Poor Reading Skills Research Articles

Why literacy matters. Links between reading ability and health.

The ability to understand verbal and written materials is central to modern life. Yet, the US Department of Education estimated that 47% of all adult Americans in 1993 had poor reading and comprehension skills. Analyses of the readability of patient education materials, discharge instructions, and consent forms throughout many specialties within medicine have found almost uniformly that these materials are written at too complex a level for many or most patients. For example, a study of the patient ophthalmic education materials of the American Academy of Ophthalmology by Ebrahimzadeh et al found large amounts of the material exceeded the reading abilities of much of the American adult population. Yet, this is only one small part of understanding the effects of literacy and reading abilities on our patient's health and their use of our increasingly complex health care system.

An Evaluation of a Multi‐sensory Speaking‐computer based System (Starcross–IDL) Designed to Teach the Literacy Skills of Reading and Spelling

The “Indirect Learning” (IDL) system is a speaking‐computer based multi‐sensory system for teaching literacy skills. The IDL system has several unique features: these are the facility to independently adjust the colour of the monitor screen and the text colour, the masking of incorrect typed responses, the incorporation of a touch‐typing course into a remedial programme, the echoing back of children's spoken responses by the computer, and the integration of all these features into over one thousand carefully graduated exercises.This evaluation describes the system and measures how effectively the system remediated the reading and spelling in a sample of 150 children and adults. The effectiveness of the IDL system for different individuals varied between the extremes of having no significant effect and improving reading age at a rate of 6 months for one month of the programme, and spelling age by 6.6 months/month so that normal reading and spelling abilities were quickly attained. The average rates of improvement for the group in reading and spelling were 2.15 and 2.17 months/month respectively. These results demonstrate that this learning system is effective, especially when it is considered that this sample had previous rates of reading gain of on average 0.58 months/month, and 0.49 months/month for spelling. This shows an average improvement in the rate of learning to read and spell by a factor of about 4 times. The resilience of the system is demonstrated by the fact that the sample group were supervised by different tutors in different teaching centres, and that the sample group had different needs. The variation of responses within the sample group to the IDL programme were found to be correlated to factors that are known to contribute to poor reading skills, eg, having poor phonological skills and/or Meares‐Irlen Syndrome (Wilkins, 1996), the age of the subject, and the quantity of exercises completed.Consideration is given to the IDL system's suitability for inclusion into mainstream educational and training provision. The results demonstrate this system's effectiveness at improving literacy; consequently decisions on its use would be made on the basis of value‐for‐money when compared to other remedial systems.

Early Failure in the Labor Market: Childhood and Adolescent Predictors of Unemployment in the Transition to Adulthood

The authors investigate the childhood and adolescent predictors of youth unemployment in a longitudinal study of young adults who have been studied for the 21 years since their births in 1972-1973. They test hypotheses about the predictors of youth unemployment using information about each individual's human capital, social capital, and personal capital. In the human capital domain, lack of high-school qualifications, poor reading skills, low IQ scores, and limited parental resources significantly increased the risk of unemployment. In the social capital domain, growing up in a single-parent family, family conflict, and lack of attachment to school also increased the risk of unemployment. In the personal capital domain, children involved in antisocial behavior had an increased risk of unemployment. These predictors of unemployment reached back to early childhood, suggesting that they began to shape labor-market outcomes years before these youths entered the work force. In addition, these effects remained significant after controlling for the duration of education and educational attainment, suggesting that many early personal and family characteristics affect labor-market outcomes, not only because they restrict the accumulation of human capital (e.g., education), but also because they directly affect labor-market behaviors. Failure to account for prior social, psychological, and economic risk factors may lead to inflated estimates of the effects of unemployment on future outcomes

Normal reading despite limited eye movements

Many investigators have demonstrated that poor readers exhibit abnormal eye movements during reading. 1–3 An association between defective vergence, accommodation, and poor reading skills has also been noted by some investigators. 4,5 Children who are poor readers have been subjected to therapeutic interventions on the basis of the assumption that improving their eye movements, as part of a multifaceted program of “vision therapy,” will yield commensurate improvement in reading performance. 6 This approach has been controversial, and other authors have expressed opposing views. 7,8 We report the ophthalmologic and reading assessments of two children with Möbius' syndrome who were average to above-average readers despite essentially absent horizontal eye movements.

