This randomized controlled trial examined the impact of adaptive, web-based, scaffolded silent reading instruction on 426 fourth- and fifth-grade students in an urban US school district. Reading proficiency was evaluated in the fall and spring using the Group Reading Assessment Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE) and an eye movement recording system…

Reading, even when silent and individual, is a social phenomenon and has often been studied as such. Complementary to this view, research has begun to explore how reading is embodied beyond simply being 'wired' in the brain. This article brings the social and embodied perspectives together in a very literal sense. Reporting a qualitative study of…

Preschoolers' (n = 32) attention to print and pictures was documented during an electronic storybook reading session. Children (M = 51.06 months; SD = 7.34 months) looked at a 12-page book that contained three types of pages, each of which was presented four times over the course of the book: (1) silent presentation of print, (2) print that was…

The present study examined the "visual scanning hypothesis", which suggests that fluent oculomotor control is an important component underlying the predictive relationship between Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) tasks and reading ability. Our approach was to isolate components of saccadic planning, articulation, and lexical retrieval in 3…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of reading modality (oral versus silent) and passage genre (narrative versus expository) on the reading comprehension of middle school students. A normative sample of sixth- and seventh-grade students (n = 175) read narrative and expository texts from the Qualitative Reading Inventory,…

This study examined the effects of reading modality (oral vs. silent) on comprehension in elementary school students with a specific learning disability in reading (N = 77). A 2 (development-level) × 2 (reading modality) × 2 (time) mixed factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine the influence of these variables on…

It has been suggested that the preview benefit effect is actually a combination of preview benefit and preview costs. Marx et al. (2015) proposed that visually degrading the parafoveal preview reduces the costs associated with traditional parafoveal letter masks used in the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), thus leading to a more neutral baseline.…

A supportive school reading culture is an educative context in which there is availability, opportunity, encouragement and support for reading. Little is known about whether Australian schools actively foster reading cultures that are supportive of reading for pleasure. In their role as reading advocates, teacher librarians may be uniquely…

The present study attempted to extend our knowledge of the role of reading fluency in contributing to reading comprehension among Turkish students in grades 4 through 8. One hundred students at each grade level were administered assessments of reading fluency, word recognition automaticity and prosody, and silent reading comprehension. Word…

Two experiments assessed how reading aloud versus reading silently would benefit recognition and recall performance of content-specific vocabulary (i.e., the production effect). Participants studied 30 terms from an American history curriculum by reading half of the vocabulary aloud, while the remaining words were read silently. After a brief…

This study examined the effects of reading mode (oral and silent) and text genre (narrative and expository) on fourth graders' reading comprehension. While controlling for prior reading ability of 48 participants, we measured comprehension. Using a repeated measured design, data were analyzed using analysis of covariance, paired t-tests, and…

This study explored the impact of a meditation program on stress, anxiety, and depression in a high-performing high school. Using a randomized controlled design with 52 students, the study took place over 4 months. Students participated in Transcendental Meditation (treatment) or silent reading (active control) twice daily. We observed significant…

The Australian Curriculum positions literacy as a general capability to be taught across all subject areas. While schools may design agreements and policies to formalise the position of literacy as a whole-school priority, there is relatively limited research guiding the structure and content of these planning documents. We contend that reading…

Despite many previous studies on reading fluency (measured by a maze task) as a screening measure, our understanding is limited about the utility of silent reading fluency in predicting later reading comprehension and contextual influences (e.g., schools and districts) on reading comprehension achievement. In the present study we examined: (1) How…

The present study measured the comprehension-based silent reading efficiency of U.S. students in grades 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. Students read standardized grade-level passages while an eye movement recording system was used to measure reading rate, fixations (eye stops) per word, fixation durations, and regressions (right-to-left eye movements)…