Keith E. Stanovich

TOWARD AN INTERACTIVE-COMPENSATORY MODEL OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF READING FLUENCY

INTERACTIVE MODELS OF READING appear to provide a more accurate conceptualization of reading performance than do strictly top-down or bottom-up models. When combined with an assumption of compensatory processing (that a deficit in any particular process will result in a greater reliance on other knowledge sources, regardless of their level in the processing hierarchy), interactive models provide a better account of the existing data on the use of orthographic structure and sentence context by good and poor readers. A review of the research literature seems to indicate that, beyond the initial stages of reading acquisition, superior reading ability is not associated with a greater tendency to use the redundancy inherent in natural language to speed word recognition. Instead, general comprehension strategies and rapid context-free word recognition appear to be the processes that most clearly distinguish good from poor readers.

Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later.

A group of 1st-graders who were administered a battery of reading tasks in a previous study were followed up as 11th graders. Ten years later, they were administered measures of exposure to print, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and general knowledge. First-grade reading ability was a strong predictor of all of the 11th-grade outcomes and remained so even when measures of cognitive ability were partialed out. First-grade reading ability (as well as 3rd- and 5th-grade ability) was reliably linked to exposure to print, as assessed in the 11th grade, even after 11th-grade reading comprehension ability was partialed out, indicating that the rapid acquisition of reading ability might well help develop the lifetime habit of reading, irrespective of the ultimate level of reading comprehension ability that the individual attains. Finally, individual differences in exposure to print were found to predict differences in the growth in reading comprehension ability throughout the elementary grades and thereafter.

Explaining the Differences Between the Dyslexic and the Garden-Variety Poor Reader The Phonological-Core Variable-Difference Model

A coherent conception of dyslexia has been difficult to arrive at because research findings have continually created logical paradoxes for the psychometric definition of reading disability. This paper develops the phonological-core variable-difference model. This model of the cognitive characteristics of dyslexic children is one of the few that does not create psychometric paradoxes of the type that have plagued the learning disabilities field. The model provides a way to conceptualize the differences between dyslexic and garden-variety poor readers. The model highlights the importance of viewing the concept of dyslexia as the outcome of the application of an arbitrary criterion in a continuous distribution, thus avoiding the connotations of discreteness that have continually undermined our understanding of reading disability.

Assessing Phonological Awareness in Kindergarten Children: Issues of Task Comparability

Ten different phonological awareness tasks were administered to a group of kindergarten children whose reading ability was assessed 1 year later. The extraneous cognitive requirements inherent in the tasks varied widely. The children’s performance on three tasks that involved a rhyming response was at ceiling, and these tasks did not correlate with subsequent reading progress. The other seven measures were all moderately related to later reading ability and, employed in sets, were very strong predictors. The relative predictive accuracy of the phonological tasks was equal to or better than more global measures of cognitive skills such as an intelligence test and a reading readiness test. The phonological tasks had a large amount of common variance. Factor analysis revealed only one factor on which all the nonrhyming phonological tasks loaded highly. The results bolster the construct validity of phonological awareness, indicate considerable comparability and interchangeability among the tasks used to measure the construct, and are encouraging as regards the possible use of such tasks in predictive test batteries.

Intelligence, Cognitive Skills, and Early Reading Progress.

FIFTY-SIX first-grade children were administered measures of general intelligence, decoding speed, phonological awareness, and listening comprehension. All four types of measures were moderately related to end-of-year reading comprehension. Decoding speed accounted for the largest amount of unique variance. The hypothesis that reading is strongly related to general intelligence once differences in decoding ability have been accounted for was not supported. Other relationships among the variables were explored via multiple regression, factor analysis, and path analysis. Developmental comparisons were made with groups of thirdand fifth-grade children. The relationships between decoding, intelligence, and reading comprehension found in the first-grade sample were replicated in the fifth-grade sample but were somewhat different in the third-grade sample. The interrelationships between the various subskills of reading and intelligence increased with age, probably due to mutual facilitation.

Assessing Print Exposure and Orthographic Processing Skill in Children: A Quick Measure of Reading Experience.

In a study of third- and fourth-grade children it was established that orthographic processing ability can account for variance in word recognition skill after the variance due to phonological processing has been partialed out. This independent orthographic variances was related to performance on a new measure of individual differences in exposure to print, the Title Recognition Test (TRT), that has a very brief administration time. Additionally, some of the orthographic processing variance linked to word recognition ability was not shared with either phonological processing measures or with print exposure

Components of phonological awareness

The factorial structure underlying different types of tasks within the domain of phonological awareness was examined in two studies. Large sample sizes allowed for sensitive differentiation of constructs. In the first study, 128 preschool children without any experience of formal reading instruction were tested with a battery of tasks intended to tap various aspects of phonological awareness: rhyme recognition, syllable counting, initial-phoneme matching, initial-phoneme deletion, phoneme blending, and phoneme counting. Three basic components were extracted in a principal component analysis: a phoneme factor, a syllable factor and a rhyme factor. Cross-tabulations indicated considerable dissociation between performance on phoneme, syllable, and rhyme tasks. The structural relationships were replicated on a much larger sample (n=1509) in the second study. Subjects in this study were one year older and were attending grade 1 thus providing an opportunity to test their reading achievement. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that the phonemic factor was by far the most potent predictor. However, the rhyming factor made an independent (although small) contribution to explaining the reading variance. Among the phonemic tasks, phoneme identification proved to be the most powerful predictor.

Concepts in developmental theories of reading skill: Cognitive resources, automaticity, and modularity

Abstract The concept of limited cognitive resources loomed large in reading theory for a considerable period, largely due to the impact of LaBerge and Samuels influential automaticity theory. However, experiments that attempted to trace the development of automatic word recognition processes generated empirical paradoxes because the different criteria employed to operationalize the automaticity concept did not display convergent validity. For example, the development of obligatory processing did not completely coincide with the development of capacity-free processing. Recently, developmental reading theories have deemphasized the capacity component of the automaticity concept and have focused on another property: information encapsulation. The latter property is the centerpiece of the concept of modularity in cognitive science, a theoretical notion only partially overlapping with automaticity. Most current conceptions of the development of reading skill emphasize issues of the quality of lexical representations and information encapsulation—conceptions thought to be more empirically tractable than resource notions, given the history of methodological and theoretical complications involving the latter.

Individual Differences in the Cognitive Processes of Reading I. Word Decoding

The importance of word decoding in accounting for individual differences in reading comprehension is discussed. Research on individual differences in the cognitive processes that mediate word decoding is reviewed. It is concluded that a large proportion of the variance in word decoding ability is accounted for by phonological processes, and that little variance is explained by differences in visual processes. Possible causal relationships and developmental changes also are discussed.

Reading in the real world and its correlates

Resultats dune enquete effectuee aupres de 217 personnes dans une salle de depart dun aeroport. Les sujets ont ete classes en lecteurs et en non lecteurs. Linvestissement dans les activites de lecture a ete correle avec lâge et leducation, le contact avec lecrit est apparu comme un bon predicteur du vocabulaire et des connaissances culturelles. Ces resultats, joints aux conclusions de plusieurs etudes voisines, invitent a conferer un role plus important aux contacts avec lecrit dans les theories relatives aux differences interindividuelles du developpement cognitif. (Ext. Res. dA.)