Reading Comprehension What makes text easy or difficult

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Reading ComprehensionWhat makes text easy or
difficult?
IDdagarna, Sollentunamässan, 3-5 October 2001

• Dr Chris Singleton
• Department of Psychology
• University of Hull, UK
• c.singleton_at_psy.hull.ac.uk

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Dyslexia

• Dyslexia is a specific language-based disorder
  of constitutional origin characterised by
  difficulties in single-word decoding, usually
  reflecting insufficient phonological processing
  abilities. These difficulties in single-word
  decoding are often unexpected in relation to age
  and other cognitive and academic abilities.
  International Dyslexia Association, 1994

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Causal model of dyslexia
Genetic brain abnormality
BIOLOGICAL
Phonological deficit
Poor phoneme- grapheme conversion
Environment
COGNITIVE
Poor reading
Poor memory
Poor phonological awareness
BEHAVIOURAL
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Phonology and memory

• Phonological processes are the basis for the
  development of a phonological decoding strategy
  in reading.
• Working memory is integral in that it enables
  constituent sounds and/or phonological codes to
  be held in short term store while phonological
  coding processes are carried out.

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Visual memory

• Visual memory is especially important in early
  stages of learning to read.
• Poor readers show bias towards visual encoding of
  words (rather than phonological encoding).
• Children with good visual memory but poor
  auditory memory find acquisition of phonics
  difficult.

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Simple componential model of reading comprehension
Decoding ability
Readingcomprehension
Listeningcomprehension
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Which is more important?

• Decoding skill?
• This is the best predictor of reading
  comprehension in younger children.

• Listening comprehension?
• This is the best predictor of reading
  comprehension in older children and adults.

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Poor decoding skills

• Poor word recognition
• Very poor phonic skills
• Very poor ability to read non-words
• Difficulty with new or unfamiliar words
• Text reading slow and laborious

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The componential model of literacy difficulties
COMPREHENSION GOOD
Dyslexic readers
Normal readers
DECODING GOOD
DECODING POOR
POOR
Garden variety poor readers
Hyperlexic readers
COMPREHENSION POOR
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Routes to comprehension
Perceptionof text
Access to lexical store(word recognition)
Visual code
Assembly of wordsin working memory
Phonologicalcode
Pronunciationof text
Comprehensionof text
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Processes in comprehension

• Word recognition skills
• Vocabulary knowledge
• Syntactic knowledge
• World knowledge
• Lexical memory (long term)
• Working memory (short term)
• Inference

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Memory processes
Rehearsal
Long Term Memory
Sensory Memory
Working Memory
IN
(Short Term)
OUT
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Inference

• Inference is the process of drawing conclusions
  from information when those conclusion are not
  explicitly stated in the text.
• Example
• The man sat down. The chair creaked under the
  weight.
• Inferences (1) the man sat on the chair (2)
  the man is heavy.

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Inference Processes

• Integration of information from different parts
  of the text e.g. Tom decided to lend Bill his
  car. He was going to take up cycling. Which one
  is going to take up cycling Tom or Bill?
• Construction of meaning using other knowledge
  e.g. Jill cut the bread. How did Jill cut the
  bread?
• Elaboration, e.g. Jill cut the ribbon. The
  scissors were blunt. What did she use to cut the
  ribbon?

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Psychological correlates of poor comprehending

• Problems with making inferences
• Working memory deficits
• Lexical processes not automatic
• Poor vocabulary

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Causes of reading comprehension difficulties
Lack of reading practice
Poor decodingskills
Visual discomfort
Readingcomprehension difficulties
Inadequatevocabulary
Dyslexia
Working memoryproblems
Poor generalknowledge
Poor inferentialskills
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Visual Discomfort

• The experience of unpleasant visual symptoms
  (blurring of text, movement, colour) when
  reading.
• Probably 15-20 of population most common in
  people who suffer from epilepsy, migraine and
  dyslexia.
• Due to striped (visual grating) effect of lines
  of text on strongly contrasting background.
• Various terms used ( scotopic sensitivity
  syndrome Meares-Irlen syndrome pattern
  glare visual discomfort).
• Mears (1980), Irlen (1983), Wilkins (1995) found
  that coloured filters and lenses can help some
  dyslexics.

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Assessing comprehensionSome example tests

• Neale Analysis of Reading (6 - 13 years)
• WORD Reading Comprehension Test (6 - 16 years)
• LASS Junior and Secondary Sentence Reading Tests
  (computerised 8 - 15 years)
• Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests Passage
  Comprehension (adults)
• No tests ideally suitable for students at college
  or university level.

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Adult reading comprehension The Craigforth
Factory Study

• Simmons, F.R. and Singleton, C.H. (2000) The
  reading comprehension abilities of dyslexic
  students in higher education. Dyslexia, 6,
  178-192.
• The performance of 15 dyslexic students in higher
  education on a reading comprehension task was
  compared with 15 non-dyslexic students.
• The task was to read a 655-word text about the
  modern-isation of a factory then to answer 10
  multiple choice questions 5 literal questions
  and 5 inferential questions. Students were
  allowed to refer back to the text while answering
  the questions.

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Average scores for the dyslexic and non-dyslexic
students.
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Average times for reading the text and answering
the questions
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Summary of results

• Dyslexic students took longer to read the text
  and to answer the questions.
• Dyslexic and non-dyslexic students did not differ
  in ability to answer the literal comprehension
  questions.
• Dyslexic students were significantly poorer in
  ability to answer the inferential comprehension
  questions.
• Dyslexic students were significantly poorer on
  the index of their specific ability to make
  inferences.
• Dyslexic students are specifically impaired in
  constructing inferences when reading complex
  text.

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Conclusions

• Dyslexic students are specifically impaired in
  constructing inferences when reading complex
  text.
• The text and questions did not include unusual or
  long words. Both groups could answer the literal
  questions well. It is unlikely that the
  dyslexics difficulty with inferential questions
  is directly related to inability to decode the
  text.
• Dyslexic students can have reading comprehension
  difficulties that cannot be accounted for by an
  inability to decode individual words in the text.
• Do we now have to change our definition of
  dyslexia?

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Why did dyslexics find inferential questions more
difficult?

• 1. Lack of automaticity in single word decoding?
• If the dyslexic subjects could decode the words,
  but had to assign more conscious effort to the
  task then they would have less cognitive
  workspace to devote to comprehension task, e.g.
  integrating information from various parts of the
  text using information from long-term memory to
  interpret words in context.
• 2. Poor short-term (working) memory?
• If working memory processes are weak, the
  dyslexics would be likely to loose information
  before the relevant inferences could be drawn.

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Improving and supporting reading comprehension

• Inference training
• Text structure training
• Imagery training
• Metacognitive training (e.g. questions, key
  words, key sentences)
• Patterned note-taking (e.g. mind mapping)
• Multisensory support (e.g. text-to-speech)

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Ways of improving text

• use clear and short sentences
• use bullet points with keywords and phrases
• clear, legible font, slightly larger than usual
• put key words in bold but avoid italics
• use some colour but not too much
• do not use right justification of text
• use images that support the text
• break up the page into short paragraphs
• avoid strong visual grating effects
• make information explicit - avoid inferences