Janice M. Keenan

Reading Comprehension Tests Vary in the Skills They Assess: Differential Dependence on Decoding and Oral Comprehension.

Comprehension tests are often used interchangeably, suggesting an implicit assumption that they are all measuring the same thing. We examine the validity of this assumption by comparing some of the most popular reading comprehension measures used in research and clinical practice in the United States: the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT), the two assessments (retellings and comprehension questions) from the Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI), the Woodcock–Johnson Passage Comprehension subtest (WJPC), and the Reading Comprehension test from the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT). Modest intercorrelations among the tests suggested that they were measuring different skills. Regression analyses showed that decoding, not listening comprehension, accounts for most of the variance in both the PIAT and the WJPC; the reverse holds for the GORT and both QRI measures. Large developmental differences in what the tests measure were found for the PIAT and the WJPC, but not the other tests, both when development was measured by chronological age and by word reading ability. We discuss the serious implications for research and clinical practice of having different comprehension tests measure different skills and of having the same test assess different skills depending on developmental level.

The Effects of Causal Cohesion on Comprehension and Memory.

Two experiments are reported in which sentence-by-sentence reading times were collected on two-sentence paragraphs, where the first sentence specified a cause for the event in the second sentence. Each paragraph had four versions. All versions had the same second sentence and were referentially coherent; they differed, however, in the causal relatedness of the two sentences. Despite referential coherence, reading times for second sentences were shown to steadily increase as causal relatedness decreased. Recognition and recall memory for the causes was poorest for the most and least related causes and best for causes of intermediate levels of relatedness.

Assessing the occurrence of elaborative inferences: Lexical decision versus naming☆

Abstract This research extends previous attempts (e.g., G. McKoon & R. Ratcliff, 1986 , Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 82–91; M. Singer & F. Ferreira, 1983 , Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 437–448) to determine whether subjects infer highly likely consequences of an event while reading. For example, if subjects read about someone falling off a 14th story roof, will they infer that the person died? The present experiments differ from previous research in that they use procedures—lexical decision and word naming—which we feel permit a clearer assessment of whether the inference occurred at encoding, they directly compare the effects of requiring versus not requiring the inference for coherence in the absence of the usual confounds with semantic relatedness, and they examine the effects that disconfirming evidence has on the activation level of the inferred concept. The lexical decision task appeared to indicate that subjects do, indeed, infer the likely consequences of events while reading. However, the naming task suggested that such inferences were not drawn. We conclude that such inferences are not drawn while reading and that the lexical decision results, as well as previous results using a recognition task, reflect context checking that occurs at the time of the test.

Pragmatics in memory: A study of natural conversation*

Sentence processing in the context of natural, purposeful communication is said to differ from sentence processing in laboratory experiments in that pragmatic information is involved. Included in pragmatic information are the speakers intentions, beliefs, and attitude toward the listener; such information is referred to as the interactional content of an utterance. Recognition memory for statements made during a luncheon discussion group was tested in an incidental learning paradigm following a retention interval of 30 hours. Statements which were high in interactional content yielded excellent memory for surface form, as well as meaning; statements low in interactional content showed no memory for surface form, and less memory for content. Three control studies demonstrate that this difference in memory for high and low interactional content statements cannot be due to (a) differences in the textual properties of the sentences; (b) differences in the quality of the distractors; or (c) reconstruction based on knowledge of the speakers stylistic habits.

Comprehending the Gray Oral Reading Test without Reading It: Why Comprehension Tests Should Not Include Passage-Independent Items.

We examined the validity of the comprehension component of the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT; Wiederholt & Bryant, 1992, 2001) by assessing whether reading really is required to answer its questions. The extent to which GORT questions are passage independent was assessed by having participants answer them without reading the passages. Most questions had passageless accuracies above chance. Furthermore, the best predictor of how well a child given normal GORT administration answered a question was not how well the child read the passage but rather how well the question could be answered without reading. Analyses comparing passage-dependent and passage-independent items showed: (a) passage-independent items are not sensitive to reading disability, and (b) passage-independent items do not correlate with performance on other comprehension tests. We conclude that the GORT Comprehension Score lacks both content validity and concurrent validity and that the field of comprehension assessment needs to be more concerned about the passage independence of items.

