Reading comprehension

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) commonly present with reading comprehension impairments that impede their academic achievement and independent living. Research suggests that intervening on listening comprehension deficits of preschool children with ASD may contribute to improved reading comprehension proficiency in the school aged years. Dialogic reading is an empirically supported shared reading method known to increase the oral language and listening comprehension of young children with and without language impairments prior to formalized schooling.
This study utilized a single subject repeated acquisition design to evaluate the effect of a parent-delivered dialogic reading intervention on the independent and accurate responding of preschool children with ASD. Overall, results showed that the dialogic reading intervention was highly effective for increasing the independent and accurate responding for two of the three participants; however minimally effective for the third.
Although the parent participants demonstrated varying levels of procedural fidelity to the dialogic reading procedures, they perceived the intervention to be both feasible and effective when implemented with their preschool children with ASD. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

Extensive evidence indicates that oral language skills at school entry predict later reading development among monolingual children. It is not clear if the effect is the same for bilingually developing children and whether their oral skills in one language can transfer to reading comprehension in the other. The current longitudinal study followed 72 Spanish-English bilingual children (42 girls, 30 boys) and examined the extent to which early oral language proficiency in English and in Spanish were related to later reading comprehension development within- and across-languages. Multilevel models revealed significant within-language relations between oral language skills at 5 years and reading comprehension growth from 6 to 8 years in both English and Spanish. Additionally, English oral skill predicted Spanish reading comprehension, whereas Spanish oral skill was unrelated to English reading comprehension. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

In this study, the relationships among cognitive styles of teachers, students
and reading rnaterials were studied. Children in second and fourth
grade classr:ooms were matched with their teachers on elements on their
cognitive style maps. A construct of cognitive style developed by Dr.
Joseph Hill of Oakland Community College was used. This construct
examines the subject in four areas: 1) the subject's use of theoretical
symbols, such as, words and numbers, 2) his reactions to qualitative
codes, such as, sensory or kinesic information, 3) the cultural deterrninants
of his actions and 4) the modes of reasoning he prefers. This study indicated that it was possible to map young children and their
teachers and arrive at a comparison of teachers' and students' maps.
Interaction did occur in the classroom based on the similarities and
differences between students and teachers. Achievement in reading
was affected by this interaction.

Reading is an essential skill necessary for academic success. However, many
children experience difficulties in acquirin,g essential reading skills necessary to support
and enhance other areas of learning (Nes, 2003). One major area in which students fail to
attain proficiency is in the area of reading fluency (Vaughn et al., 2000). Previous
research has demonstrated that repeated reading is an effective intervention for increasing
fluency in elementary age readers (Keehn, 2003; Rashotte & Torgesen, 1985). However,
little research has specifically addressed the impact of repeated readings on first grade
students. In addition, researchers have called for investigations of additional components
(sight words and phonics) on repeated reading interventions (Vaughn et al., 2000).
Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of combining sight
words and spelling pattern instruction with timed repeated readings on the word
accuracy, words read correctly per minute and prosody of first grade students who are at
risk for reading failure.
An ANCOVA yielded significant effects on each of the three dependent variables,
and these results demonstrated that the addition of components (sight words and spelling
patterns) to timed repeated readings improved the oral reading fluency of low level
readers, of which students at risk for reading failure are a part. The outcome of this study
also confirmed that first grade students from low socioeconomic backgrounds can
increase their oral reading fluency skills with research-based methods.

The present study examined two models of text comprehension. The first was the propositional representation proposed by Kintsch and van Dijk (1978), in which coherence is determined by coreference and consistency. The second model was a mental model which incorporates readers' world knowledge, goals, and plans in the comprehension of text. In Experiment 1, subjects were told to assume the protagonist perspective while reading a series of short passages. Results showed that when instructed to do so, subjects formed an image that includes information regarding protagonist location. When this location information was violated, a slowdown in reading time of a target sentence occurred. Experiment 2 showed that when subjects are not instructed to assume the protagonist perspective, they apparently are not aware of inconsistencies in location information.

Good and poor seventh grade readers were given a
typicality rating task in session one. In session two
subjects were given an incidental cued-recall task with item
typicality individually defined. In session three subjects
were given two free recall lists, with item typicality for
the Self-Generated lists individually defined and item
typicality for the Adult-Generated lists based on adult
ratings. In session one, poor readers selected fewer items
as appropriate category exemplars than did good readers or
adults, and correlations with adults were greater for the
good readers for all twelve categories. Recall was
equivalent for both groups for the incidental cued-recall
and Self-Generated free recall tasks. Good readers recalled
more only for the Adult-Generated free recall task. Poor
readers have a different knowledge base than good readers
resulting in differences in the extent to which semantic
memory relations can be easily activated.

