Reading Recognition Research Articles

Semantic memory content in permastore: Fifty years of memory for Spanish learned in school.

Retention of Spanish learned in school was tested over a 50-year period for 733 individuals. Tests of reading comprehension, recall, and recognition vocabulary and grammar were administered together with a questionnaire to determine the level of original training, the grades received, and rehearsals during the retention interval in the form of reading, writing, speaking, or listening to Spanish. Multiple regression analysis shows that retention throughout the 50-year period is predictable on the basis of the level of original training. The great majority of subjects rehearse so little that the data reveal no significant rehearsal effects. The analysis yields memory curves which decline exponentially for the first 3-6 years of the retention interval. After that retention remains unchanged for periods of up to 30 years before showing a final decline. Large portions of the originally acquired information remain accessible for over 50 years in spite of the fact the information is not used or rehearsed. This portion of the information in a "permastore" state is a function of the level of original training, the grades received in Spanish courses, and the method of testing (recall vs. recognition), but it appears to be unaffected by ordinary conditions of interference. The life-span frequency distribution of learned responses is discontinuous; one portion of the response distribution has life spans of 0-6 years, the other portion, life spans in excess of 25 years, and no responses have life spans of 6-25 years. This suggests a discrete transition into a permastore state during the extended period of original training. Analysis of successive relearning processes over extended time periods is deemed essential for an understanding of the acquisition of permanent semantic memory content.

Effect of middle ear pathology on selected psychoeducational measures following surgical treatment.

24 children surgically treated for pathology of the middle ear and 24 matched control children having histories without problems with ears or school were compared on the Slosson Intelligence Test, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, the Block Design subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Form R, the Spelling subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test, the Spelling and Reading Recognition subtests of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test, and the Goldman-Fristoe-Woodcock Test of Auditory Discrimination. The surgical group scored similarly to the control children on six of the eight tests, but significantly lower on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the Block Design subtest of the Wechsler scale. Longitudinal research comparing similar groups of children is recommended.

Effectiveness of peer tutors vs. resource teachers

The purpose of this study was to determine whether mildly handicapped students working on a one-to-one basis with tutors would show a greater academic gain than students working in a small group with the resource teacher. By using a pretest-posttest control design it was found that after a three-month period, students who had tutors did show a more significant gain in reading (especially in the area of reading recognition). Teachers advised that no more than two tutors from one classroom be assigned to the tutor program, and teachers further felt that they could not supervise more than two tutorial pairs.

Woodcock and PIAT Reading Scores: A Lack of Equivalency

Using each student as his or her own control, 76 students in grades 2 through 6 from rural to urban localities in upper east Tennessee were administered the Peabody Individual Achievement Test and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests. Comparisons were made between the PIAT Reading Recognition and Woodcock Word Identification tests and between the PIAT Reading Comprehension and Woodcock Passage Comprehension tests. While the correlations for the total group were highly significant in both comparisons, a breakdown by grade level demonstrated variability in the results, ranging from not significant to highly significant. In assessing the comparability of the obtained scores, the scores from the total grouup were significantly different. However, a breakdown by grade level found the same variability as for the correlations. Concern for errors in diagnosis is expressed and a call for the development of local norms is made.

Gender Differences in the Relationship of Nascent Conservation and Reading Abilities

Eighty five-year-old children were administered the Reading Recognition subtest of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAI ), the Concept Assessment Kit-Conservation (CAK), the Concepts About Print test (C AP), and Taking Inventory of Children’s Literary Background in a study of gender differences in the relationship of early conservation ability with reading and linguistic awareness. Regression analyses revealed a correlation of .72 between the C AK and PIAI for the girls, but the same coefficient was only - .10 for the boys. A similar difference also occurred in the relationship between the C AK and C AP. These findings and available evidence from other studies consistently support the hy pothesis that conservation ability is more highly correlated with performance on reading and reading-related tasks in girls than in boys.

Assessment of Optacon Reading: A Preliminary Investigation

An experimental instrument to assess Optacon reading performance was developed primarily through modification of existing reading tests. Results from a pilot study involving 12 Optacon reading students indicated that subtests measuring letter recognition, word recognition, and rate of reading possessed satisfactory levels of reliability. However, the subtest measuring literal comprehension had low reliability.

Relationships between self-esteem, anxiety, and achievement in young learning disabled students.

