Standardized Reading Comprehension Test Research Articles

Role of Visual Attention in Cognitive Control of Oculomotor Readiness in Students with Reading Disabilities

This study investigated eye movement and comprehension therapy in Grade 6 children with reading disabilities (RD). Both order of therapy and type of therapy were examined. Furthermore, the implications of visual attention in ameliorating reading disability are discussed. Thirty-one students with RD were identified using standardized reading comprehension tests. Eye movements were analyzed objectively using an infra-red recording device. Reading scores of participating children were 0.5 to 1 SD below the national mean. Testing took place before the start of therapy (T1) and was repeated after 12 weeks (T2) and 24 weeks (T3) of therapy. One group of students had eye movement therapy first, followed by comprehension therapy; in the other group, the order was reversed. Data were evaluated using a repeated measures MANOVA and post hoc tests. At T1, mean reading grade was 2 years below grade level, and eye movement scores were at about Grade 2 level. Mean growth in reading comprehension for the total sample was 2.6 years (p < .01) at T3; equally significant improvement was measured in eye movements (p < .01). Learning rate in reading comprehension improved from 60% (T1) to 400% (T3). Although within-group differences were statistically significant, between-group differences were not significant for comprehension or eye movements. Order of therapy (comprehension first or eye movements first) was not significant. Improvements in within-group scores for comprehension and eye movements were consistently significant at T2 and T3. Eye movement therapy improved eye movements and also resulted in significant gains in reading comprehension. Comprehension therapy likewise produced improvement both in eye movement efficiency and in reading comprehension. The results support the notion of a cognitive link among visual attention, oculomotor readiness, and reading comprehension.

Effects of Listening Comprehension Training on Listening and Reading

In this study the effects of providing text strategy instruction in a listening mode on listening and reading comprehension of experimental and control groups of 9- to 11-year-old poor readers were examined. All students were very poor in decoding and poor in reading comprehension. In addition, half of the group were also poor listeners, whereas the other half consisted of students with normal listening test scores. The experimental program employed auditorily presented texts, and the students were trained in the strategies of clarifying, summarizing, predicting, and questioning. The program's teaching format consisted of a combination of reciprocal teaching and direct instruction. Measurements occurred according to a pretest-posttest-retention test design. The results indicated significant program effects on strategic listening and strategic reading posttests, and the results were maintained on retention tests that were administered 3 months after termination of the program. However, transfer in terms of an improved performance on more general and standardized listening and reading comprehension tests was not demonstrated.

Breastfeeding and later cognitive and academic outcomes.

This study examines the associations between duration of breastfeeding and childhood cognitive ability and academic achievement over the period from 8 to 18 years using data collected during the course of an 18-year longitudinal study of a birth cohort of >1000 New Zealand children. During the period from birth to age 1 year, information was collected on maternal breastfeeding practices. Over the period from 8 to 18 years, sample members were assessed on a range of measures of cognitive and academic outcomes including measures of child intelligence quotient; teacher ratings of school performance; standardized tests of reading comprehension, mathematics, and scholastic ability; pass rates in school leaving examinations; and leaving school without qualifications. Increasing duration of breastfeeding was associated with consistent and statistically significant increases in 1) intelligence quotient assessed at ages 8 and 9 years; 2) reading comprehension, mathematical ability, and scholastic ability assessed during the period from 10 to 13 years; 3) teacher ratings of reading and mathematics assessed at 8 and 12 years; and 4) higher levels of attainment in school leaving examinations. Children who were breastfed for >/=8 months had mean test scores that were between 0. 35 and 0.59 SD units higher than children who were bottle-fed. Mothers who elected to breastfeed tended to be older; better educated; from upper socioeconomic status families; were in a two-parent family; did not smoke during pregnancy; and experienced above average income and living standards. Additionally, rates of breastfeeding increased with increasing birth weight, and first-born children were more likely to be breastfed. Regression adjustment for maternal and other factors associated with breastfeeding reduced the associations between breastfeeding and cognitive or educational outcomes. Nonetheless, in 10 of the 12 models, fitted duration of breastfeeding remained a significant predictor of later cognitive or educational outcomes. After adjustment for confounding factors, children who were breastfed for >/=8 months had mean test scores that were between 0.11 and 0.30 SD units higher than those not breastfed. It is concluded that breastfeeding is associated with small but detectable increases in child cognitive ability and educational achievement. These effects are 1) pervasive, being reflected in a range of measures including standardized tests, teacher ratings, and academic outcomes in high school; and 2) relatively long-lived, extending throughout childhood into young adulthood.

