Simon P. Tiffin-Richards

Children's and adults' parafoveal processes in German: Phonological and orthographic effects

Phonological and orthographic information has been shown to play an important role in parafoveal processing in skilled adult reading in English. In the present study, we investigated whether similar parafoveal effects can be found in children using the boundary eye tracking method. Children and adults read sentences in German with embedded target nouns which were presented in original, pseudohomophone (PsH), transposed-letter (TL), lower-case and control conditions to assess phonological and orthographic preview effects. We found evidence of PsH preview benefit effects for children. We also found TL preview benefit effects for adults, while children only showed these effects under specific conditions. Results are consistent with the developmental view that reading initially depends on phonological processes and that orthographic processes become increasingly important.

Word length and frequency effects on children's eye movements during silent reading.

In the present study we measured the eye movements of a large sample of 2nd grade German speaking children and a control group of adults during a silent reading task. To be able to directly investigate the interaction of word length and frequency effects we employed controlled sentence frames with embedded target words in an experimental design in which length and frequency were manipulated independently of one another. Unlike previous studies which have investigated the interaction of word length and frequency effects in children, we used age-appropriate word frequencies for children. We found significant effects of word length and frequency for both children and adults while effects were generally greater for children. The interaction of word length and frequency was significant for children in gaze duration and total viewing time eye movement measures but not for adults. Our results suggest that children rely on sublexical decoding of infrequent words, leading to greater length effects for infrequent than frequent words while adults do not show this effect when reading childrens reading materials.

The repeated name penalty effect in children’s natural reading: Evidence from eye tracking

We report data from an eye tracking experiment on the repeated name penalty effect in 9-year-old children and young adults. The repeated name penalty effect is informative for the study of children’s reading because it allows conclusions about children’s ability to direct attention to discourse-level processing cues during reading. We presented children and adults simple three-sentence stories with a single referent, which was referred to by an anaphor—either a pronoun or a repeated name—downstream in the text. The anaphor was either near or far from the antecedent. We found a repeated name penalty effect in early processing for children as well as adults, suggesting that beginning readers are already susceptible to discourse-level expectations of anaphora during reading. Furthermore, children’s reading was more influenced by the distance of anaphor and antecedent than adults’, which we attribute to differences in reading fluency and the resulting cognitive load during reading.

Verification of nonwords: The baseword frequency effect in children’s pseudohomophone reading

In this study, we investigated the baseword frequency effect in children and its implications for models of visual word recognition. The baseword frequency effect reflects the finding that response latencies in the lexical decision task to nonwords derived from high-frequency basewords (e.g., GREAN derived from GREEN) are shorter than for those derived from low-frequency basewords (e.g., SLEAT derived from SLEET). Importantly, the baseword frequency effect presents a challenge to current activation-based models of visual word recognition. One explanation for this effect is that the orthographic representations of high-frequency basewords are easier to access. This allows a quick progression to a verification stage in which the exact spelling of a stimulus is checked, upon which the lexicality decision is then based. The main goal of this study was to investigate whether such a verification mechanism is specifically modulated by the quality of the orthographic lexicon. We tested whether the baseword frequency effect was evident in children’s lexical decisions to pseudohomophones (PsH) and whether verification accuracy varied as a function of children’s orthographic knowledge. The baseword frequency effect in response latency was observed in both German-speaking adults and children. Children’s spelling skills significantly influenced the accuracy of the verification stage in their responses to PsH. These findings imply that verification is an integral part of word reading and thus should be included in computational models of visual word recognition.

The Development of Wrap-Up Processes in Text Reading: A Study of Children's Eye Movements.

Reading comprehension is the product of constructing a coherent mental model of a text. Although some of the processes that are necessary to construct such a mental model are executed incrementally, others are deferred to the end of the clause or sentence, where integration processing is wrapped up before the reader progresses further in the text. In this longitudinal study of 65 German-speaking children across Grades 2, 3, and 4, we investigated the development of wrap-up processes at clause and sentence boundaries by tracking the children’s eye movements while they read age-appropriate texts. Our central finding was that children in Grade 2 showed strong wrap-up effects that then slowly decreased across school grades. Children in Grades 3 and 4 also increasingly used clause and sentence boundaries to initiate regressions and rereading. Finally, children in Grade 2 were shown to be significantly disrupted in their reading at line breaks, which are inherent in continuous text. This disruption decreased as the children progressed to Grades 3 and 4. Overall, our results show that children exhibit an adultlike pattern of wrap-up effects by the time they reach Grade 4. We discuss this developmental trajectory in relation to models of text processing and mechanisms of eye-movement control.

Arguing Validity in Educational Assessment

Interpreting test-scores in terms of whether examinees reach specific levels of achievement (e.g., below basic, basic, advanced), provides a means to assess and communicate whether educational goals are being reached and expectations are being met. Whether these interpretations of test-scores are informative, however, hinges on their validity. While validity plays an important role in educational assessment, it is rarely addressed in a systematic and comprehensive manner. Our aim is to detail a theoretical framework in which validation is considered in the context of practical test development. To this end, we apply Kane’s (Psychol Bull 112:527–535, 1992; Rev Edu Res 64:425–461, 1994) interpretive argument approach and Toulmin’s inference model (Kane, Lang Test 29:3–17, 2011; Toulmin, The uses of argument. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) to the development of competence-based educational assessments and the interpretation of their results. A logical argument is presented to provide a theoretical framework for evaluating the rhetorical backing and empirical evidence supporting interpretations of educational assessment results. The discussion focusses on the role of standard setting procedures which define minimum passing scores on test-score scales in the evaluation of the validity of test-score interpretations.

Standard Setting: Bridging the Worlds of Policy Making and Research

Interpreting test scores in terms of whether examinees reach specific levels of achievement, provides a means to assess and communicate whether educational goals are being reached and expectations are being met. Whether these interpretations of test scores are informative, however, hinges on their validity. While validity plays an important role in educational assessment, it is rarely addressed in a systematic and comprehensive manner. The discussion focusses on the role of standard setting procedures which define minimum passing scores on test score scales. Our aim is to detail a theoretical framework in which validation is considered in the context of practical test development and large-scale assessment in Germany. To this end, we apply Kane’s interpretive argument approach and Toulmin’s inference model to the development of standards-based educational assessments and the interpretation of their results. A logical argument is presented to provide a theoretical framework for evaluating the rhetorical backing and empirical evidence supporting interpretations of educational assessment results.