This study investigates the relationships between both the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory and the Sarason General Anxiety Scale for Children and the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (subtests of Mathematics, Reading Recognition, and General Information). Eighty-eight kindergarten through sixth-grade learning disabled children placed in the regular classroom with resource help were tested individually by a certified learning disabilities teacher. Pearson product-moment coefficients of correlation between all variables were determined for the total sample and for each sex. Significant relationships were found between (a) self-esteem and Mathematics, Reading Recognition, and General Information achievement scores for the total group and females, (b) self-esteem and Reading Recognition and General Information achievement scores for males, (c) general anxiety and General Information achievement scores for the total group and for males (negative direction), and (d) general anxiety and self-esteem for the total group and males (negative direction).

Orthography and Word Recognition in Reading

Orthography and Word Recognition in Reading

A study of hyperlexia

Twelve children with early intense reading and superior word recognition skills coupled with disordered language and cognitive behavior are described. Cognitive, linguistic, and reading measures evidenced a generalized cognitive deficit in forming superordinate schemata which was not specific to visual or auditory modalities. Positive family histories for reading problems were present for 11 of the 12 children, suggesting a relationship between hyperlexia and dyslexia.

Letter naming time, digit span, and precocious reading achievement

In two 6-month longitudinal studies of intellectually advanced preschool children, letter naming time and backward digit span were moderately good predictors of concurrent reading achievement (PIAT Reading Recognition Score). None of the remaining measures in a battery of standard cognitive indices, including Stanford-Binet MA, was associated with reading achievement. The results of cross-lagged correlation analysis of data from one of the two samples suggested that individual differences in time to access name codes for visual stimuli predict, but are not a consequence of, individual differences in reading achievement. The results of the cross-lagged analysis for the second sample were inconclusive. As a whole, the results are consistent with findings from other populations indicating that both short term memory span and efficiency of retrieval from long term memory are related to reading ability. The results also indicate, however, that the relationship between retrieval efficiency and reading achievement in precocious readers cannot be described by extrapolation of threshold estimates from the performance of older, unselected groups of readers.

DO YOUR CUES CONFUSE STUDENTS?

A legitimate source of student confusion about reading and word recognition appears to be the variety and rapid pacing of teacher prompts and cues during oral reading activities. Examples of teacher cueing behaviors that confuse students are presented and several techniques for analyzing and improving teacher prompts and cues are presented. The article points out how student understanding as well as student confusion are both functions of teacher behavior.

Spelling Ability of Reading Disabled LD Students and Able Readers

The present study investigated differences in the spelling ability of two populations of elementary pupils: reading disabled students receiving learning disability services and able readers. Subjects consisted of three groups totaling 107 children. Pupils were matched on reading recognition ability with intelligence controlled for. Results revealed that reading disabled pupils differed from able readers of the same chronological age in phonetic spelling ability, nonphonetic spelling ability, and recognition spelling ability. It was concluded that the spelling ability of school-identified students with severe reading deficiencies was significantly inferior to that of reading able students.

Interpretation of academic strengths and weaknesses on the peabody individual achievement test

The Peabody Individual Achievement Test yields scores in Mathematics, Reading Recognition, Reading Comprehension, Spelling, and General Information. In order to determine academic strengths and weaknesses, the test Manual suggests a pairwise comparison system to determine when one academic area is significantly different from another. The aim of the present study was to develop a more efficient system of determining academic strengths and weaknesses relative to a child's average performance on the entire test than the pairwise technique advocated by the authors.

Neuropsychological approaches to the study of reading.

This paper describes four syndromes of acquired dyslexia (that is, reading deficits in previously literate adults who have suffered neurological damage); deep dyslexia, surface dyslexia, phonological dyslexia and letter-by-letter reading. The format of the description inquires whether reading performance in each syndrome is (1) sensitive to dimensions of words (such as word length or part of speech), (2) affected by experimental manipulations (such as exposure duration), and (3) relevant to theorectical issues (such as the nature of codes for word recognition in reading). The four patterns of reading impairment seem to relate in an orderly way to these dimensions, manipulations and issues drawn from the literature on normal word recognition and production. Such orderly relationships, it is claimed, favour the position that neuropsychological observations are germane to conceptions of normal reading.

Variable interaction between visual recognition and memory in oral reading.

Variable interaction between visual recognition and memory in oral reading.

Variable interaction between visual recognition and memory in oral reading.

Variable interaction between visual recognition and memory in oral reading.

Specific cognitive abilities in 5- to 12-year-old twins.

