Reader Skill Research Articles

Measuring expertise in identifying interictal epileptiform discharges.

Interictal epileptiform discharges on EEG are integral to diagnosing epilepsy. However, EEGs are interpreted by readers with and without specialty training, and there is no accepted method to assess skill in interpretation. We aimed to develop a test to quantify IED recognition skills. A total of 13,262 candidate IEDs were selected from EEGs and scored by eight fellowship-trained reviewers to establish a gold standard. An online test was developed to assess how well readers with different training levels could distinguish candidate waveforms. Sensitivity, false positive rate and calibration were calculated for each reader. A simple mathematical model was developed to estimate each reader's skill and threshold in identifying an IED, and to develop receiver operating characteristics curves for each reader. We investigated the number of IEDs needed to measure skill level with acceptable precision. Twenty-nine raters completed the test; nine experts, seven experienced non-experts and thirteen novices. Median calibration errors for experts, experienced non-experts and novices were -0.056, 0.012, 0.046; median sensitivities were 0.800, 0.811, 0.715; and median false positive rates were 0.177, 0.272, 0.396, respectively. The number of test questions needed to measure those scores was 549. Our analysis identified that novices had a higher noise level (uncertainty) compared to experienced non-experts and experts. Using calculated noise and threshold levels, receiver operating curves were created, showing increasing median area under the curve from novices (0.735), to experienced non-experts (0.852) and experts (0.891). Expert and non-expert readers can be distinguished based on ability to identify IEDs. This type of assessment could also be used to identify and correct differences in thresholds in identifying IEDs.

Minimal, Maximal, or Multiple: Which Contrastive Intervention Approach to Use With Children With Speech Sound Disorders?

This tutorial contrasts a familiar and frequently used speech sound disorder (SSD) intervention approach, conventional minimal pair, with newer but less familiar and less frequently used variants that may be more effective: (a) maximal opposition and (b) multiple oppositions. This tutorial provides a general description of each contrastive approach, focusing on the evidence base and a small number of critical elements that define the approach and make it unique from all other approaches. Hypothetical cases are used to illustrate how the approaches can be tailored to child needs and speech-language pathologist (SLP) expertise. Supplemental materials enhance the reader's skill in using these approaches in their practice with a minimal initial investment. The reader will be able to identify which children with SSD are appropriate for conventional minimal pair, maximal opposition, or multiple oppositions approaches and will be able to plan intervention (i.e., select target sounds and contrasting words or nonwords, develop intervention activities, write goals, and determine intervention intensity) for each of these approaches. This tutorial highlights that using the conventional minimal pair approach should be restricted to children with a small number of errors (i.e., older children or children with mild SSD). There is an opportunity for SLPs to use newer, more efficacious approaches with younger children and children with more severe SSDs. The maximal opposition approach is well suited to children with multiple errors across multiple sound classes. The multiple oppositions approach specifically targets global phoneme collapses that impact intelligibility. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.19178783.

Читацька компетентність українських школярів крізь призму матеріалів міжнародного дослідження якості освіти PISA

The article analyzes international research of quality of education provided by PISA, emphasizing the importance of such research, because according to foreign educational experts the list of language skills in XXI century includes, in particular, the ability to «read and critically analyze different materials, novels, poems, plays, essays and news», «to form and defend your position, opinion». The author draws attention to one aspect of the study – students' reading literacy, identifies key provisions that should be taken into account in practice of educational activities of Ukrainian language and literature teachers, as well as scientist-methodologists in the development of methods for growing a competent reader at Ukrainian language and literature lessons at school. The tasks offered to students in the research process are analyzed and characterized. The key skills that teachers need to pay attention to are identified and commented on. Critical comments and suggestions on terminological differences, peculiarities of methods and organization of educational process in Ukraine were made. In particular, attention was drawn to the different interpretations of the term «reading» in PISA studies and in Ukrainian linguistics; there is a need among international and domestic researchers in correlation of the terms «reading competence» and «reading literacy». In Ukraine, education is still subject matter (although subjects are combined into categories), according to the reporting materials, in foreign countries educational process does not have division into subjects. At the time of the monitoring the State standard of general and secondary education does not include reading competence in the list of key competences, so its formation is restricted to subjects of language and literature. The text of the new State Standard should include terms «reader skill», «reader incompetence», «skillful reader», «incompetent reader». Taking these and other differences into account will help improve our results in the future.

