Sentence Reading Comprehension Research Articles

The Genetic and Environmental Foundation of the Simple View of Reading in Chinese

The Simple View of Reading (SVR) in Chinese was examined in a genetically sensitive design. A total of 270 pairs of Chinese twins (190 pairs of monozygotic twins and 80 pairs of same-sex dizygotic twins) were tested on Chinese vocabulary and word reading at the mean age 7.8 years and reading comprehension of sentences and passages one year later. Results of behavior-genetic analyses showed that both vocabulary and word reading had significant independent genetic influences on reading comprehension, and the two factors together accounted for most but not all of the genetic influences on reading comprehension. In addition, sentence comprehension had a stronger genetic correlation with word reading while passage comprehension showed a trend of stronger genetic overlap with vocabulary. These findings suggest that the genetic foundation of the SVR in Chinese is largely supported in that language comprehension and decoding are two core skills for reading comprehension in nonalphabetic as well as alphabetic written languages.

Bilingual Spanish/English–Speaking Children's Sentence Reading Comprehension

A number of factors were examined to determine which were associated with 40 bilingual Spanish/English–speaking children's sentence reading comprehension (SRC). In our study, 40 bilingual Spanish/English–speaking children, age ranged from 8.07 to 14.96 years, completed nonword repetition, spoken language, receptive vocabulary, single word reading (SWR), and novel word discrimination tests, with all language and reading tests administered in English. Parents' occupations, the report of the language used in interaction with friends (English vs. Spanish), age, and academic grade were also considered as possible factors for SRC. Our results found that receptive vocabulary and SWR accounted for intact SRC. Findings revealed that 13 of the 40 bilingual children (32.5%) presented with SRC difficulties. However, only 2 of these 13 children were identified with reading difficulties prior to their participation in this study, suggesting that early screening is essential to prevent later literacy difficulties.

Compreensão de leitura de alunos surdos na rede regular de ensino

To evaluate and compare the reading comprehension of deaf students included in regular classrooms of public schools with and without specialized educational support. Observational analytic study with 35 students with sensorineural hearing loss, with and without educational support. All subjects were assessed with the Word Reading Competence Test (WRCT), the Picture-Print Matching Test by Choice (PPMT-C), and the Sentence Reading Comprehension Test (SRCT). In the tests regarding comprehension of words (WRCT and PPMT-C), the results showed no difference in the performance of deaf students who attend and do not attend educational support. Regarding reading comprehension of sentences, the application of the SRCT also did not show differences between the groups of deaf students. A significant correlation was found between age and grade, indicating that the older the students and the higher their educational level, the better their performance in reading sentences. The results indicate that deaf students, regardless of attending educational support, read words better than sentences. There is no difference in reading comprehension between deaf students who receive and do not receive specialized pedagogical monitoring.

Syntactic skills in sentence reading comprehension among Chinese elementary school children

The present study examined the role of syntactic skills for reading comprehension in Chinese. Two hundred and seventy-two Chinese children were tested on their phonological processing, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and literacy skills at Grades 1 and 2. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that syntactic skills, in terms of word order, connective usage, and knowledge of morphosyntactic structure (measured by an oral cloze task) in Grade 1, significantly predicted sentence reading comprehension in Grade 2 after controlling for the children’s age, IQ, and word level reading-related cognitive skills in Grade 1, and word reading in Grade 2. As in alphabetic languages, syntactic skills are essential for reading comprehension in Chinese. The unique roles of individual syntactic skills for understanding sentences in Chinese are discussed.

Japanese and English sentence reading comprehension and writing systems: An fMRI study of first and second language effects on brain activation

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare brain activation from Japanese readers reading hiragana (syllabic) and kanji (logographic) sentences, and English as a second language (L2). Kanji showed more activation than hiragana in right-hemisphere occipito-temporal lobe areas associated with visuospatial processing; hiragana, in turn, showed more activation than kanji in areas of the brain associated with phonological processing. L1 results underscore the difference in visuospatial and phonological processing demands between the systems. Reading in English as compared to either of the Japanese systems showed more activation in inferior frontal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, and angular gyrus. The additional activation in English in these areas may have been associated with an increased cognitive demand for phonological processing and verbal working memory. More generally, L2 results suggest more effortful reading comprehension processes. The study contributes to the understanding of differential brain responses to different writing systems and to reading comprehension in a second language.