Eleven tests of specific cognitive abilities were administered to 108 pairs of young twins (average age of 7.6 years). Internal consistencies are high for all measures except Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices and Delayed Picture Memory. Two-month, test-retest reliabilities are also reported. The twin sample is representative in terms of both means and variances when compared to normative data from standardization samples, and twin correlations for height and weight are similar to those obtained in six other twin studies. Because all measures were highly correlated with age (average correlation with age was 0.64), scores were aged adjusted. Previous twin studies of specific cognitive abilities in adolescents and adults found genetic variance for nearly all tests. In contrast, our study of young twins yielded significant genetic influence for only 1 of the 11 measures, PIAT Reading Recognition, and suggested the possibility of genetic influence on 2 others (vocabulary and WISC-R mazes). Environmental influences seem to dominate, particularly for nonverbal measures, as children begin their education. In accord with other studies, we found that between-family environmental factors have an important influence on the development of nearly all of the measures of specific cognitive abilities. However, we found that our tests of perceptual speed and memory were substantially influenced by within-family environmental factors independent of error.

Predicting Academic Achievement: Preliminary Analysis of the McCarthy Scales

This preliminary study determined the extent to which the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities ( I ) , the McCarthy Screening Test ( 2 ) , and a McCarthy shorr form ( 3 ) predict achievement scores after a year for 50 kindergarren students from a predominantly white, middle-class community who were ~ n d ~ v ~ d u a l l y administered the hicCarthy Scales in March 1978. About a year later in March 1979, 23 students of the initial 50 were administered the Peabody Individual Achievement Test. The large attrition was accounted for by absences or conflict of schedules on test days. Scores for the McCarthy Screening Test, which includes the right-left orientation, verbal memory, draw-a-design, numerical memory, conceptual grouping, and leg coordination subtests, and the McCarthy Short Form, which includes rhe counting and sorting, pictorial memory, number questions, verbal fluency, numerical memory, and tapping sequence subtests, were also obtained. The Pearson correlations of the full McCarthy Scales and two abbreviated forms with the scores from the Peabody appear in Table 1.' Correlations of the General Cognitive Index with various Peabody achievement scales ranged from .48 ( p < .05) to .76 ( p < .01). The verbal scale correlated .58, .56, and .61 with Spelling, General Information, and Total score. Quantirative and memory scores correlated .58 and .16 respectively with Reading recognition. The McCarthy short form scores correlated .58, .57, and .63 with Peabody scores on Mathematics, Reading recognition and Total.. These values should be considered preliminary data as the sample size is small. Given moderate correlations yielded by the McCarthy Scales and the McCarthy short form with achievement, these instruments might effectively be used for screening and readiness. If other studies yield similar results, one might administer the short form first and continue with the rest of the McCarthy if the shorr form score is lower than a predetermined cut-off point. Information might be useful for those in need of further evaluation.

Response latency and accuracy in visual word recognition.

In a single visual word recognition experiment, the effects of (1) eccentricity of presentation, (2) word length, and (3) word frequency were investigated. The stimuli used were Dutch nouns in two frequency classes of about 15 and 150.10-6; word length varied from 1 to 10; eccentricity varied from −4 to +4 deg. The response quality and response latency of 11 subjects were measured. For the correct responses, recognition scores decreased and response latencies increased with eccentricity; both showed asymmetrical curves in the visual field. It is argued that word length proper affects neither the probability of correct responses nor latency. A clear word frequency effect was established. The eccentricity of presentation is considered as the determinant of the amount of available information, thus directly influencing accuracy and latency. The linear relationship between accuracy and latency is a major finding. A word recognition scheme is offered which incorporates (1) activation, (2) decision, and (3) speech. The time relations between incoming retinal information and response decision, leading to an extra 400 msec for incorrect as compared with correct responses, are discussed. Word recognition in reading is examined, together with the impact of the present experimental results on information flow in successive eye fixations, eye movement control, and eye-voice span.

The Theoretical Relationship between Item Difficulty and The “In Doubt” Response in Music Tests

The Musical Aptitude Profile (MAP) and the Iowa Tests of Music Literacy (ITML) were administered to 90 fourth-grade students to investigate the theoretical validity of the relationship between use of the “in doubt” response and item difficulty. The purpose of the study was to question Gordon's (the author of the test battery) theory that the use of the “in doubt” response increases as item difficulty increases. Statistically significant correlations between use of the “in doubt” response and item difficulty were found for all total tests of both batteries, the ITML Tonal subtest, Reading Recognition, and the MAP Tonal subtest, Harmony. No significant correlation coefficients were found for any of the Rhythm subtests. When the mean use of the “in doubt” response for items of extreme difficulty-very easy and very difficult—were compared, all mean differences were statistically significant except for the MAP Rhythm subtest, Meter, and the ITML Tonal subtest, Aural Perception.