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Ludo Verhoeven - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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How executive functions contribute to Reading Comprehension.
The British journal of educational psychology, 2020Co-Authors: Suzan Nouwens, Margriet A. Groen, Tijs Kleemans, Ludo VerhoevenAbstract:Background: Executive functions have been proposed to account for individual variation in Reading Comprehension beyond the contributions of decoding skills and language skills. However, insight into the direct and indirect effects of multiple executive functions on fifth-grade Reading Comprehension, while accounting for decoding and language skills, is limited. Aim: The present study investigated the direct and indirect effects of fourth-grade executive functions (i.e., working memory, inhibition, and planning) on fifth-grade Reading Comprehension, after accounting for decoding and language skills. Sample: The sample included 113 fourth-grade children (including 65 boys and 48 girls; Age M = 9.89; SD = .44 years). Methods: The participants were tested on their executive functions (working memory, inhibition and planning), and their decoding skills, language skills (vocabulary and syntax knowledge) and Reading Comprehension, one year later. Results: Using structural equation modelling, the results indicated direct effects of working memory and planning on Reading Comprehension, as well as indirect effects of working memory and inhibition via decoding (X2 = 2.46). Conclusions: The results of the present study highlight the importance of executive functions for Reading Comprehension after taking variance in decoding and language skills into account: Both working memory and planning uniquely contributed to Reading Comprehension. In addition, working memory and inhibition also supported decoding. As a practical implication, educational professionals should not only consider the decoding and language skills children bring into the classroom, but their executive functions as well.
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Situation model building ability uniquely predicts first and second language Reading Comprehension
Journal of Neurolinguistics, 2019Co-Authors: Henriette Raudszus, Eliane Segers, Ludo VerhoevenAbstract:Abstract We examined the unique role of textbase memory and situation model building ability in first (L1) and second (L2) language Reading Comprehension. Participants were 76 monolingual and 102 bilingual children in 4th grade. A pathfinder network approach was used to assess textbase memory and situation model building ability, on top of other well-known cognitive and linguistic predictors of Reading Comprehension (working memory, nonverbal reasoning, decoding, vocabulary, and grammar). Reading Comprehension was assessed by a standardized task unrelated to the textbase and situation model building task. The results showed that there was no difference between L1 and L2 readers in nonverbal reasoning, working memory, textbase memory and situation model building. L2 readers were more efficient decoders than L1 readers, but lagged behind on vocabulary, grammar, and Reading Comprehension. Situation model building ability was found to predict Reading Comprehension over and above the other cognitive and linguistic predictors to the same extent in both groups.
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How logical reasoning mediates the relation between lexical quality and Reading Comprehension
Reading and Writing, 2016Co-Authors: Eliane Segers, Ludo VerhoevenAbstract:The present study aimed to examine the role of logical reasoning in the relation between lexical quality and Reading Comprehension in 146 fourth grade Dutch children. We assessed their standardized Reading Comprehension measure, along with their decoding efficiency and vocabulary as measures of lexical quality, syllogistic reasoning as measure of (verbal) logical reasoning, and nonverbal reasoning as a control measure. Syllogistic reasoning was divided into a measure tapping basic, coherence inferencing skill using logical syllogisms, and a measure tapping elaborative inferencing skill using indeterminate syllogisms. Results showed that both types of syllogisms partly mediated the relation between lexical quality and Reading Comprehension, but also had a unique additional effect on Reading Comprehension. The indirect effect of lexical quality on Reading Comprehension via syllogisms was driven by vocabulary knowledge. It is concluded that measures of syllogistic reasoning account for higher-order thinking processes that are needed to make inferences in Reading Comprehension. The role of lexical quality appears to be pivotal in explaining the variation in Reading Comprehension both directly and indirectly via syllogistic reasoning.
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What Oral Text Reading Fluency Can Reveal about Reading Comprehension.
Journal of Research in Reading, 2014Co-Authors: Nathalie J. Veenendaal, Margriet A. Groen, Ludo VerhoevenAbstract:Text Reading fluency – the ability to read quickly, accurately and with a natural intonation – has been proposed as a predictor of Reading Comprehension. In the current study, we examined the role of oral text Reading fluency, defined as text Reading rate and text Reading prosody, as a contributor to Reading Comprehension outcomes in addition to decoding efficiency and language Comprehension. One hundred and six Dutch primary school children from fourth grade participated in this study and were assessed on decoding efficiency, vocabulary, syntactic ability, Reading fluency performance and Reading Comprehension skills. Regression analysis showed that text Reading prosody, not text Reading rate, explained additional variance in Reading Comprehension performance when decoding efficiency and language Comprehension were controlled for. This result suggests that the inclusion of text Reading prosody as an aspect of text Reading fluency is justified and that a natural intonation is associated with better Comprehension of what is read.
