This article evaluates the predictions of an algorithmic-level distributed associative memory model as it introduces, propagates, and resolves ambiguity, and compares it to the predictions of computational-level parallel parsing models in which ambiguous analyses are accounted separately in discrete distributions. By superposing activation…

Historically, there has been concern about students losing reading ability over extended breaks from school, commonly in the summer, but studies of this phenomenon have produced inconsistent results. We applied exploratory visual analysis of multiple datasets to examine whether students in Grades K-5 appear to lose or improve in various reading…

Even though Cued Speech has been a communication option for 50 years, it has not been widely adopted among users of English or in the country where it was created (i.e., the United States). This situation has led scholars and practitioners in the field of deafness to question whether the original intent of creating this system has been realized…

Purpose: In this initial article of the clinical forum on reading comprehension, we argue that reading comprehension is not a single ability that can be assessed by one or more general reading measures or taught by a small set of strategies or approaches. Method: We present evidence for a multidimensional view of reading comprehension that…

Common to all models of reading comprehension is the assumption that a reader's level of comprehension is heavily influenced by their standards of coherence (van den Broek, Risden, & Husbye-Hartman, 1995). Our discussion focuses on a subcomponent of the readers' standards of coherence: the coherence threshold. We situate this discussion within…

Students' ability to read complex texts is emphasized in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts and Literacy. The standards propose a three-part model for measuring text complexity. Although the model presents a robust means for determining text complexity based on a variety of features inherent to a text as well as…

Infants who have more power within the gamma frequency range at rest develop better language and cognitive abilities over their first 3 years of life (Benasich et al., 2008). This positive trend may reflect the gradual increase in resting gamma power that peaks at about 4 years (Takano & Ogawa, 1998): infants further along the maturational…

The paper highlights problems surrounding the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check that has accompanied the legislative framework for synthetic phonics in English primary schools. It investigates the inclusion of pseudowords and raises questions regarding their generation and categorization, the rationale for their inclusion and the assumption that the…

The authors investigated differences in the processes underlying two types of metacomprehension judgments: judgments of difficulty and predictions of performance (JOD vs. POP). An experiment was conducted to assess whether these two types of judgments aligned with different types of processing cues, and whether their accuracy correlated with…

Vocabulary development is critical for children's ability to learn to read and their success at school. Vocabulary has also been identified as a key factor in the achievement gap, with children from low-income families knowing significantly fewer words when they enter school. Although book reading has long been celebrated as an effective way for…

We have conducted the national annual literacy survey since 2010 and have surveyed young people on literacy issues since 2005. This report outlines findings about children's and young people's reading from our seventh annual literacy survey conducted in November/ December 2016 and where possible relates those findings back to our other reading…

Several inference types serving distinct purposes are established in the literature on reading comprehension. Despite this highlighting that inference is a non-unitary construct, reading tests tend to treat it as a single ability. Consequently, different tests can assess different inferential abilities. Professionals, knowing what is implicitly…

This paper introduces the concept of "reading resilience": students' ability to read and interpret complex and demanding literary texts by drawing on advanced, engaged, critical reading skills. Reading resilience is a means for rethinking the place and pedagogies of close reading in the contemporary literary studies classroom. Our…

Compared to skilled adult readers, children typically make more fixations that are longer in duration, shorter saccades, and more regressions, thus reading more slowly (Blythe & Joseph, 2011). Recent attempts to understand the reasons for these differences have discovered some similarities (e.g., children and adults target their saccades…

"Vocabulary and structural knowledge" (Grabe, 1991, p. 379) appears to be a key component of reading ability. However, is this component to be taken as a unitary one or is structural knowledge a separate factor that can therefore also be tested in isolation in, say, a test of syntax? If syntax can be singled out (e.g. in order to…