Comprehension of Standard Seven Pupils of a Village Junior Secondary School

To assess comprehension skills among pupils of a village junior secondary school a Study Process Questionnaire was constructed and administered to 63 Standard 7 pupils, 33 boys and 30 girls (ages 14 to 18 years). Analysis showed learning viewed as reproduction more than understanding, failure to use prior knowledge in current learning, low achievement motivation, and poor reading skills.

A comparison between the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory with incarcerated adolescent males.

Empirical work on psychopathology and delinquency requires concise and specific instruments. The Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (WAI), was correlated with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) using a sample of incarcerated adolescent males (N = 178). The distress dimension of the WAI was significantly and positively associated with scales 2, 4 and 7 of the MMPI. The restraint dimension was significantly and positively associated with the Lie and K scales of the MMPI. Distress and restraint were distinct dimensions. The WAI may be a brief and helpful personality measure, determining responses to conflict and subjective stress in delinquents with poor reading skills and other special education impairments. The length of the WAI makes it especially suitable for populations such as incarcerated adolescent males who exhibit short attention spans and frequent episodes of noncompliant and resistant behavior.

Reading and Communication

The views of children toward literacy can provide insight into the relationship between areas of reading and communication abilities and suggest possibilities for classroom language intervention and the use of written materials. This investigation examined differences in the opinions of fourth-grade readers with good and poor reading skills. Interviews were conducted with 270 fourth-grade students, 142 above average (AAR) readers and 128 below average (BAR) readers. Data analysis revealed significant differences between the two groups of readers on nine of 22 questions. The subjects accurately identified themselves as good or poor readers. The AAR group reported understanding more of what they read, whereas the BAR group reported problems in comprehending written information. As oral communicators, the AARs reported talking more and being understood more often when they talked than the BARs. Significant differences were found between the AAR and BAR groups regarding how often they read at home by themselves and how often they read for fun. However, no differences existed between the groups in their opinions of the value and importance of reading.

Activity in right frontal cortex is correlated with poor reading skill in dyslexia

Activity in right frontal cortex is correlated with poor reading skill in dyslexia

174 A CONTR0LLEO POPULATION BASED STUDY OF THE COGNITIVE SKILLS AND EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT OF 8 YEAR OLD VERY LOW BIRTHWEIGHT CHILDREN IN SCOTLAND

AIMS: To investigate the cognitive development of all 339 very low birthweight (VLBW) children born and still resident in Scotland at the age of 8 years, in comparison to two classroom peers. We also hypothesized that poor performance on the visual recognition subscale at 4 yrs would correlate with poor reading skills at 8 yrs.METHOD: Seven subscales of the British Ability Scales were used, testing short term visual and auditory memory, verbal reasoning, spatial imagery, visual reasoning, application of knowledge stored in long term memory and speed of information processing, from which an IQ was estimated. School attainment was assessed using the basic numbers skills and word reading scales.RESULTS: For 24 (7%) of the children receiving special education, no suitable comparison children were available. A 96% follow up rate was achieved. The VLBW children had significantly lower mean IQ scores than their controls (93.2, SE 0.77 vs 101.3, SE 0.51); for the attainment tasks and for all of the cognitive subscales except short term auditory memory, their performance was significantly poorer. Visual recognition scores at 4 tyears were not correlated with reading scores at 8 years.CONCLUSIONS: Teaching techniques based on a phonetic approach may be more appropriate for those children not succeeding in acquiring reading skills by other methods based on short term visual memory.

