct) improved impressively (range 64%–85% correct) after about one month of training (about 1 h/day). Control tests demonstrated that the learning process consisted essentially in an adaptation to use an eccentric area of the retina for reading. These results indicate that functional retinal implants consisting of more than 300 stimulation contacts will be needed. They might successfully restore some reading abilities in blind patients, even if they have to be placed outside the foveal area. Reaching optimal performance may, however, require a significant adaptation process.

Sink or Swim: What Happened to California's Bilingual Students after Proposition 227?

AbstractProposition 227, passed by California voters in 1998, aimed to dismantle bilingual programs in public schools and to replace them with English-only programs. Bilingual education, a long-standing program in California, involved mostly Hispanic students of limited English skills who were taught initially in their native language, and then were gradually transitioned into English-only classes. Using individual-level data from one southern California school district, I find that in 1998, before Proposition 227, limited-English-proficient (LEP) students enrolled in bilingual classes had lower scores in reading than LEP students who were not enrolled in bilingual classes, and who were, in general, more proficient in English. In math, bilingual students had test scores as good as those of non-bilingual LEPs. But in 1999, after Proposition 227, the same set of bilingual students had reading and math scores that were no worse than those of non-bilingual LEPs. Proposition 227, which interrupted bilingual programs and emphasized English instruction, did not set bilingual LEP students back relative to non-bilingual LEPs, and it may have even benefited them.

Effects of Mandatory Basic Education for Adult AFDC Recipients

Only small education effects were found for a large-scale program requiring participation in basic education by adult welfare recipients without a high school diploma or with low reading or math pretest scores. Positive results found in some of the research sites suggest that, with a focused program effort, GED certificates and improved achievement test scores may be obtained for individuals with pretest scores that are relatively high for this population. Raising achievement levels and increasing GED receipt appreciably among the many welfare recipients with lower pretest scores will require substantially improved program effectiveness.

Reading, syntactic, and working memory skills of bilingual Portuguese-English Canadian children

The purpose of the study was to examine the nature of language, memory, and reading skills of bilingual students and to determine the relationship between reading problems in English and reading problems in Portuguese. The study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 37 bilingual Portuguese-Canadian children, aged 9–12 years. English was their main instructional language and Portuguese was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program at school where they were taught to read and write Portuguese. The children were administered word and pseudoword reading, language, and working memory tasks in English and Portuguese. The majority of the children (67%) showed at least average proficiency in both languages. The children who had low reading scores in English also had significantly lower scores on the Portuguese tasks. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudoword reading, working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The Portuguese-Canadian children who were normally achieving readers did not differ from a comparison group of monolingual English speaking normally achieving readers except that the bilingual children had significantly lower scores on the English syntactic awareness task. The bilingual reading disabled children had similar scores to the monolingual reading disabled children on word reading and working memory but lower scores on the syntactic awareness task. However, the bilingual reading disabled children had significantlyhigher scores than the monolingual English speaking reading disabled children on the English pseudoword reading test and the English spelling task, perhaps reflecting a positive transfer from the more regular grapheme phoneme conversion rules of Portuguese. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of reading skills. In both English and Portuguese, reading difficulties appear to be strongly related to deficits in phonological processing.

Content-Specific and General Reading Disabilities of Secondary-Level Students

The purposes of this study were (a) to examine the diagnostic utility of reading from text for distinguishing students with general reading disabilities from those whose reading deficits are related to background knowledge in specific content areas, and (b) to establish the educational utility of these two subgroups. Participants were 121 students (71 male and 50 female) in the 10th grade who were participating in a larger study to examine the contribution of reading to the academic success of secondary students. Students first completed a background-knowledge vocabulary test. Then they read aloud from English and science texts, studied and answered multiple-choice questions based on the selected texts, and finally read aloud from the texts again. The discrepancy between student performance in reading aloud from the prestudy English and science texts was utilized to formulate two subgroups: students with general reading deficits defined by low reading scores in both English and science, and students with content-specific deficits defined by reading scores in English that were substantially higher than in science. Results of the discrepancy analysis yielded a group of 33 students with general deficits and 6 students with content-specific deficits. To examine the educational utility of these groups, content-specific and matched general-deficit groups were compared on their poststudy reading performances of the science passage. Poststudy reading scores for the content-specific group were significantly higher than for the general-deficit group, suggesting that students in the content-specific group benefited more from study of the text than did students in the general-deficit group. Additional analyses supported the hypothesis that the content-specific deficits were due to a lack of background knowledge. Results lend support to the possibility that reading from text can be used by teachers as a diagnostic tool to identify educationally relevant subtypes of students with learning difficulties in the content areas.