READER'S SKILL

The article deals with the issues of artistic perception culture of fictional texts. The sufficiency of literary reading is derived from the aesthetic specificity of verbal art: from special status of an author's figure, from the special nature of the artistic sense, from the special text organization as a combination of the reader's impression factors. According to M. Bakhtin, literature is interpreted as the art of “indirect speaking”, where the author “puts on silence” because in fictional text we never deal with the writer's speech, it is always mediated by the figure of the talking hero or the narrator. The artistic perception of fictional texts should be studied as a reader's skill. The culture of reading is the complementarity of two differently directed vectors: it is a deep and sincere empathy, as if it were reality; on the other hand – the reader's creativity in relation to the text artfullness, which conceals the meaning of the art work. The artistic sense is actualized by the reader's consciousness as complementary to the author's consciousness manifested in the text.

A Comparison of Rereading Benefits in First and Second Language Reading

Text comprehension models in first and second language reading research posit that slow word recognition inhibits reading speed and decreases comprehension. To investigate the role of word recognition in reading, 2 experiments examined rereading benefits in participants’ first and second languages using scrambled and normal versions of English and Spanish texts. Native English speakers with intermediate (Experiment 1) or advanced (Experiment 2) Spanish skills demonstrated word‐ and text‐level transfer in both English and Spanish. However, advanced Spanish readers did not exhibit word‐level transfer when reading simple Spanish texts. These results suggest that fluent reading may be strongly influenced not just by word recognition, but also by text difficulty relative to reader skill, as well as other factors.

Reading Differences and Brain: Cortical Integration of Speech and Print in Sentence Processing Varies With Reader Skill

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the impact of literacy skills in young adults on the distribution of cerebral activity during comprehension of sentences in spoken and printed form. The aim was to discover where speech and print streams merge, and whether their convergence is affected by the level of reading skill. The results from different analyses all point to the conclusion that neural integration of sentence processing across speech and print varies positively with the reader's skill. Further, they identify the inferior frontal region as the principal site of speech–print integration and a major focus of reading comprehension differences. The findings provide new evidence of the role of the inferior frontal region in supporting supramodal systems of linguistic representation.

Is there an Effect of Print Exposure on the Word Frequency Effect and the Neighborhood Size Effect?

Orthographic and phonological processing skills have been shown to vary as a function of reader skill (Stanovich & West, Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 402-433, 1989; Unsworth & Pexman, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56A, 63-81, 2003). One variable known to contribute to differences between readers of higher and lower skill is amount of print exposure: higher skilled readers read more often than lower skilled readers, and their increased print exposure is associated with faster responding to words and nonwords in lexical decision tasks. The present experiments examined the effect of print exposure on the word frequency effect and neighborhood size effect. We conclude that the different outcomes reported in previous studies (Chateau & Jared, Memory and Cognition, 28, 143-153, 2000; Lewellen, Goldinger, Pisoni, & Greene, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 316-330, 1993) were due to the type of nonwords used in the lexical decision task (regular nonwords versus pseudohomophones). Our results are explained in terms of differences in the reliance on orthographic and phonological information between readers of higher and lower print exposure.

Assessment of Medical Imaging Systems and Computer Aids: A Tutorial Review

This article reviews the central issues that arise in the assessment of diagnostic imaging and computer-assist modalities. The paradigm of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve--the dependence of the true-positive fraction versus the false-positive fraction as a function of the level of aggressiveness of the reader/radiologist toward a positive call--is essential to this field because diagnostic imaging systems are used in multiple settings, including controlled laboratory studies in which the prevalence of disease is different from that encountered in a study in the field. The basic equation of statistical decision theory is used to display how readers can vary their level of aggressiveness according to this diagnostic context. Most studies of diagnostic modalities in the last 15 years have demonstrated not only a range of levels of reader aggressiveness, but also a range of level of reader performance. These characteristics require a multivariate approach to ROC analysis that accounts for both the variation of case difficulty and the variation of reader skill in a study. The resulting paradigm is called the multiple-reader, multiple-case ROC paradigm. Highlights of historic as well as contemporary work in this field are reviewed. Many practical issues related to study design and resulting statistical power are included, together with recent developments and availability of analytical software.