Enhancing the Reading Fluency and Comprehension of Children With Reading Disabilities in an Orthographically Transparent Language

Breznitz (2006) demonstrated that Hebrew-speaking adults with reading disabilities benefited from a training in which reading rate was experimentally manipulated. In the present study, the authors examine whether silent reading training enhances the sentence reading rate and comprehension of children with reading disabilities and whether results found in Hebrew equally apply to an orthographically transparent language. Training results of 59 Dutch children with reading disabilities and normally achieving children show that children with reading disabilities are able to increase their sentence reading rate with high comprehension levels when pushed to do so with accelerated reading training. Posttest results show that transfer to routine reading is less strong for both accelerated and unaccelerated reading. Only accelerated training allows children with reading disabilities to read at high speed while maintaining high comprehension levels.

Adults with mild intellectual disabilities: can their reading comprehension ability be improved?

Adults with a mild intellectual disability (ID) often show poor decoding and reading comprehension skills. The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of teaching text comprehension strategies to these adults. Specific research goals were to determine (1) the effects of two instruction conditions, i.e. strategy instruction to individuals and strategy instruction in small groups in a reciprocal teaching context; (2) intervention programme effects on specific strategy tests (so-called direct effects), and possible differences between strategies; (3) (long-term) transfer effects of the programme on general reading comprehension ability; and (4) the regression of general text comprehension by the variables of technical reading, IQ, reading comprehension of sentences (RCS), and pretest and posttest scores on the strategies taught. In total, 38 adults (age range 20-72 years; mean age of 36 years) with ID participated in the study. IQs ranged from 45 to 69 with a mean IQ of 58. The intervention programme involved 15 weekly lessons of 1 h each, taught during 3 months. Blocks of lessons included each of Brown and Palincsar's strategies of summarizing, questioning, clarifying and predicting, as participants read and studied narrative and expository texts. Results indicated no significant difference between group and individual instruction conditions. Second, direct programme effects - as determined by posttest-pretest contrasts for strategy tests - were substantial, except for the questioning strategy. Third, even more substantial was the transfer effect to general text comprehension. Moreover, the results on this test were well maintained at a follow-up test. Finally, the variance of general reading comprehension ability was best explained by the test of RCS, and only moderately by the strategies trained. The presently used intervention programme provides a good starting point for adults with ID to become better readers.

Basic reading skills in high-functioning Swedish children with autism spectrum disorders or attention disorder

High-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been reported to have an early success in reading. Children with attention disorders such as DAMP or ADHD, on the other hand, often struggle acquiring reading skills. The primary aim of the study was two-fold: (a) to compare reading performance of children with ASD, DAMP and typical development; (b) to examine whether memory functions and verbal and performance IQ related differently to the reading performance depending on diagnosis. Striking similarities were found between clinical groups on performance level and patterns of reading ability. Decoding and reading comprehension difficulties were common in both clinical groups relative to the comparison group matched for mental age. There was a strong association between word decoding fluency and sentence reading comprehension in the clinical groups even after the effect of age and VIQ was partialled out. Further research on cognition, linguistic abilities and educational milieu is warranted to explore the reasons for the word decoding difficulties.

P2-108: Language assessment in different stages in Alzheimer’s disease: A comparative study

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is usually associated with cognitive, language and behavioral impairments, which become more severe as the disease progresses. Language impairments are normally mild in the early phases, but they can become severe as disease progresses and modify the communication abilities. The aim of this study is to verify how language impairments become worse during the disease and which language abilities are more affected in each one of the AD'stages. We evaluated 24 patients meeting criteria for probable AD, 12 patients scored more than 23 at the Mini–Mental State Examination, and 12 scored between 13 and 22 points. All patients were evaluated by the Boston test (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1983;2001), and performed tasks involving oral and writing language abilities. Data acquired on this language evaluation were compared with the average of normal population data, with the same age and years of education. Patients that scored more than 23 showed statistical differences than compared with normal subjects just in visual confrontation naming and auditory comphrension tasks. In the group of patients that scored between 13 and 22, we found deterioration in all linguistic abilities. Besides the difficulties observed in the other group, they showed impairment in simple oral comphrension and reading comprehension of words, sentences and paragraphs, serial writing, words and sentences writing and writing confrontation naming. We concluded that language impairment seems to follow cognitive deterioration in AD.