The Boston Teacher Questionnaire. 2. Assessments of validity.

We assessed the validity of the Boston Teacher Questionnaire in a sample of 3451 9-year-old children. Those identified by the questionnaire as having a learning difficulty syndrome were compared to those without any characteristic of that syndrome. The validity reference measures were individually administered neuropsychological assessments at age 7 years and a group-administered reading achievement test at age 9 years. Girls and boys with the reading syndrome had much lower reading scores at age 9 years than did their peers. Boys, but not girls, with the arithmetic syndrome were much more likely than their peers to have arithmetic scores more than one grade below the expected level at age 7 years. Girls and boys with the tasks syndrome, characterized by impersistence, dependence, and inflexibility, were more likely than those without any features of the syndrome to be classified as having little or no goal orientation by a neuropsychologist who assessed the children in an office setting. Similarly, the neuropsychologist was much more likely than expected to have classified children with the attention syndrome as having a short attention span, and to have classified boys, but not girls, with the hyperactivity syndrome as having an unusual/extreme level and nature of overactivity. Children with any syndrome were more likely than others to have low scores on components of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, items of the Bender-Gestalt Test that assessed integration and distortion, and measures of reading comprehension. We conclude that the Boston Teacher Questionnaire validly identifies children with learning problems.

Effects of Familiar Proctor on Fifth and Sixth Grade Students' Test Anxiety

The effect of the proctor's familiarity on four groups of students in Grades 5 and 6 was investigated. The 137 children took a reading examination, half of which was administered by a familiar proctor, the other half by an unfamiliar one. Order of conditions was controlled. Analysis showed that students had significantly lower reading scores with the unfamiliar proctor. Students with midrange IQs had significantly lower reading scores than those in the low or high ranges. A significant relationship between test anxiety and effects of the unfamiliar proctor on test performance was shown. Test anxiety contributed significantly to the relationship between self-esteem and performance.

Validity of self-reported reading disability by parents of reading-disabled and control children

Composite reading scores obtained from parents of 125 reading-disabled children and 125 matched control children who participated in the Colorado Family Reading Study were used to test the validity of self-reported reading problems. Parents who reported that they encountered serious difficulty learning to read had significantly lower reading scores than did those who reported no positive history of reading problems. Moreover, this difference was larger for parents of reading-disabled children than for those of controls. Thus, parental self-reports provide a valid index of reading problems.

Overflow movements and cognitive, motor and behavioural disturbance: a normative study of girls.

This study established norms for overflow movements of girls on the Modified Fog Test (MFT) of neurological function and investigated the relationship between high levels of overflow and behavioural and cognitive measures. 193 girls aged seven to 10 years, from suburban and inner-city areas, were examined for overflow, co-ordination and handedness, and completed cognitive and reading tests. Teachers' assessments of performance and behaviour at school were obtained and the parents of 147 girls were interviewed about developmental history, psychosocial situation and current behaviour. As predicted, there was a highly significant reduction in the amount of overflow with increasing age. Left-handed girls showed more overflow on the right side, in contrast to right- and mixed-handed girls. Girls in a combined group of 'poor performers' on the MFT were significantly more likely to show behaviour problems at school, and to be judged poor scholastically. They had significantly lower reading scores, were judged poor at handwriting and school sport, and scored lower on the Gubbay clap and catch task.

A Longitudinal Study Of Children With Developmental Language Delay At Age Three: Later Intelligence, Reading And Behaviour Problems

A large sample of Dunedin (New Zealand) children were assessed at age three to identify those with language delay. 2.6 per cent were defined as delayed in verbal comprehension only, 2.3 per cent as delayed in verbal expression only, and 2.3 per cent as delayed in both ('general language delay'). Most of these children, and the remainder of the sample, were assessed for intelligence, reading and behaviour problems at ages seven, nine and 11. Those in every language-delay group had significantly lower mean IQs and lower mean reading scores than the remainder of the sample. They also more often had a low IQ or a lower reading score at ages seven and nine and a lower Verbal and Full-scale IQ at 11. The groups with delayed verbal comprehension and general language delay had significantly more behaviour problems than the remainder of the sample. The group with general language delay was consistently the most disadvantaged in later intelligence, reading and behaviour. Two of the language-delay groups (comprehension and general language) had significantly higher scores on a family disadvantage index. The results of this study confirm the importance of early language delay as a predictor of lower than average intelligence and reading ability and increased behaviour problems.