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prediction of the development of Reading Comprehension a longitudinal study
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2008Co-Authors: Ludo Verhoeven, Jan Van LeeuweAbstract:Specific effects of word decoding, vocabulary and listening Comprehension abilities on the development of Reading Comprehension were longitudinally examined for a representative sample of 2143 Dutch children throughout the elementary school period. An attempt was made to test two theoretical frameworks for the prediction of the development of Reading Comprehension: the lexical quality hypothesis in which word decoding and vocabulary are assumed to be critical determinants of Reading Comprehension and the simple Reading view in which Reading Comprehension is assumed to be the product of word decoding and listening Comprehension. The results showed significant progress across grades on all of the predictor and criterion measures. The stability of the measures was also high across time, which shows the individual differences between students to remain across grades. Word decoding exerted a substantial effect on early Reading Comprehension and a small effect on later sixth grade Reading Comprehension. The data provide empirical support for the lexical quality hypothesis as they show knowledge of word forms and word meanings (i.e. vocabulary) to predict the development of Reading Comprehension. Support for the simple Reading view was also found in that word decoding and listening Comprehension significantly predicted Reading Comprehension as well. A combined structural model with word decoding, vocabulary and listening Comprehension as predictors of Reading Comprehension showed a substantial impact of the three predictors on Reading Comprehension at first grade. In subsequent grades, vocabulary is still predicting Reading Comprehension directly whereas listening Comprehension shows a reciprocal relationship with vocabulary. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Lauren Artzi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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language of instruction as a moderator for transfer of Reading Comprehension skills among spanish speaking english language learners
Bilingual Research Journal, 2014Co-Authors: Maria S. Carlo, Diane August, Christopher D Barr, Margarita Calderon, Lauren ArtziAbstract:This three-year longitudinal study investigated the role of language of instruction in moderating the relationships between initial levels of English oral language proficiency and Spanish Reading Comprehension and growth in English Reading Comprehension. The study followed Spanish-speaking English language learners in English-only literacy instruction, an early-exit bilingual program, or a late-exit bilingual program, from third through fifth grade. Students in all groups experienced significant growth in English Reading Comprehension. For the English-only group, initial levels of Spanish Reading Comprehension were not related to growth in English Reading Comprehension. However, for students in the two bilingually instructed groups, those who began with stronger Spanish Reading Comprehension skills grew faster in English Reading Comprehension than students without initial strong Spanish Reading Comprehension skills.
Yejin Choi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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cosmos qa machine Reading Comprehension with contextual commonsense reasoning
arXiv: Computation and Language, 2019Co-Authors: Lifu Huang, Ronan Le Bras, Chandra Bhagavatula, Yejin ChoiAbstract:Understanding narratives requires Reading between the lines, which in turn, requires interpreting the likely causes and effects of events, even when they are not mentioned explicitly. In this paper, we introduce Cosmos QA, a large-scale dataset of 35,600 problems that require commonsense-based Reading Comprehension, formulated as multiple-choice questions. In stark contrast to most existing Reading Comprehension datasets where the questions focus on factual and literal understanding of the context paragraph, our dataset focuses on Reading between the lines over a diverse collection of people's everyday narratives, asking such questions as "what might be the possible reason of ...?", or "what would have happened if ..." that require reasoning beyond the exact text spans in the context. To establish baseline performances on Cosmos QA, we experiment with several state-of-the-art neural architectures for Reading Comprehension, and also propose a new architecture that improves over the competitive baselines. Experimental results demonstrate a significant gap between machine (68.4%) and human performance (94%), pointing to avenues for future research on commonsense machine Comprehension. Dataset, code and leaderboard is publicly available at this https URL.
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cosmos qa machine Reading Comprehension with contextual commonsense reasoning
Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 2019Co-Authors: Lifu Huang, Ronan Le Bras, Chandra Bhagavatula, Yejin ChoiAbstract:Understanding narratives requires Reading between the lines, which in turn, requires interpreting the likely causes and effects of events, even when they are not mentioned explicitly. In this paper, we introduce Cosmos QA, a large-scale dataset of 35,600 problems that require commonsense-based Reading Comprehension, formulated as multiple-choice questions. In stark contrast to most existing Reading Comprehension datasets where the questions focus on factual and literal understanding of the context paragraph, our dataset focuses on Reading between the lines over a diverse collection of people’s everyday narratives, asking such questions as “what might be the possible reason of ...?", or “what would have happened if ..." that require reasoning beyond the exact text spans in the context. To establish baseline performances on Cosmos QA, we experiment with several state-of-the-art neural architectures for Reading Comprehension, and also propose a new architecture that improves over the competitive baselines. Experimental results demonstrate a significant gap between machine (68.4%) and human performance (94%), pointing to avenues for future research on commonsense machine Comprehension. Dataset, code and leaderboard is publicly available at https://wilburone.github.io/cosmos.