Effects of constraint and expectation on reading comprehension in aphasia

Multiple-choice responses to incomplete sentence stems is a popular task for assessing and treating reading comprehension in patients with aphasia. This study investigated the influence of contextual constraint and response expectation on aphasic subjects' sentence-level reading comprehension. Constraint refers to the number of possible word completions available for a sentence stem. Expectation refers to whether the correct completions are expected or unexpected words. Subjects responded to stimulus items in which levels of constraint (high/low) and levels of expectation (expected/unexpected) were combined into four test conditions. Results indicated that the subjects performed worst on the low-constraint, unexpected-response sentences. They did significantly better with both increased constraint and with increased expectation. Both word pool and semantic feature activation are discussed as possible underlying mechanisms that influence aphasic subjects' reading comprehension of sentences.

The Effects of Sentence-Combining Instructions on Writing and on Standardized Test Scores

AbstractSpecial instruction in sentence combining has historically elicited the writing of longer sentences among younger or less sophisticated writers. Research also is available that suggests that such instruction may produce a corollary increase in reading comprehension of longer sentences. This study focuses on the parallel increases of scores on two standardized tests Reading Comprehension and Sentence Structure and on the free writing of middle and high school students. Results indicate significant gains among younger students and focused gains among older students.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ITEM CHARACTERISTICS AND AN INDEX OF DIFFERENTIAL ITEM FUNCTIONING (DIF) FOR THE FOUR GRE VERBAL ITEM TYPES

ABSTRACTTwo studies are reported. The first examined the factors that predict differences in item responses of two populations (Black and matched White examinees) to GRE analogies. Three factors were found to independently predict differential item responses of these two groups to 234 GRE analogy items: (1) item difficulty, (2) analogy stems with a part/whole relationship and (3) and analogy stems with an “attribute” relationship. An independent sample of 220 SAT analogy items was found to yield very similar results, especially for item difficulty and part/whole relationships. For both GRE and SAT analogies, Black examinees were found to do differentially better than matched White examinees on the hard analogy items.Since item difficulty was found to be the most important predictor variable in Study I, Study II explored the possible importance of item difficulty as a predictor of differential item responses of Black versus matched White examinees for three other verbal item types of both the GRE and SAT tests (these types were antonyms, sentence completions, and reading comprehension items). Item difficulty was found to be an important predictor of the observed differences. An overview of the results suggests that the amount of verbal context might be an important determinant of the magnitude of the relationship between item difficulty and differential performance of Black versus matched White examinees. That is, analogies and antonyms (which have minimal verbal context) produced a stronger correlation of difficulty with differential ethnic performance than did sentence completion and reading comprehension items. This was found for both the GRE and SAT verbal item types. Several hypotheses are advanced to account for some of the observed ethnic differences.

THE INTERNAL CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF THE SAT1

ABSTRACTThe primary goal of this research was to obtain a fuller understanding of what is being measured by the SAT. In addition, this project had two secondary goals: (1) the identification of a set of analytic techniques that can satisfactorily assess the dimensionality of the SAT; and (2) the identification of components of a cost‐effective and informative system for monitoring the internal construct validity of the SAT.The principal project findings are: The SAT‐Mathematical test is effectively unidimensional. There is little empirical justification for dividing the total SAT‐Mathematical score into subscores on the basis of item content related to subject area. For purposes of differential item functioning analysis, the total SAT‐Mathematics score should be an adequate matching variable. The SAT‐Verbal test is composed of two distinct albeit highly‐related dimensions, a reading dimension and a vocabulary dimension. Hence, there is an empirical justification for reporting two separate subscores. Currently, antonym and analogy items count toward a vocabulary subscore; sentence completion and reading comprehension items count toward a reading subscore. The empirical data indicate that the sentence completion items appear to belong more with the analogy and antonym items than with the reading comprehension items. The LISREL analyses also provide some evidence for separating the Vocabulary dimension into two dimensions, Antonyms and Analogies. The evidence is inconsistent, however. For the purposes of differential item functioning analysis, it may be necessary to match on the current Reading subscore (reading and sentence completion) for reading comprehension items, an analogy/sentence completion criterion for analogies, an antonym/sentence completion criterion for antonyms and any of these three criteria or SAT‐Verbal for sentence completion items. This research has several findings that have implications for redesigning the SAT‐Verbal test. First, the sentence completion item type is the item type that is most like the total SAT‐Verbal score in what it measures, while the reading passage items are measuring the construct that is least like the total SAT‐Verbal score. Second, speededness effects on SAT‐Verbal may be large enough to produce a factor in item level data that is more salient than a general reading passage factor. Third, the analogy item seems to be the least reliable item type, while the sentence completion item type appears to be the most reliable. This array of results points in the direction of using more reading passage items to achieve a more distinct and reliable reading subscore, using more sentence completion items because they are more reliable and may take less time than other items, and using fewer analogy items because they are less reliable and probably more time consuming than sentence completions or antonyms. The analyses conducted in this study have served to underscore the value of using confirmatory factor analysis of item parcel data to study the dimensional structure of test data. This approach is computationally inexpensive, and appears to provide meaningful and consistent results. The use of parallel parcels makes item data amenable to linear factor analysis. The method seems to circumvent the problems associated with directly factor analyzing item data, namely, the propagation of artifactual “difficulty” factors. The method can also avoid the problem of observing a “speed” factor, as items from later positions in the test can be balanced across parcels. In sum, the parallel parcel approach can be used to dispense with difficulty and speed factors and, hence, obtain a clearer look at the substantive factor structure of the test. Full information factor analysis is not ready for routine use with ATP data. The TESTFACT program is very expensive and sometimes yields “methodological” factors under the full information mode. The TESTFACT program can also produce a least squares factor analysis of a smoothed positive definite matrix of tetrachorics corrected for guessing at a fraction of the cost of the full information solution. Unfortunately, this solution appeared to yield difficulty factors for both SAT‐Verbal and SAT‐Mathematical.