This study investigated the effect of teaching reading through the content area of science on the reading achievement test scores of middle school below level readers when the science teachers received extensive staff development. Therefore, the staff development model developed and implemented by the researcher was an important part of this study. Participants were 811 seventh and eighth grade students who scored between the 21st and 50th percentile on a standardized measure administered each spring. Four hundred and five students served as the experimental group and 406 students served as the control group. The control group received reading instruction in separate reading classes taught by certified reading teachers. There were 16 teachers from 10 middle schools who volunteered to be a part of this study. The 10 science teachers received 60 hours of staff development that included modeling, coaching, and feedback. There were four full days of training prior to school opening, after school seminars, on site assistance with lesson planning, modeling of lessons, coaching, and feedback. A 2X2 ANCOVA was used to determine statistical relationships between the method of instruction (reading taught through science and reading taught in separate classes) and the grade level of the students (seventh and eighth grades). Informal qualitative data was gathered on the teachers' knowledge base for teaching reading and teacher attitudes regarding their responsibility for teaching reading. A pre- and posttest of teacher knowledge and a pre- and post survey of teacher attitudes were administered to each teacher involved in this study. The results indicated that there was no significant difference in the reading achievement test scores of seventh and eighth grade below-level readers who received reading instruction in science and those who received reading in separate classes of reading taught by certified reading teachers. The informal data showed that the science teachers who were involved in the study did significantly increase their knowledge base about teaching reading through their content area. This was reflected in the difference between their pretest and posttest scores on the test of teacher knowledge. There was also a change in their attitudes about the responsibility for teaching reading. On the pre survey they indicated that the science content should be their main instructional responsibility. On the post survey they indicated that teaching reading should be a major focus of their instruction.

Fast, efficient reading skills are essential in college where the majority of learning comes from independent reading. However, reading college-level expository texts is a potential problem for college students with learning disabilities (LD) who classically have difficulty with reading. Since little is known about young adults with LD who attend college, the purpose of this study was to examine the reading abilities of this group. More specifically, reading comprehension scores, from both oral and silent reading, as well as analyses of oral reading miscues were examined. Additionally, the influence of expository text structures on reading comprehension and oral miscues was explored. A total of forty undergraduate subjects from one state university participated in the study: twenty were upper class (junior/senior status) students with childhood diagnoses of LD in reading; twenty were upper class students without LD who were considered poor college readers. Four passages from a college textbook on social problems were selected for the reading assessment: two passages of an enumeration text structure, and two of an historical text structure. All subjects read two passages silently and two passages orally from each structure, The subjects' oral readings were analyzed for types of miscues. After reading each passage, the subjects then orally summarized the readings. A comprehension score was derived for each passage from the oral retellings. Results revealed that the college students with LD produced a greater total number of oral reading miscues and earned fewer comprehension points than their peers without LD. Text structure did not effect the comprehension scores of the students with LD; however, the type of text structure did effect the oral reading comprehension scores of the students without LD. The subjects with LD also produced a significantly higher percentage of miscues categorized as loss-of-meaning miscues. The results of this study indicated that college students with LD continue to have reading difficulties: difficulty decoding words; poor comprehension; and a lack of metacognitive awareness and use of strategies for comprehending various expository text structures.

Two basic problems were addressed in this study: (1) Was there a significant difference between good/average and poor comprehenders on level of use of top-level structure as an organizational strategy for recall of expository material? (2) Was there a significant difference in recall at each level of use of top-level structure for good/average
comprehenders and for poor comprehenders? To investigate these problems, three phases of
research were conducted: At Phase 1, a standardized
reading test was administered to determine the student's
level of ability in comprehending literal and inferential
types of questions and level of vocabulary. The student's
level of prior knowledge of the strategy and his/her
performance in free recall were assessed from protocols
written in a pretest. At Phase 2 , an experimental manipulation was
introduced in which all students received intensive training
in the nature of top-level structure, in -how to find it in
expository material, and in how to use it to organize
written, free recall. Immediately following instruction,
use of the strategy and free recall were assessed from
protocols written.

The purpose of the study was to determine the reading grade
placement levels of junior college students in relationship to the
readability grade placement levels of their assigned social science
textbook, and determine the relationship of these variables with the
grade in course.