Many students infrequently read during leisure time. Due to fast, unconscious decisions, they may overlook the possibility of reading. We tested the impact of nudging on reading frequency, reading attitude, and reading skills. Two studies targeting Grades 4 to 6 (N = 105) and Grades 7 and 8 (N = 146) compared: (1) a nudging condition--participants…

Using a nationally representative sample of 5,150 Dutch students who have been followed over a 6-year period, the presence of the Matthew effect was investigated for general language skills. The analyses do not reveal unmistakable evidence for the supposition that the rich get richer and the poor poorer. On the contrary, in schools with low…

This article presents empirical evidence challenging the received wisdom that a nonword-reading deficit is a characteristic trait of disabled readers. On the basis of 2 large-scale empirical studies using the reading-level match design, we argue that a nonword-reading deficit is the consequence of normal developmental differences in word-specific…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 13th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2016), October 28-30, 2016, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by the University of Mannheim, Germany, and endorsed by the…

The purpose of the present study was to explore Dutch spelling development throughout the elementary grades. Two issues were considered (a) dimensional structure over time, and (b) rate of change. Whether the rate of change differs depending on gender, ethnicity, or word reading skill was examined in particular. A pseudolongitudinal dataset with…

In this study we examined how good and weak students of literature interact with short literary stories. We focused on differences in the use of cognitive and affective reading activities, and in the extent to which good and weak students adapt their activities to (parts of) the story they are reading. 19 Dutch tenth-grade students from 8 classes…