Putting on my Reading Glasses: A Response to Lenses on Reading (Tracey, D. H. & Morrow, L. M., 2006)

In this chapter from Lenses on Reading, Tracey and Morrow discuss six of the prominent cognitive processing theories from the 1950s to the 1970s.  It is interesting to see how our understanding of cognitive processes in general, and of reading in particular, have become more sophisticated with time, though there is still much we do not know about what occurs in our brain.  Each of these models make pretty good conjecture based on the research available to the theorists, and each model helped progress our understanding of the reading process.  I particularly like that the authors discuss both the historical significance of these six theories (The Substrata-Factor Theory of Reading, 1953; Information Processing Model, 1968; Gough's Model, 1972;  Automatic Information Processing Model, 1974; Interactive Model, 1977; Rauding Theory, 1977) and the parts of the model that are still relevant to researchers and practitioners today.  For instance, LaBerge & Samuels' Automatic Information Processing Model first introduced the reading field to the idea that reading is a difficult task that requires a limited amount of attentional resources be allocated to several processes: decoding first and comprehension last.  Their model is helpful for figuring out why some students may have difficulty comprehending--if the decoding is too slow, they simply can't focus on making sense of what they have read.  Also, automaticity theory has many useful implications for teaching, including the rich practice of guided reading.  Stauffer's Directed-reading-Thinking-Activity (DRTA) fits nicely into a guided reading activity.  I like that the authors note that round robin reading should be avoided during guided reading, and having brief periods of silent reading when meeting in small groups serves too purposes:  to avoid this dreadful practice and to build stamina with silent reading under a teacher's guidance, with questions to follow.  For running records, the teacher could even track the rate of different students as they read silently.  In terms of research applications and this theory, I agree that "LaBerge and Samuels's conceptualization of internal attention, external attention, and automaticity are still highly applicable to contemporary understanding of the reading process.  They are as viable in the 21st century as when they were presented in the early 1970s" (p. 145).

Carver's Rauding Theory differentiates between reading to study (typically involving reading at a slower pace and re-reading), skim reading, and actual reading, where one reads at their optimal reading rate. 

Before reading this chapter, I wasn't quite aware of the progression of these models.  I was familiar with Carver and LaBerge & Samuels, and of course Rumelhart's Interactive Model, but it was very informative to see how these models progressed from bottom-up models to the interactive, parallel models we have today, such as Adams's (1990) model.  I feel that the interactive models, while more elaborate, are also clearer lenses through which to view the reading process.  Also, I always enjoy seeing the names researchers attach to their models and methods.  In this case, Gough's Model was very rich (while LaBerge and Samuels's was a bit more dry)!

Also, as the reading field tends to be ahistorical (and education, in general), grabbing on to the next new trend without examining the successes and failures of the past, it was refreshing to read the history of reading theories AND to see the current uses of these older models heralded.