Strategy use on standardized reading comprehension tests.

Strategy use and its impact on standardized reading test performance were investigated. High school students were randomly assigned to 2 groups, standardized test and main idea, with separate control and think-aloud conditions. In the standardized think-aloud group, students thought aloud while taking a portion of a reading test, consisting of passages accompanied by several questions each. In the main idea conditions, students read the same passages with the lower level questions removed and answered a single multiple-choice question about the main idea of each passage, having been told that the task was not a test. Both groups used strategies, and students in the standardized test condition made significantly greater use of strategies than students in the main idea condition. Significant between-group differences were found in use of rereading. In comparisons between the think-aloud and control conditions, thinking aloud was found to have a significant detrimental effect on students' ability to identify passage main ideas.

Strategy use on standardized reading comprehension tests.

Strategy use on standardized reading comprehension tests.

Reciprocal teaching of reading comprehension in a New Zealand high school

This paper presents an experimental evaluation of a trial implementation of reciprocal teaching procedures by high school teachers to address reading comprehension deficits in a group of their students. Forty-six students with the lowest scores on a standardized test of reading comprehension in seven eighth-grade classes participated in the study. Following 3 hours of instruction in reciprocal teaching procedures, four classroom teachers and two support teachers ran eight reciprocal teaching groups. Four of these groups, 20 students in all, were exposed to between 12 and 16 reciprocal teaching sessions, while 15 students in the other four groups received between six and eight sessions. The remaining 11 students served as a no-treatment comparison group. Pre- and posttest scores on the standardized test served as the dependent measure. Significant gains were observed with students in the extended program, with no significant differences observed between the short program and comparison groups. Follow-up assessments of extended program students between 3 and 7 months later showed a maintenance of comprehension gains. Implications for high schools are discussed in terms of the absence of student progress with insufficient spaced practice in metacognitive skill training and strategic resourcing for remedial comprehension instruction.

The role of question type and reading ability in reading comprehension

Performance on a standardized reading comprehension test reflects the number of correct answers readers select from a list of alternate choices, but fails to provide information about how readers cope with the various cognitive demands of the task. The aim of this study was to determine whether three groups of readers: normally achieving (NA), poor comprehenders (CD), with no decoding disability, and reading disabled (RD), poor comprehenders with poor decoding skills, differed in their ability to cope with reading comprehension task demands. Three task variables reflected in the question-answer relations that appear on standardized reading comprehension tests were identified.Passage Independent (PI) question can be answered with reasonable accuracy based on the reader's prior knowledge of the passage content.Inference (INFER) questions required the reader to generate an inference at the local or global test level.Locating (LOCAT) questions require the reader to match the correct answer choice to a detail explicitly stated in the text either verbatim or in paraphrase form. The relations among reader characteristics, cognitive task factors and reading comprehension test scores were analyzed using a structural relations equation with LISREL. It was found that the three reading groups differed with respect to the underlying relationship between their performance on specific question-answer types and their standardized reading comprehension score. For the NA group, a high score on PI was likely to be accompanied by a low score on INFER, whereas in the CD and RD groups, PI and INFER are positively related. The finding of a negative relationship between background knowledge and inference task factors for normally achieving readers suggests that even normal readers may have comprehension difficulties that go undetected on the basis of a standardized scores. This study indicates that current comprehension assessments may not be adequate for assessing specific reading difficulties and that more precise diagnostic tools are needed.

