Passage Comprehension Research Articles

READABILITY OF THE GATES‐McGINITIE READING TEST: CAUTIONS FOR TEST GIVERS, TEST TAKERS, AND TEST MAKERS

The comprehension passages of the Gates‐MacGinitie Reading Test were subjected to readability analysis using a multi‐formula computer program. Several questions about the comprehension passages were investigated. The questions included, what is the reading grade level of each comprehension passage? Are the test forms for each level equivalent in readability difficulty? Are the comprehension passages arranged sequentially from easy to difficult? Do tests assigned a certain grade equivalent score range really contain comprehension passages representative of that range? This study shows that the test forms are not equally difficult in readability. There appears to be only moderate consideration for arranging the comprehension passages in an established sequential pattern of difficulty. The unequal distribution of passages written below, at, or above the test taker's grade imposes limitations on the credibility of the performance scores. A most important finding is that the grade equivalent scores cannot be a...

An Extended Comparison of Adjunct Aids with Low-Average and Good Readers in the Sixth Grade

AbstractFour types of prestatements and prequestions and no adjunct aid were compared as techniques for enhancing comprehension of cause-effect passages. During six weekly practice sessions, each of 200 randomly assigned sixth grade subjects read one passage accompanied by the designated type of aid, answered comprehension questions, and checked the answers. During the first testing session, each student read two systematically assigned passages of five used. The next day each student answered 10 literal and four main idea questions for each passage read. The good readers given no adjunct aid performed significantly better on the main idea questions than the good readers given application prequestions and those given why prequestions. Good readers in the sixth grade may be motivated by post questions alone.

Which Comprehension? Artifacts in the Measurement of Reading Comprehension

Differences in fifth graders’ reading comprehension scores were obtained using four different tasks typically employed to measure comprehension (multiple - choice, recall, cloze, and maze) and four different reading passages that were equated according to readability formulas. Data analyses revealed significant effects for passage, task, and an interaction between task and passage. It was concluded that the choice of a particular comprehension passage and testing procedure, whether in research or practice, does not allow generalization to other operational definitions of reading comprehension. These results suggest serious limitations of most contemporary reading comprehension research and testing.

Temporal locus of inference in the comprehension of brief passages: recognizing and verifying implications about instruments.

Recent investigations of language comprehension have shown that people frequently report recognizing test sentences which express ideas that were only implied in an antecedent passage. The present study asked whether the inferences underlying these false alarms are drawn when the original message is encoded or at test time. In Exp. 1, it was shown that the recognition rate for direct quotations from brief passages is clearly higher than for sentences expressing implications about the instruments used to perform actions. In Exps. 2, 3, and 4 the subjects were timed while they decided whether test sentences (a) had been heard verbatim in the passage or (b) were true concerning the passage. In all conditions, subjects needed about .2 sec. more to respond affirmatively to "implicit" sentences than to ones that quoted or paraphrased the passage. It was concluded that at least a subset of the cognitive processes associated with the inferences in question is executed at test time.

Measuring Reading Comprehension Using the Paraphrase Test and the Reading-Storage Test

The newly developed reading-storage type of test was compared to the paraphrase type of test to determine the extent to which each test was sensitive to the comprehension of prose passages as opposed to word memorization. Comprehension was manipulated using passages that were difficult to comprehend without the aid of context cues, and memorization was manipulated by administering the tests without the opportunity to read the passages. The average gain from the No Context to Context condition was greater for the reading-storage test, thus suggesting that it was more sensitive to comprehension than the paraphrase test. The average gain from the Non-Reading to No Context condition was greater for the paraphrase test, thus suggesting that the paraphrase test was more sensitive to word memorization than the reading-storage test. These data suggested that the completely objective, reading-storage test deserves further research, and that paraphrase questions may not be as valid as intuition would suggest.

Intrusion of a Thematic Idea in Children's Comprehension and Retention of Stories

BROWN, ANN L.; SMILEY, SANDRA S.; DAY, JEANNE D.; TOWNSEND, MICHAEL A. R.; and LAWTON, SALLIE C. Intrusion of a Thematic Idea in Children's Comprehension and Retention of Stories. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1977, 48, 1454-1466. 2 experiments concerned with memory and comprehension of prose passages were conducted with children from second through seventh grade. In both experiments the major variable was the provision of appropriate frameworks for comprehending ambiguous sections of the passages. In the initial experiment, recognition of themecongruent and incongruent foils was the main metric, while in the second experiment intrusions in recall and postrecall interviews were used to measure the influence of preexisting expectations on story comprehension and recall. The main effect was the striking absence of developmental trends; children behaved like adults in both the recall and recognition studies. Recall of ambiguous passages was enhanced if a relevant framework was givens intrusions reflected the prior orientation, and the subjects had difficulty distinguishing between their own embellishments and the actual story content. Under recognition conditions, children treated themecongruent foils as if they were target items and incongruent foils as if they were distractors. It is argued that for children as well as adults schemata provide the interpretive framework for comprehending discourse.

Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse

The effects of structure and content variables on memory and comprehension of prose passages were studied in two experiments. The experimental passages exemplify a class of simple narrative stories that is described by a generative grammar of plot structures. A comprehension model is proposed that assumes a hierarchical organizational framework of stories in memory, determined by the grammar, representing the abstract structural components of the plot. The quality and characteristics of subjects' memory for stories were tested on a variety of experimental tasks in which story organization was manipulated. Comprehensibility and recall were found to be a function of the amount of inherent plot structure in the story, independent of passage content. Recall probability of individual facts from passages depended on the structural centrality of the facts: Subjects tended to recall facts corresponding to high-level organizational story elements rather than lower-level details. In addition, story summarizations from memory tended to emphasize general structural characteristics rather than specific content. For successively presented stories, both structure and content manipulations influenced recall. Furthermore, repeating story structure across two passages produced facilitation in recall of the second passage, while repeating story content produced proactive interference. The implications for a model of memory for narrative discourse are discussed.

Efficacy of Three Common Study Methods

30 college males in liberal arts curricula were assigned to study passages by 3 different methods: reading, reading with underlining, and reading with note taking. When verbal intelligence (Scholastic Aptitude Test-Verbal) was held constant, the 3 groups did not differ on questions about comprehension of passages. The findings question the assumed value of underlining and note-taking during study and imply that future research might better be aimed at improving verbal rather than study skills in undergraduate populations.

Black and white children's comprehension of standard and nonstandard English passages.

Black and white children's comprehension of standard and nonstandard English passages.

Objective Evaluation of the Quality of Multiple-Choice Test Items Designed to Measure Comprehension of Reading Passages

THE QUALITY OF READING COMPREHENSION test items may be determined, in part, by computing an index that indicates the extent to which correct answers to such items can be identified in the absence of the reading passages to which they refer. Data obtained in this study indicate that such an index can be determined with an adequate degree of reliability. The data also are used to illustrate how the strengths and weaknesses of particular items may be determined. Procedures that have been used to varying degrees in the past for producing reading comprehension items of high quality are discussed.

Simultaneous vision and audition: the comprehension of prose passages with varying levels of difficulty.

Simultaneous vision and audition: the comprehension of prose passages with varying levels of difficulty.