Children with deficits in attention, motor control and perception (DAMP) almost grown up: The contribution of various background factors to outcome at age 16 years

Fifty-six children with and forty-five children without deficits in attention, motor control and perception (DAMP) had been recruited from the general population at age 7 years. They were followed up neuropsychiatrically at age 16 years after intermediate term follow up at age 10 and 13 years. Cases were subdivided into those with good and not good outcome on the basis of absence or presence of psychiatric and personality disorders, multiple traumatic accidents and speech and language problems at age 16 years. The presence of DAMP in itself was the strongest predictor of poor outcome. High scores for minor neurological dysfunction, low performance IQ, autistic features at age 7 years and poor reading skills at age 10 and/or 13 years were important background factors in cases with poor outcome. In the small subgroup with poor outcome among those without DAMP at age 7 years, major life events was the most important background factor.

Illiteracy among Medicaid Recipients and its Relationship to Health Care Costs

Poor literacy is associated with poor health status, but whether illiteracy is also linked to higher medical care costs is unclear. We characterized the literacy skills of 402 randomly selected adult Medicaid enrollees to determine if there was an association between literacy skills and health care costs. Each subject's literacy skills were measured with a bilingual (English/Spanish) reading-assessment instrument. We also reviewed each subject's health care costs over the same one-year period. The mean reading level of this Medicaid population was at grade 5.6. Mean annual health care costs were $4,574 per person. There was no significant relationship between literacy and health care costs. While there are compelling reasons to improve poor reading skills among Medicaid enrollees, illiteracy in this population does not appear to contribute to the high cost of providing government-sponsored care.

Phonological Deficits, IQ, and Individual Differences in Reading Disability: Genetic and Environmental Influences

In this paper we review our recent work on the phonological reading deficit in reading disability. Disabled readers typically show poor nonword reading skills relative to their word recognition skills. Behavior-genetic analyses reveal that nonword reading deficits are highly heritable and that heritable variance in word recognition is closely linked to heritable variance in phonological coding. However, subjects vary considerably in terms of the degree of their phonological reading deficits. The analyses show that subjects with lower phonological skills (relative to word recognition) tend to have word recognition deficits that are more heritable compared to subjects whose nonword reading is more congruent with their word recognition skills. We also argue that subjects who showed poor word recognition relative to intelligence would be expected to have word recognition deficits that were more heritable compared to subjects whose reading and intelligence were more congruent. The analyses indicate a trend in this direction but the effect was not significant. We argue that both the nonword deficit dimension and the reading-IQ discrepancy dimension should be investigated in future analyses.

Individual differences in working memory: A model testing and subgroup analysis of learning-disabled and skilled readers

This experiment compares two models of working memory as means of explaining the variance in skilled and learning-disabled (LD) readers' comprehension performance. The contrasting models are tested as to whether short-term memory (STM) tasks operate independently, or serve as a subset of working memory (WM). Correlational and confirmatory factor analyses tested the alternative models. For Experiment 1, memory processes were inferred from performance on Sentence Span, Concurrent, and Preload tasks. Individual differences in the relationship between memory and reading performance were studied by subgrouping skilled and LD readers. The results support a process model in which LD readers have weaker WMs than skilled readers, not because of poor reading skills, but because they have less WM capacity available for performing reading and nonreading tasks. Experiment 2 extended the model to other measures of WM. Taken together, these studies support two primary conclusions: (a) WM reflects a number of independent processes that coalesce onto a single factor, independent of STM; and (b) reading comprehension and components of WM operate on a continuum of independence to dependence as reading becomes more skilled.

Attention deficit disorder and age of onset of problem behaviors.