Are Families of Children with Reading Difficulties at Risk for Immune Disorders and Nonrighthandedness?

This study used questionnaire data to examine immune disorders and nonrighthandedness in the families of children enrolled in a learning disabilities school and children attending regular classrooms in public schools. Groups were organized according to their performance on a standardized test of reading comprehension to avoid overlap. In total, 468 questionnaires were returned, from which we were able to derive a final sample of carefully matched subjects: 55 subjects undergoing remediation for reading problems and 55 age- and sexmatched control subjects. The results indicated that children with reading problems and their families more frequently suffered from some immune and autoimmune disorders, particularly those involving the gastrointestinal tract and the thyroid gland. In addition, symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were associated with Crohn's disease and migraine headache in the families. There was no evidence of an elevated prevalence of nonrighthandedness in the children with reading problems and their families.

The Relative Importance of Home and School in the Development of Literacy Skills for Middle-Grade Students

Variations in the home environments of poor and middle-income children affect their literacy development, which leads to substantial differences in reading ability and behavior. Schools can mediate influences from home through the conditions that they foster and the instructional policies and procedures they promote. The result of schools' efforts may either ameliorate or magnify the inequities in reading development related to family economic conditions. This study tests these contentions in middle-grade schools by using a nationally representative sample of poor and middle-class eighth graders from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). Home and school effects on our measure of literacy development--a standardized test of reading comprehension--are explored with multilevel methods (hierarchical linear modeling). While homes exert an important influence on this outcome, findings focusing on schools and classrooms are emphasized. The study also highlights school conditions and polici...

Exploring the relationship of test anxiety and metacognition on reading test performance: A cognitive analysis

Abstract This study explored the relationship between test anxiety and metacognitive word knowledge on performance on a standardized reading comprehension test. One hundred and seventeen (117) college students participated by completing three paper and pencil measures: (1) a self-report measure of test anxiety; (2) a metacognitive word knowledge task; and (3) a standardized measure of reading comprehension. The results of a series of multiple regression analyses suggest that the cognitive component of test anxiety (worry) exerted a negative influence on students' performance on the metacognitive word knowledge task, independent of overall reading ability. Additional analyses suggest that once initial reading ability is controlled, both anxious worrying and metacognitive word knowledge jointly influence performance on a standardized measure of reading comprehension. On the most cognitively demanding reading comprehension tasks, however, metacognitive word knowledge interacted with worry, such that when anxious worrying was low, increases in metacognitive word knowledge were associated with higher performance; and when anxious worrying was high, increases in metacognitive word knowledge were associated with lower levels of performance. The findings are discussed within a cognitive capacity framework of test anxiety.

The Effect of Metacognitive Knowledge on Local and Global Monitoring

This study investigated whether knowledge of cognition affects regulation of cognition. College students were assigned to one of three levels of monitoring ability based on pre-experimental self-report data and then completed a reading comprehension test in which they monitored their local (i.e., during testing) and global (i.e., after testing) performance. Self-appraised high monitors scored higher on a standardized reading comprehension test and were more confident and accurate when evaluating their test performance locally and globally compared to low monitors. Global monitoring scores improved significantly for high but not low monitors due in part to information acquired during testing. These results suggest that most college students possess metacognitive knowledge about their learning even though a large proportion do not use this knowledge to improve their on-line regulation of test performance.

Strategy Instruction in a Literature-Based Reading Program

Since the 1980s, educators have sought increasingly to expand students' repertoire of thinking skills, but relatively few instructional programs are designed to do so. This article describes a program that teaches reading and thinking strategies through a student-centered, literature-based curriculum. The program is designed to increase students' cognitive strategy use, reading achievement, self-esteem, and critical thinking abilities. The approach centers around a 2-part lesson. In part 1, teachers explain and model a thinking and reading comprehension strategy. In part 2, students select children's literature and apply the strategy as they read. In research on program effects, 178 experimental students significantly outperformed 174 controls on standardized tests of reading comprehension, ability to transfer cognitive strategies to situations outside of school, as well as assessments of self-esteem and critical and creative thinking.