Grade school children's listening and reading comprehension of complex sentences

Abstract Two experiments examined the roles of world knowledge and syntactic knowledge in grade school children's comprehension of spoken and written complex sentences. Experiment 1 tested 128 second, third, fourth, and sixth graders’ reading and listening comprehension of active and passive, cleft and pseudocleft sentences with relative clauses. Statistically significant effects were found for reading ability, sentence condition (involving mode, voice, and whether or not sentence meanings were consistent with expectation), and reading ability X sentence condition. Subjects used and trusted syntactic information mostly with spoken sentences; only above average readers were able to do so in reading tasks, and then only with active sentences. In Experiment 2, 72 second graders were given training in attending to syntactic details, training in entertaining interpretations contrary to world knowledge, or practice. Some characteristics of Experiment 1's above average readers were duplicated with all three trea...

Letter, Word, and Text Reading Times of Precocious and Average Readers

JACKSON, NANCY EWALD, and BIEMILLER, ANDREW J. Letter, Word, and Text Reading Times of Precocious and Average Readers. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1985, 56, 196-206. Measures of letter, scrambled word, and text reading time were administered to kindergarten-age precocious readers (N = 97) whose mean comprehension ability was at the third-grade level and to representative samples of children of second-grade age (90 or 96 months, N = 66) and third-grade age (102 or 108 months, N = 62). Within each group, letter naming and scrambled word reading times were correlated with text reading times. However, none of the reading time measures was strongly associated with precocious readers' scores on a multiple-choice test of sentence reading comprehension. The precocious group named letters less rapidly than second graders did, but read words at the same speed as second graders and text faster. Comparisons of the precocious and third-grade groups showed a similar pattern, that is, precocious readers were most like third graders in text reading time and least like them in letter naming time. There were no significant grade x task interactions in any comparison between the secondand third-grade groups. The results are interpreted as evidence that, for precocious readers, efficiency in executing lower-order tasks (letter naming and individual word identificationi is a facilitative but not a prerequisite condition for rapid text reading and good comprehension.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF GRE GENERAL TEST ITEM‐TYPE PART SCORES TO UNDERGRADUATE GRADES

ABSTRACTThis study was undertaken (a) to assess the relative contribution of a vocabulary score made up of GRE General Test antonyms and analogies and a reading comprehension score made up of GRE sentence completions and reading comprehension sets to prediction of an academic criterion (self‐reported undergraduate grade point average) and (b) to assess patterns of criterion‐related validity for item‐type part scores on the GRE quantitative and analytical measures as well.The study was based on data from GRE files for 9,375 examinees in 12 fields of study representing 437 undergraduate departments from 149 colleges and universities. All data were standardized within each undergraduate department and then pooled for analysis by field.There were differences by major field in average performance on the various item‐type part scores within each test. The reading comprehension subtest was found to carry most of the predictive load in the GRE verbal measure (consistent with findings for the reading comprehension subscore on the SAT verbal measure). Item‐type part scores on the other measures also exhibited differential patterns of relationships with the self‐reported undergraduate grade point average.The findings suggest that the different item types within the respective broad ability measures may be tapping somewhat unique skills and abilities and that further exploration of their potential contribution is in order.