Understanding the complex etiologies of developmental disorders: Behavioral and molecular genetic approaches

Objective: This article has 2 primary goals. First, a brief tutorial on behavioral and molecular genetic methods is provided for readers without extensive training in these areas. To illustrate the application of these approaches to developmental disorders, etiologically informative studies of reading disability (RD), math disability (MD), and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are then reviewed. Implications of the results for these specific disorders and for developmental disabilities as a whole are discussed, and novel directions for future research are highlighted. Method: Previous family and twin studies of RD, MD, and ADHD are reviewed systematically, and the extensive molecular genetic literatures on each disorder are summarized. To illustrate 4 novel extensions of these etiologically informative approaches, new data are presented from the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center, an ongoing twin study of the etiology of RD, ADHD, MD, and related disorders. Conclusions: RD, MD, and ADHD are familial and heritable, and co-occur more frequently than expected by chance. Molecular genetic studies suggest that all 3 disorders have complex etiologies, with multiple genetic and environmental risk factors each contributing to overall risk for each disorder. Neuropsychological analyses indicate that the 3 disorders are each associated with multiple neuropsychological weaknesses, and initial evidence suggests that comorbidity between the 3 disorders is due to common genetic risk factors that lead to slow processing speed.

The role of arousal in memory for conversation.

In the first experimental study of memory for natural conversation, Keenan, MacWhinney, and Mayhew (1977) found that, even after 30 h, subjects had extremely good recognition memory for the exact wording of statements that contained information about a speaker’s “intentions, beliefs, and his relations with the listener.” Such sentences were said to be high in “interactionai content.” One possible interpretation of the results of Keenan et al. is that it is the immediate affective response to an utterance, rather than its interactional content, that increases its memorability. In the present study, the strong relationship between interactional content and memory found by Keenan et al. was replicated. Subjects showed excellent recognition memory for high interactional content statements from a conversation, even after a 72-h interval. However, there was very little relationship between arousal, as determined by subjects’ electrodermal response (EDR), and subsequent memory. Moreover, involvement had its greatest effect not on memory, but on subjects’ arousal as measured by EDR.

Methodological Issues In Evaluating The Occurrence of Inferences

Publisher Summary Two central questions in the study of inferences are (1) which types of inferences do readers/listeners routinely draw and (2) when do they draw them—on-line during comprehension or only later during retrieval when they are being queried about the text. Two techniques have been used for assessing inferences on-line. One is to intersperse throughout the text various questions that tap the readers developing representation of the text to see if it contains information about unspecified information, such as why events have happened and what is going to happen next. The other on-line technique for assessing the occurrence of inferences is less invasive and, consequently, more popular among researchers. Activation is assessed on-line either during or immediately following an inference version of a text versus a control version. Researchers avoid using recognition, even with a deadline procedure, because there is no way to eliminate the possibility of this with recognition. Although the on-line assessment of activation levels of inference concepts avoids some of the criticisms of other measures of inferencing—such as cued recall and on-line question answering—it too has methodological problems. This chapter examines these problems and discusses their theoretical significance and their tentative solutions.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Vocabulary and Reading Development.

Genetic and environmental relations between vocabulary and reading skills were explored longitudinally from preschool through Grades 2 and 4. At preschool there were strong shared-environment and weak genetic influences on both vocabulary and print knowledge but substantial differences in their source. Separation of etiology for vocabulary and reading continued for word recognition and decoding through Grade 4, but genetic and environmental correlations between vocabulary and reading comprehension approached unity by Grade 4, when vocabulary and word recognition accounted for all of the genetic and shared environment influences on reading comprehension.

Test Differences in Diagnosing Reading Comprehension Deficits

The authors examined the implications of test differences for defining and diagnosing comprehension deficits using reading comprehension tests. They had 995 children complete the Gray Oral Reading Test–3, the Qualitative Reading Inventory–3, the Woodcock–Johnson Passage Comprehension–3, and the Peabody Individual Achievement Test and compared which children were identified by each test as being in the lowest 10%. Although a child who performs so poorly might be expected to do poorly on all tests, the authors found that the average overlap between tests in diagnosing comprehension difficulties was only 43%. Consistency in diagnosis was greater for younger children, when comprehension deficits are the result of weaker decoding skills, than for older children. Inconsistencies between tests were just as evident when identifying the top performers. The different children identified as having a comprehension deficit by each test were compared on four profile variables—word decoding skill, IQ, ADHD symptoms, and working memory skill—to understand the nature of the different deficits assessed by each test. Theoretical and practical implications of these test differences in defining and diagnosing comprehension deficits are discussed.