In the course of a prospective longitudinal study, we examined age of onset of behavior problems in a group of boys and girls identified with attention deficit disorder (ADD) at age 11. Onset occurred during the preschool years, by the first year of schooling, or by the end of the second year of school. Onset was strongly related to informant source at age 11, pattern of comorbidity of disorder at age 11, and developmental language, perceptual motor, and IQ measures. Onset by the first year of schooling was particularly related to poor reading skills. By age 15, nearly three-quarters of those with onset of problems before age 6 had one or more DSM-III disorders.

Lateral versus frontal ERP predictors of reading skill

Neuropsychological factors that could account for good versus poor reading skills include hemispheric asymmetry for language, signal processing efficiency, hemisphericity, and frontally based control of attention. Using event-related potential (ERP) measures of these constructs, we find that only hemisphericity accounts for individual differences in reading skill among our 15-year-old good readers, while the frontally generated Contigent Negative Variation attentional ERP accounts for reading skill differences among the poor readers. While good readers show expected hemispheric ERP asymmetries and poor readers do not, this group difference does not account for the variation in reading skill. These data suggest that below some crucial threshold, reading disability is predicted by frontal attentional skill, whereas above this threshold, good reading is better predicted by hemisphericity.

Reading and Arithmetic Achievement in Primary Years for Students from Non-English-Speaking Families: A Seven-Year Longitudinal Comparison

Students from seven schools, some from English-speaking ( N = 226) and some from non-English-speaking ( N = 60) families, were tested for reading achievement in Years 1, 2, 3 and 6, and for mathematics achievement in Year 6. Students from non-English-speaking families achieved significantly poorer reading results than those from English-speaking families, and these differences were consistent and stable across Years 1–6. Longitudinal analyses suggested that the effect occurred primarily in Year 1; students from non-English-speaking families achieved lower reading scores in subsequent school years but their lower scores could be explained by their poor reading skills in earlier school years. The language group differences were quite specific to reading skills, and the two groups did not differ in mathematics achievement in Year 6. The specificity of the group achievement differences to language and reading skills suggests that home language may be an important determinant of early reading, and that early reading is in turn the primary determinant of subsequent reading performance. All students in the present investigation who performed poorly on reading tests in Year 1, no matter what the cause and no matter what the home language, were very likely to perform poorly on reading tests through all primary school years.

Eye movements in dyslexia: their diagnostic significance.

The study of eye movements during reading has provided many important insights about the process of reading. Until recently, there has been a relatively broad consensus that the erratic eye movements of poor readers were a consequence of difficulties in learning the visual-verbal associations involved in reading, rather than being a primary cause of poor reading themselves. However, recent data has begun to question this assumption. In this month's Topical Review, the author reviews the research suggesting the erratic eye movements of dyslexics are not simply a consequence of poor reading skills. This research is important because, if it is substantiated in future work, examination of eye movement patterns may contribute significantly to the diagnosis of dyslexia. —J.K.T.

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.

Teaching the Low Achiever

ow achievement in school is often a result of poor reading skills. These authors outline an alternate, non-reading curriculum which mphasizes content, not skill.

Patterns of intellectual ability in children with verbal deficits.

Patterns of intellectual ability were examined in 81 children with verbal deficits identified by a Low Verbal/High Performance WISC profile. The results of verbal and nonverbal tests of intellectual functioning were factor-analyzed, and three groups of children were defined based on patterns of factor scores. Group 1 consisted of children with a Specific Language Disability (SLD) but good Abstract Reasoning ability, while Group 2 included SLD children with good Sequencing-Memory skills. Group 3 children displayed a General Language Disability (GLD) with deficits in both abstract reasoning and sequencing memory. The intellectual patterns were related to cognitive interpretations and found to have educational implications, with Group 1 children reading adequately, Group 2 children showing somewhat poorer reading skills, and Group 3 children reading very poorly. These findings emphasize the importance of identifying subgroups of children with verbal deficits and demonstrate the feasibility of extracting relatively specific cognitive information from global measures of intelligence. The results question the appropriateness of applying traditional assumptions regarding cognitive organization derived from studies of normal children to atypical groups of children.