Comparaison de quatre méthodes d’évaluation des modifications de la perfusion cérébrale en tomoscintigraphie

Introduction We compared four different methods to assess changes in cerebral blood flow in patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus using cerebral ECD SPECT before and after injection of acetazolamide. Material and methods Eleven patients underwent cerebral SPECT before and after injection of 1 g of acetazolamide using a 99mTc-ECD split-dose protocole with a first injection of 370 MBq and a second of 1100 MBq. After reconstruction of volumes with Neurogam ® (Segami) software, we compared visual analysis to semi quantitative analysis provided by Neurogam software, ratios methods and parametric analysis under SPM99 and SPM2. Results Visual analysis is immediate but frequently misleading. The contribution of Neurogam depends on the reader's skill and may be significant for non expert readers. The manual semi-automatic method is tedious and its results depend on the choice of the areas of interest and reference necessary for activity normalization. At last, the automatic method carried out by SPM is reliable for population analysis, but its efficiency for individual analysis remains to be evaluated.

A Probabilistic Model for the MRMC Method, Part 1: Theoretical Development

Current approaches to receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis use the MRMC (multiple-reader, multiple-case) paradigm in which several readers read each case and their ratings (or scores) are used to construct an estimate of the area under the ROC curve or some other ROC-related parameter. Standard practice is to decompose the parameter of interest according to a linear model into terms that depend in various ways on the readers, cases, and modalities. Though the methodologic aspects of MRMC analysis have been studied in detail, the literature on the probabilistic basis of the individual terms is sparse. In particular, few articles state what probability law applies to each term and what underlying assumptions are needed for the assumed independence. When probability distributions are specified for these terms, these distributions are assumed to be Gaussians. This article approaches the MRMC problem from a mechanistic perspective. For a single modality, three sources of randomness are included: the images, the reader skill, and the reader uncertainty. The probability law on the reader scores is written in terms of three nested conditional probabilities, and random variables associated with this probability are referred to as triply stochastic. In this article, we present the probabilistic MRMC model and apply this model to the Wilcoxon statistic. The result is a seven-term expansion for the variance of the figure of merit. We relate the terms in this expansion to those in the standard, linear MRMC model. Finally, we use the probabilistic model to derive constraints on the coefficients in the seven-term expansion.

Reader Variability in Mammography and Its Implications for Expected Utility over the Population of Readers and Cases

The multiple-reader, multiple-case (MRMC) approach to receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is becoming the dominant assessment paradigm in medical imaging. Its most common version involves having many readers read every patient case in the study, a critical feature since differences among competing imaging modalities are often dominated by differences in reader performance. The present authors have carried out MRMC ROC analysis on a uniquely large data set for mammography. The analysis quantifies the great range of observed reader skill in that data set. It also demonstrates that the sample sizes are sufficiently large that the conclusions generalize to the populations sampled here with little uncertainty from the finite sample size. A schematic approach to bracketing the utility matrix is then used to study trends in the resulting expected utility functions that correspond to the range of observed ROC curves. This is done for both the screening and the diagnostic context. The results raise 2 hypotheses for further investigation. First, it is possible that the present ambiguity surrounding the effectiveness of mammography is due in part to the observed range of reader skills and corresponding expected utility functions. Second, it is possible that computer-assisted modalities for mammography may lead to improvements in the expected utility function not only for screening but also in the diagnostic context, especially for the lower performing readers.

The Poetry of François Villon: Text and Context by Jane H. M. Taylor (review)

