An important question in research on eye movements in reading is whether word frequency and word predictability have additive or interactive effects on fixation durations. A fair number of studies have reported only additive effects of the frequency and predictability of a target word on reading times on that word, failing to show significant…

Eye movements were monitored as subjects read sentences containing high- or low-predictable target words. The extent to which target words were predictable from prior context was varied: Half of the target words were predictable, and the other half were unpredictable. In addition, the length of the target word varied: The target words were short…

Iconicity is a property that pervades the lexicon of many sign languages, including American Sign Language (ASL). Iconic signs exhibit a motivated, nonarbitrary mapping between the form of the sign and its meaning. We investigated whether iconicity enhances semantic priming effects for ASL and whether iconic signs are recognized more quickly than…

We investigated the latent factor structure of the "Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Kindergarteners" in Spanish ("PALS español K"). Participants included 590 Spanish-speaking, public-school kindergarteners from five states. Three theoretically-guided factor structures were measured and tested with one half of our…

We used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to test two hypotheses that might explain why no conclusive evidence has been found for the existence of n + 2 preprocessing effects. In Experiment 1, we tested whether parafoveal processing of the second word to the right of fixation (n + 2) takes place only when the preceding word (n + 1) is very…

Nearly 90% of intermediate and middle school students from low-income families in the United States are not proficient in reading. This action research project used a quasi-experimental design to determine the effectiveness of a multi-component reading intervention program for students in grades four through eight at Mother of Sorrows Catholic…

The study evaluated the effects of the Integrated Reading Comprehension Strategy on two levels. The Integrated Reading Comprehension Strategy integrated story grammar instruction and story maps, prior knowledge and prediction method, and word webs through a culturally responsive teaching framework; the Integrated Reading Comprehension Strategy…

Argumentative writing is a challenging communication task that calls upon sophisticated cognitive and linguistic abilities. Pre-adolescents (n = 80; mean age = 11;10; range = 10;6-13:5) were asked to write an argumentative essay on the controversial topic of training animals to perform in circuses. Additionally, they were asked to solve a set of…

Reading is the most valuable skill children must master early in schooling. Unfortunately, many students struggle to read and may be identified as having a Reading Disability (RD). In this dissertation, I explored the usefulness of the Response-to-Intervention (RtI) framework for identifying children with RD by examining the use of 1st and 2nd…

The authors investigated whether practice in reading fluency had a causal influence on the relationship between working memory (WM) and text comprehension for 155 students in Grades 2 and 4 who were poor or average readers. Dysfluent readers were randomly assigned to repeated reading or continuous reading practice conditions and compared with…

IN A THREE-STAGE STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF THE PHONIC AND LOOK-SAY METHODS OF READING ON THE TRANSFER OF READING SKILLS, 60 KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN WERE DIVIDED INTO A LETTER GROUP, A WORD GROUP, AND A CONTROL GROUP. MATERIALS USED WERE SIX GRAPHEMES DESIGNED DIFFERENTLY FROM ENGLISH LETTERS AND ASSIGNED TO SIX SINGLE ENGLISH PHONEMES. DURING STAGE…

AN EXPERIMENT WAS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE EFFECT OF 2-WORD ASSOCIATIONS IN LEARNING TO READ THE SECOND WORD OF A 2-WORD CHAIN. ABOUT 45 FIRST AND SECOND GRADE STUDENTS WERE CHOSEN AS SUBJECTS AFTER PRETESTING TO INSURE THEY WERE ABLE TO READ THE FIRST (STIMULUS) WORD BUT NOT THE SECOND (RESPONSE) WORD OF EACH WORD PAIR USED IN THE STUDY. EIGHT…

A study examined the construct and predictive validity of phonemic awareness to determine the strength of the relationship between phonemic segmentation and auditory abstraction and to determine which of the two measures provided the best prediction of word recognition ability. Data were gathered from 65 first-grade children from 2 public…

THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY WAS TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECT UPON WORD RECOGNITION AND READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS OF FOUR READING PROGRAMS. THESE PROGRAMS VARIED IN (1) THE DEGREE OF REGULARITY OF GRAPHEME-PHONEME CORRESPONDENCES PROGRAMED INTO THE VOCABULARY PRESENTED AND (2) THE EMPHASIS ON LANGUAGE STRUCTURE AS RELATED TO MEANING. FOUR…

THIS STUDY WAS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE EXPERIENCE APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF THE LANGUAGE ARTS AS COMPARED WITH THE TRADITIONAL METHOD. TO ACCOMPLISH THIS, FOUR AREAS OF LANGUAGE ARTS WERE SEPARATELY MEASURED--READING, WRITING, LISTENING, AND SPEAKING. IN ADDITION, AN INDEX OF DEVELOPMENT IN READING INTEREST WAS…