Cognitive componential modelling of reading in ten- to twelve-year-old readers

The longitudinal project attempts to estimate the parameters of a priori postulates with their measurement errors, and the goodness-of-fit of model-implied population covariance sigma matrices with observed sample covariance matrices, using linear structural equation modelling (LISREL). The present report deals with Phase 2 of the project (see Leong 1988 for Phase 1 results) and involved 252 ten-to twelve-year-old readers. Three latent exogenous components were postulated: (a) orthographic/phonological component, (b) morphological component, and (c) sentence comprehension component. These constructs were subserved by 8 measurable indicators (5 lexical decision and 3 vocalization tasks). These 8 independent tasks were all administered on-line via the microcomputer under laboratory conditions with combined, scaled accuracy and latency measures as indices of efficiency in processing the reading related tasks. The latent endogenous or dependent component Reading Performance was subserved by standardized vocabulary and reading comprehension tests. Maximum likelihood analyses using LISREL VI to test the approximation of the hypothesized model show a good fit for the grade 4 data, a reasonable fit for grade 5, and a less unambiguous fit for grade 6. These results are generally confirmed with the simultaneous structural analyses of Phase 2 and Phase 1 (N=298 students) multisamples. Multi-components and multi-levels of reading for these age groups are emphasized.

Pictorial enhancement of text memory: limitations imposed by picture type and comprehension skill.

We examined the kinds of information in a prose passage that is better remembered when depictive illustrations are embedded in the passage than when the passage contains no illustrations. Experiment 1 showed that (1) pictures depicting details effectively increased recall of those details and (2) pictures depicting relationships effectively increased recall of that relational information (relative to a no-picture control condition). In Experiment 2, comprehension skill was found to modulate the general effects obtained in Experiment 1. Detail pictures enhanced the recall of targeted details for all skill levels. Relational pictures enhanced recall of pictured relational information for highly skilled and moderately skilled comprehenders, but not for less skilled comprehenders. Because there were no recall differences across the different skill levels in the no-picture control condition, it is suggested that pictures may serve to enable processing in which readers would not necessarily engage under ordinary circumstances. Pictures, however, did not appear to compensate for limitations reflected in lower scores on a standardized test of reading comprehension.

Treating a case of surface dyslexia after closed head injury

We describe an original treatment program for surface dyslexia in a patient with a closed head injury. Addressing the question of whether the deficient lexical reading routes could be improved in this type of case. we designed three tasks and administered them over ten consecutive treatment sessions. Results indicate improved accuracy of responses as a function of presentation times or response times, or both, on all treatment tasks. Comparisons of standardized reading comprehension and oral reading tests before and after therapy disclosed increases in reading rate, with the patient's originally high level of accuracy remaining constant. This suggests that the patient incorporated the more rapid lexical reading strategy without compromising her level of accuracy.

A Description of What Happens When an Examinee Takes a Multiple‐Choice Reading Comprehension Test

This study investigated the strategies a group of college students used to complete a portion of a standardized reading comprehension test. Twenty‐six students were randomly assigned to either an introspective interview, in which the subjects explained to a researcher what they were doing and thinking as they read the test passages and answered the multiple‐choice questions, or a retrospective interview, in which the students completed the test without interruption and then recounted for the researcher how they had gone about the task. Data analysis resulted in the identification of three broad categories of processing behavior: an overall approach to the test task, reading strategies, and test‐taking strategies. In addition, difficulties encountered by the subjects were identified. Results indicate that the common element in each subject's approach to the test was a focus on getting to the questions as quickly as possible and then using the questions to direct a search of the passage to locate the best possible information to answer the questions. The implications of these results for better understanding the relationship between test‐taking behavior and reading are discussed.