Richard K. Wagner - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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specific Reading Comprehension disability major problem myth or misnomer
Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 2014Co-Authors: Mercedes Spencer, Jamie M Quinn, Richard K. WagnerAbstract:The goal of the present study was to test three competing hypotheses about the nature of Comprehension problems of students who are poor in Reading Comprehension. Participants in the study were first, second, and third graders, totaling 9 cohorts and over 425,000 participants in all. The pattern of results was consistent across all cohorts: Less than one percent of first- through third-grade students who scored as poor in Reading Comprehension were adequate in both decoding and vocabulary. Although poor Reading Comprehension certainly qualifies as a major problem rather than a myth, the term specific Reading Comprehension disability is a misnomer: Individuals with problems in Reading Comprehension that are not attributable to poor word recognition have Comprehension problems that are general to language Comprehension rather than specific to Reading. Implications for assessment and intervention are discussed.
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is oral text Reading fluency a bridge to Reading Comprehension
Reading and Writing, 2014Co-Authors: Young-suk Kim, Chea Hyeong Park, Richard K. WagnerAbstract:In the present study we investigated developmental relations among word Reading fluency, listening Comprehension, and text Reading fluency to Reading Comprehension in a relatively transparent language, Korean. A total of 98 kindergartners and 170 first graders in Korea were assessed on a series of tasks involving listening Comprehension, word Reading fluency, text Reading fluency, and Reading Comprehension. Results from multigroup structural equation models showed that text Reading fluency was a dissociable construct from word Reading fluency for both kindergartners and first graders. In addition, a developmental pattern emerged: listening Comprehension was not uniquely related to text Reading fluency for first graders, but not for kindergartners, over and above word Reading fluency. In addition, text Reading fluency was uniquely related to Reading Comprehension for kindergartners, but not for first graders, after accounting for word Reading fluency and listening Comprehension. For first graders, listening Comprehension dominated the relations. There were no differences in the pattern of relations for skilled and less skilled readers in first grade. Results are discussed from a developmental perspective for Reading Comprehension component skills including text Reading fluency.
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relationships between word knowledge and Reading Comprehension in third grade children
Scientific Studies of Reading, 2006Co-Authors: Kendra R Tannenbaum, Joseph K Torgesen, Richard K. WagnerAbstract:The relationship between word knowledge and Reading Comprehension has been well documented in research; however, the nature of this relationship remains unclear. Researchers usually distinguish between 2 aspects of an individual's word knowledge: breadth and depth. In addition to these 2 factors, it may be important to also consider fluency in the study of word knowledge. Two hundred and three 3rd-grade students took part in a study that examined the relationships between 3 dimensions of word knowledge and Reading Comprehension. Confirmatory factor analyses, structural equation modeling, and hierarchical regression analyses show that a 2-factor model of breadth and depth/fluency provides the best fit to the data. Breadth has a stronger relationship to Reading Comprehension than does depth/fluency; however, the 2 dimensions of word knowledge have significant overlapping variance that contributes to the prediction of Reading Comprehension.
Jennifer G Cromley - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Reading Comprehension of scientific text a domain specific test of the direct and inferential mediation model of Reading Comprehension
Journal of Educational Psychology, 2010Co-Authors: Jennifer G Cromley, Lindsey E Snyderhogan, Ulana A LuciwdubasAbstract:Reading Comprehension is strongly associated with academic achievement, including science achievement. A better understanding of Reading Comprehension processes in science text might hold promise for improving science achievement in the long run. We tested the fit of the direct and inferential mediation (DIME) model of Reading Comprehension (Cromley & Azevedo, 2007) with 737 students in an introductory biology course required for majors. Participants completed multiple choice measures of biology-specific prior-topic knowledge, inference, Reading strategy use, Reading vocabulary, word Reading fluency, and Reading Comprehension in small groups in our laboratory. Using structural equation modeling to test the fit of the DIME model to the data, we found excellent fit indices for all models. However, the original DIME model fit significantly worse than the measurement model, and a modified model that included a path from Reading vocabulary to Reading strategy use fit significantly better. Results from the modified model suggest that Comprehension interventions for undergraduate students with biology majors might use preteaching to build topic knowledge. We discuss the need for future experimental studies to confirm the vocabulary-Reading strategies link.
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testing and refining the direct and inferential mediation model of Reading Comprehension
Journal of Educational Psychology, 2007Co-Authors: Jennifer G Cromley, Roger AzevedoAbstract:A significant proportion of American high school students struggle with Reading Comprehension. Theoretical models of Reading Comprehension might help researchers understand these difficulties, because they can point to variables that make the largest contributions to Comprehension. On the basis of an extensive review of the literature, we created a new model of Reading Comprehension, the direct and inferential mediation (DIME) model. The model hypothesizes relationships among background knowledge, inferences, Reading Comprehension strategies, vocabulary, and word Reading and addresses the direct and mediated effects of these 5 predictors on Comprehension. The authors tested the fit of the model and 3 variations of the model to data from 175 students in 9th grade. The DIME model explained 66% of the variance in Comprehension. Vocabulary and background knowledge made the largest contributions to Comprehension, followed by inference, word Reading, and strategies. Analyses of participants scoring below the 30th percentile on Comprehension showed these students to have low scores on all of the measures. The authors suggest that vocabulary and background knowledge interventions might be the best way to begin improving the academic Reading Comprehension of students like those in the sample.