486 Reviews The Poetry of Franfois Villon: Text and Context. By Jane H. M. Taylor. (Cam? bridge Studies in French, 68) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001. xii + 234pp. $64.95. ISBN 0-521-79270-3. Avoiding the tendency of some earlier critics to formulate an all-embracing view of Villon, Jane Taylor looks at his multiple identities. Accordingly she is deliberately selective in the poems she analyses, and her purpose is to demonstrate the differentways in which, far from being an alienated outsider, Villon enthusiastically engages with the poetics of his day, well aware ofthe work of his predecessors and contemporaries. At the same time she warns ofthe difnculty forus in reading fifteenth-centurypoetry, which cannot be judged by modern ideas of originality. Neither a poet of the times nor his reader would be bothered by the question of influence; on the contrary, the pleasure of reading was to be found in recognition and in extracting meaning below the surface. She begins by examining the 'poetics ofengagement', which characterizes all late medieval poetry, exploring a range of examples that show how poems were written as deliberate echoes of one another, so that poetry was collaborative within a network of a cultural elite. Turning to Villon, she concentrates on the conflicting and confusing personae and viewpoints suggested by differentpoems or moments within them, looking firstat his use of the martyred-lover motif at the opening of the Lais and the closing of the Testament, together with the intratextual relationship between the lyricLay and Bergeronnecte,the Ballade a s'amye, the Verset,and Ballade finale. To appreciate Villon's three Ubi sunt? poems, which revitalize a tired topos, a cross-reading is necessary, supported by the reader's skill in recognizingphoneticand rhyming links to perceive not only his originality but also his ability to challenge the reader to rethink his assumptions on the topic. The Belle Heaulmiere and the Double ballade demonstrate Villon's dialogue with the Roman de la Rose, but the feminine voice adopted forthe Belle Heaulmiere is counterbalanced by the masculine discourse by which he then renounces love in the tradition of the conge. In the Contredictz de Franc Gontier, Villon engages with the commonplaces of the pastoral, dismissing the idyllic and turning it into an attack on poverty. As for the Ballade de la Grosse Margot, there are clear affinitieswith the sotteballade, but it goes beyond the literary associations which alert readers would easily recognize and raises issues of a moral and ethical nature, particularly when it is linked to the Ballade pour prier Nostre Dame. The final poem discussed is the Ballade pour Robert d'Estouteville, which is usually rather ignored by critics, but its importance lies in the differentview of love from the rest ofthe Testament that it projects. Overall this is a lively, intelligent, and informative study, the fruitof mature reflection on this most elusive of poets. University of Birmingham Leslie C. Brook (Euvres spirituelles1510-1516. By GabrielledeBourbon. Ed. by Evelyne BerriotSalvadore . (Textes de la Renaissance, 26) Paris: Champion. 1999. 263 pp. ISBN 2-7453-0141-1. As Evelyne Berriot-Salvadore remarks in the introduction to her competently executed edition, Gabrielle de Bourbon is known to modern readers primarily as the wife of Louis II de La Tremoille, the 'chevalier sans reproche' celebrated by Gabrielle's protege, the rhetoriqueurJean Bouchet. In additionto playing a political role, however, Gabrielle left, in manuscript form, a corpus of devotional works addressed to a lay audience, which betray close engagement with both the literary fashions and the theo? logical debates ofthe day. The Petit traictesur lesdoulleurs de la Passion du doulx Jesus et de sa benoistemereand the Voyage espirituelentreprinspar I'Ame devotepour par venir en la cite de Bon Repoux narrate the spiritual evolution of the Ame devote' guided by the ...

The impact of reader skill on phonological processing in visual word recognition.

There has been much debate about the role of phonology in reading. This debate has been fuelled, in part, by mixed findings for phonological effects in lexical decision tasks. In the present research we investigated the impact of reader skill on three phonological effects (homophone, homograph, and regularity effects) in a lexical decision task and in a phonological lexical decision task. In both tasks, the more skilled readers showed different patterns of phonological effects from those of the less skilled readers; in particular, less skilled readers showed regularity effects in both tasks whereas more skilled readers did not. We concluded that more skilled readers activate phonology in these tasks but do so more efficiently, with less spurious phonological activation.

AUTOMATICITY AND INFERENCE GENERATION DURING READING COMPREHENSION

A reader must simultaneously carry out many cognitive processes while moving through a text. Each process could demand all the reader's attention and prevent any other process from occurring. However, as a reader's skill develops, some of these processes begin to demand less and less attention, thus freeing attentional resources for other, simultaneous processes. The development of automaticity is a hallmark of skilled reading, yet there are questions regarding which processes truly become automatic with practice. We intuitively know that we make a wide variety of inferences as we read that both clarify and enrich a text. However, research provides evidence that only a minimum of these inferences occur automatically. Because educators should make use of this research, recommendations are given here for fostering automaticity in inference generation.

Analysis of the causes of false negative cytology reports on breast cancer fine needle aspirates

Forty-six (2.9%) false negative reports were recorded among adequate fine needle aspirates from 1609 consecutive histologically proven carcinomas, observed from 1991 to 1993. False negatives were more frequent among younger women (< 40 years = 7.1; 40-49 years = 4.0; 50-59 years = 3.6; 60-69 years = 1.7; > 69 years = 1.5%), lobular invasive subtypes (5.4%), and smaller tumours (pT1a = 4.2; pT1b = 7.6; pT1c = 1.9; pT2 = 2.1; pT3-4 = 1.5%). The latter findings is probably ascribable to better differentiation and less precise sampling of small non-palpable tumours. No significant association was found between the false negative rate and the sampler's or reader's skill and experience. The former finding may be ascribed to the wide use of sonography guided aspiration, even for palpable masses, and the latter to the fact that readers were highly experienced and undergo periodic quality control of individual performance. False negatives were reclassified at reviews as true false negatives, reading errors or inadequates in 27, 11, and eight cases, respectively. The observed findings suggest that in most cases cytological faults were due to the absence of cytological atypia in cells sampled from well differentiated tumours, rather than to misinterpretation or sampling from adjacent normal tissues.