Effect of Allergy Medication on Children's Reading Comprehension

The impact of a very common over-the-counter antihistamine, chlorpheniramine, was measured in respect to the reading comprehension of 12 normal school-age children (5 boys and 7 girls) who had a history of allergic rhinitis. Each subject served as his/her own control, and a double-blind design was employed. Each child's parent was given two bottles of cherry syrup and told to administer the syrup in Bottle A for 3 days and then that in Bottle B for 3 days according to directions on the bottle. Parents and children did not know which bottle contained the medication. One of the two forms of a standardized reading comprehension test was administered at the end of each 3-day period in the allergist's office by a trained test administrator. Students were randomly assigned to the two conditions and to the form of the test administered. The mean reading comprehension scores of the drug and placebo drugs were 59 and 60, respectively, which were not significantly different. This study would indicate that common across-the-counter antihistamines should not adversely affect typical school activities such as reading comprehension if used appropriately. Even if some drowsiness or inattention may occur, children's cognitive functions are not affected sufficiently to disrupt learning.

Reciprocal Teaching Improves Standardized Reading-Comprehension Performance in Poor Comprehenders

Grade 4 and 7 poor comprehenders (N = 72) participated in 13 sessions of reading-strategy instruction or reading practice (control condition). Trained students were instructed to make predictions when reading, to generate questions about text, to summarize what was read, and to clarify points that were hard to understand. The strategies were taught using the reciprocal instruction approach developed by Palincsar and Brown (1984), involving provision of support to students as they needed it and peer teaching of strategies. Control subjects were exposed to the same materials as reciprocally trained students but were given no strategy instruction. The most important finding was a greater increase from before to after training on a standardized test of reading comprehension in the reciprocally trained than in the control condition. This effect is important since standardized comprehension tests measure important reading skills and are used extensively in making curriculum and instruction decisions. The import...

An analysis of the spelling errors of children who differ in their reading and spelling skills

ABSTRACTResults of recent studies comparing the spelling errors of children with varying discrepancies between their reading and spelling skills have yielded conflicting results. Some studies suggest that good readers-poor spellers (mixed) are characterized by a set of deficits that differentiates them from poor readers-poor spellers (poor). Other studies fail to find differences between groups of poor spellers who differ in their reading skills. The present study attempted to determine the degree to which these discrepant results reflected differences in methods of subject selection and of error analysis. Two different sets of criteria were used to identify poor spellers-good readers. Subjects were selected on the basis of standardized reading comprehension and spelling test scores or on the basis of standardized single-word-recognition and spelling-test scores. The phonetic accuracy of the spelling errors was assessed using two different scoring systems – one that took positional constraints into account and one that did not. In addition, children were identified at two different age levels, allowing for developmental comparisons. Regardless of age or reading ability, poor and mixed spellers had difficulty converting sounds into positionally appropriate graphemes. Only older children with good word recognition but poor spelling skills provided some evidence for a distinct subgroup of poor spellers. These children had relatively good visual memory for words and, unlike other poor spellers, showed relatively good use of rudimentary sound-letter correspondences.

A componential approach to understanding reading and its difficulties in preadolescent readers

The present study is predicated on the logic of interrelated functional information processing components as an approach to understanding reading and its difficulties in preadolescent readers. The structural equation modelling (and its variants) involved these three latent components: (a) orthographic/phonological component, (b) morphological component, and (c) sentence and paragraph comprehension component. These components were subserved by a total of ten measurable tasks, all administered on-line via the microcomputer under laboratory conditions with reaction time measures as indices of mental representation of word knowledge and sentence/paragraph comprehension. The latent dependent component of reading performance was subserved by standardized vocabulary and reading comprehension tests. The total sample consisted of 298 children in grades, 4, 5, and 6. Maximum likelihood analyses using LISREL show that the data in general do not disconfirm the proposed model for grade 4 readers. The three-component model, with some variables set free, provides a reasonable fit for the grade 5 data but less claim could be made about the goodness of fit for grade 6. The results show the mutually reinforcing and mutually facilitating effects of multilevels and multicomponents of reading. Word structure and word knowledge are particularly predictive of reading. The present Phase 1 work would be validated in a follow-up of another cohort of readers and would also lead to the systematic training of some of the components with poor readers.