Slow starters versus long term backward readers.

Summary. The aim of this study was to analyse data from a longitudinal study of a sample of culturally disadvantaged children and a matched control group to see what features distinguished a group of poor readers at age 7.5 years who remained seriously backward in reading throughout their school careers (Long Term Backward Group) from a group of equally low scoring readers of the same age who subsequently made relatively good progress in reading (Slow Starter Group). A discriminant function analysis was carried out using a selection of performance and behavioural measures obtained between ages 6 and 7 years, together with a global measure of the cultural and material provision in the children's home backgrounds. A combination of five of the seven measures produced a discriminant function which successfully distinguished 21 out of the 24 cases (87 per cent) in terms of their group membership. Although both groups obtained very low reading scores at 7.5 years, case records showed a marked difference between them in their pattern of progress through their infant school reading schemes. The findings supported a multi‐factorial explanation of long term reading failure in which a paucity of literary experience in the home and a limited oral vocabulary resulting in a low interest in and concentration upon pre‐reading and reading tasks in school, with associated behavioural problems, are salient features.

Hyperactive and Learning Disabled Children: Who Gets Help?

Although not all hyperactive children are learning disabled, many are. This investigation sought to establish if those hyperactive children with learning disabilities are more likely to receive educational assistance than control children, and to learn what additional pupil characteristics are associated with receiving special educational services. The results indicated that hyperactive children are more likely to be served by special education than control children. Those hyperactive children served tended to have lower reading scores, have parents who acknowledged their problems, be poorly adapted to classroom learning demands, and have poorer intrapersonal adjustment. They also were characterized by aggressive behavior and lower verbal IQs. Nonhyperactive children served had the same characteristics save aggressive behavior. But they did have significantly higher rated hyperactive behavior during testing. Hyperactive behavior, either attributed to the child or observed, is important in determining who gets help for learning disabilities.

Reading disability in an epidemiological context incidence and environmental correlates.

Among four year-groups of children in a school system (266 girls, 284 boys), 4 percenthad a reading disability (IQ ≥ 85), and 2.7 percent were “slow learners” (IQ < 85). Reading disabled boys tended to be later born in their families, and 40 percent of those born in the local area came from the 10.8 percent of boys born when the mean monthly climatic temperature was ≥ 71°F (mainly July). This was seven times the rate for boys born in cool or moderate months (33°F to 70°F). Lower reading scores were associated with hot birth month temperatures for all socioeconomic groups. Possible explanations are discussed.

Computers in Audio-Tutorial Biology

Research Article| March 01 1984 Computers in Audio-Tutorial Biology Charles C. Self, Charles C. Self Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Mary Anne Self, Mary Anne Self Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Charlotte E. Rahaim Charlotte E. Rahaim Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The American Biology Teacher (1984) 46 (3): 168–172. https://doi.org/10.2307/4447806 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Charles C. Self, Mary Anne Self, Charlotte E. Rahaim; Computers in Audio-Tutorial Biology. The American Biology Teacher 1 March 1984; 46 (3): 168–172. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/4447806 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe American Biology Teacher Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1984 The National Association of Biology Teachers Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

A Twin Study of Genetic Influences in Reoding Achievement

The California Reading Achievement Test was administered to 70 pairs of same-sex twins, ages 9 to 12 years. Intraclass (within-pair) correlations were significantly higher for monozygotic (MZ) than for dizygotic (DZ) pairs, and F ratios of variance showed that the DZ pairs had significantly greater within-pair variability than the MZ pairs. The results were in close agreement with findings of previous studies, and together are indicative of hereditary influences in reading achievement. The MZ twins' reading scores were found in a bimodal rather than a normal distribution, suggesting a recessive gene influence on relatively lower reading scores. Tentative support for this suggestion was found by comparing the observed distribution with that expected from a recessive gene model. The advantages are discussed for utilizing twin samples for further research into (1) inherited underlying traits which might influence reading achievement, and (2) environmental contributions to reading achievement.