How Text Difficulty and Reader Skill Interact to Produce Differential Reliance on Word and Content Overlap in Reading Transfer

Four experiments examined the factors that influence across-text transfer for children. Transfer was indicated by increases in the reading speed and accuracy of a second text following reading of different first texts. The first texts were related to the second by overlap in words only, in content only, in words and content, or in neither words nor content. Results indicated that the extent to which readers benefited from word or content overlap depended on the interaction of reader skill with text difficulty. Children who read texts that were easy for them showed transfer only when a pair of stories shared content. However, when children read stories that were difficult for them, they also showed transfer when words alone were shared by a pair of stories. The results are discussed in terms of how easy and difficult texts are represented in memory and retrieved to produce transfer.

The Effect of Context on the Size of the Perceptual Unit Used in Word Recognition

Good and poor readers from the second and fourth grades read words which varied in length from 3 to 6 letters under three exposure conditions; context, miscue and no-context. Word recognition latency for the nouns in each word length category was recorded. An increase in latency relative to word length would suggest component-letter processing, while no increase would suggest holistic processing. Results indicated that under all conditions poor second grade readers used holistic processing. Poor fourth grade readers used holistic processing with context but component-letter processing in no-context and miscue conditions. These findings suggest that the size of the word recognition unit is sensitive to reader skill and context condition.

Devine comment j'apprends a lire?

SUMMARYThe Swiss researchers Cardinet and Weiss (1975) have stressed, following recent psycholinguistic trends, the complexity of the intellectual activity involved in reading. A Belgian study (Burion, 1979) examined what constituted reading for a beginner, what were the general principles of teaching initial reading, and what the implications of these were for teaching early readers. Reading was taken to involve hypothesis forming and guessing, within constraints which vary according to the reader's skill. Beginning reading requires, among other things, motivation to learn and some relevant personal experience, both of which are aspects which parents and others have been encouraged to develop. Following Cardinet and Weiss (1974) and Inizan (1978) children's oral language is used as a basis for reading texts. The purpose and use of reading are stressed as well as the development of skills which are needed for continuing to learn how to read (see figure). In general, it is argued that the teaching of initial reading should focus upon the beginning reader rather than on teaching procedures and that account must be taken of factors in the individual child such as motivation, experience, oral language, cognitive development and pace of learning.

Comparison of Word Identification Strategies with Varying Context, Word Type, and Reader Skill

THE CURRENT STUDY INVESTIGATED the extent to which second and third graders, at various skill levels, read using a text-driven or concept-driven process; that is, the conditions were examined under which readers use context to identify words. Subjects read target words which varied in decodability, frequency, and number of syllables in conditions of isolation, poor context, and moderate context. Subject factors included grade (second or third), sex, and reading ability (high, average, low). In general, the data indicated that good readers are predominately text-driven, while poor readers are concept-driven, and average readers fluctuate. Limitations to the findings were discussed.

The effects of the reader's skill and the difficulty of the text on the perceptual span in reading.

Development of the perceptual span in reading was investigated by varying the availability of graphic information in the periphery of vision. Low-ability eighth-grade readers, high-ability eighth-grade readers, and skilled adult readers read texts presented in a normal prose format, with a single space between words, and texts typed with 13 letter spaces between words. It was found that removing peripheral information by wide spacing improved comprehension for low-ability eighth graders but did not affect their overall reading efficiency (the number of questions answered correctly per minute of reading time). Wide spacing decreased the reading efficiency of high-ability eighth-grade readers and skilled adult readers. In addition, the texts were of two levels of difficulty. It was hypothesized that subjects would employ a larger span of perception with the easy text. Surprisingly, the wide spacing of words did not produce greater decrement fo reading efficiency with the easy text. The findings thus suggest that the perceptual span may increase as reading skill develops but does not change under the influence of momentary task variables.