Reading skill and the minimum distance principle: A comparison of listening and reading comprehension

Experiment I compared the listening and reading comprehension of sentences which follow the Minimum Distance Principle, e.g., John tells Bill to bake the cake, and of those which do not, e.g., John promises Bill to bake the cake. Third, fourth, and fifth graders were tested. Support for Chomsky's Stage analysis of mastery of the Minimum Distance Principle was found for the listening but not for the reading task. Reading skill level was found to be positively correlated with Stage and a significantly better predictor of promise performance than was age or IQ. Experiment II investigated the effect of the composition of the experimental presentation list on performance by comparing comprehension when the list contained only promise or tell sentences with that obtained when the list contained both types of sentences. For half the subjects, performance differed as a function of the list composition: Implications of these findings for the assessment of the development of language competence are discussed.

Teaching Second Language Reading at the Advanced Level: Goals, Techniques, and Procedures

The oral approach to teaching ESL rightly emphasizes oral skills at the beginning and intermediate levels, yet reading fluency, which cannot be achieved by simple transfer of oral skills, is much more important in the long run for most adult students in technical and academic programs. Directed to the classroom teacher, this paper focuses on three primary aspects of the teaching task at the advanced level: (1) definition of reading skill goals; (2) techniques for reading skill improvement; (3) classroom procedures. The student's general goal-getting information from the printed page efficiently, rapidly, and with full understanding-requires development in five skill areas: reading speed, vocabulary recognition, and comprehension of sentences, paragraphs, and complete reading selections. Techniques and exercises for improvement in each of the five areas are illustrated by examples compiled from ESL texts. Five types of questions for comprehension are described and ranked. Vocabulary improvement by means of word analysis and through use of context clues to meaning is discussed and illustrated. Classroom procedures involve three stages: (1) pre-reading preparation to minimize linguistic interference and provide motivation and purpose, (2) actual reading, and (3) oral and written follow-up activities. 1.0 Introduction. 'Hearing before speaking, speaking before reading, reading before writing.' (Defense Language Institute, American Language Course: Intermediate Phase, Instructor Text, p. 1.) This prescription has dominated contemporary second language teaching in America at least since 1941, the year that marked the entrance of the United States into World War II and, with that, the end of our 'linguistic isolation', as Moulton remarks in his excellent survey of language teaching in the '40s and '50s (Moulton 1961, pp. 84-85). The armed forces soon found that the recently established ACLS Intensive Language Program could meet the need for teaching large numbers of military men a practical speaking knowledge of many languages, most of which were completely unfamiliar to any Americans including the nation's linguists. But the linguists were soon at work analyzing the languages and designing course materials guided by such linguistic principles as these-principles which became, as Moulton puts it, language teaching slogans of the day: 'Language is speech, not writing. A language is a set of habits. Teach the language, not about the language.' Thus it was that the 'oral approach'

THE ASSOCIATION OF AUDITORY HIGH FREQUENCY WEAKNESS WITH VERBAL AND WRITTEN COMPREHENSION AND EXPRESSION

Clinical observation prompted the hypothesis that failure of response to high frequency tones outside the speech range is associated with linguistic impairment. Pure tone audiometric assessment of school children was carried out, special equipment being used to ascertain normal upper limits of hearing. In a representative sample of 209 children the mean upper limits in the age groups 7 to 12 were about 18,000 cycles per second, but a significant lowering of limit with age was then apparent, the mean at age 15 being just above 16,000 c.p.s Further surveys of maladjusted children, retarded readers and educationally subnormal children demonstrated that high frequency auditory acuity is positively associated with intelligence and with introversion. From 484 children tested 20 cases of relative high frequency weakness (HFW) were selected. The group included 9 boys and 11 girls aged 8 to 13, with a ride range of intelligence. These children were individually tested with a battery of eight measures of linguistic development. They proved to be grossly retarded in inferior to 20 matched controls. The most significant group difference were in speech articulation, vocabulary and oral language development. Paucity of ideas, looseness of expression, limited verbal comprehension and general linguistic retardation were also reflected in written composition and tests of sentence structure and reading comprehension. Only in mechanical word recognition was the HFW group's inferiority not statistically significant. The school histories of these HFW children were characterised by retardation or impatient in speech, language, academic attainment and behaviour. It is suggested that HFW is not merely a sensory impairment and may more profitably be regarded as an intervening variable. Attention is drawn to psychological aspects of pure tone audiometry, and discussion is in terms of Vigilance, set, response consistency and extravagation. In addition to their theoretical implications the findings would appear to be of immediate clinical and educational significance