Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

Teacher Bobbi In this course, the Psychological Processes of Reading, many of my notions of what the brain does while it reads were solidified. Prior to this course, I had studied several theories of reading, but this course helped me to synthesize those, to understand their historical development, and to see that several reading theories, although partially disproven, still hold value to the researcher and the reading teacher. Furthermore, I began to understand reading comprehension with more depth. As any serious student of reading knows, there are two important reading theories regarding attention and automaticity. LaBerge and Samuels (1994;1974) first posited that reading is like playing a musical instrument or a sport: that you overlearn the lower processes (like reading the music or memorizing the plays) so that the brain will be able to focus on the more difficult aspects of the activity (playing the music or executing the play). In reading, Automaticity Theory explains t...

. "The Development of Verbal Efficiency, Metacognitive Strategies, and Their Interplay" ( Walczyk , 1994) uses Perfetti's (1985) Verbal Efficiency Theory as the lens with which to view the construct of comprehension.  The following is a response to a couple of questions raised by Dr. Omer Ari in regards to this article. 1. On page 182, Walczyk discusses “compensatory mechanisms” and the conditions under which they may be used. What does he mean by “compensatory mechanisms”? Compensatory mechanisms are the comprehension strategies students might use to repair comprehension.  These strategies require that the reader be metacognitive .  Once a breakdown in reading comprehension has been detected, the reader has several courses of action, depending upon where the breakdown occurred.  For example, a student can read slower.  If the information decays in working memory, the reader can re-read the text (or that portion of the text).  The reader ...

Morris & Gaffney's (in press) article, "Building Reading Fluency in a Disabled Middle-School Reader" details the work done with a rising 8th grader at  Appalachian State University's Reading Clinic over the course of a calendar year. Who is Luke? Luke is a middle- schooler , a rising 8th grader, who reads at the rate of a 2nd grader.  He lacks fluency and speed.  Exogenous Factors:  moved from another state in 5th grade Endogenous Factors:   ADD, seizure disorders; both controlled by medications Reading History: at 5th grade, read at late first grade level had difficulty in decoding/read at a slow rate after working int he Wilson Reading program, his decoding had greatly improved by the end of 6th. However, rate remained slow. He currently reads at a 3rd-4th grade level with a significant deficit in reading fluency. Luke's Intervention--Focusing on Fluency Using his interests (Civil War, WW II, Civil rights, & Greek mytholog...

The Constructionist-Integration ( Kintsch , 1988; 2004) Model of Reading comprehension (CI) sounds like it may be a construction crew out building libraries or bookstores, but it is really a model of how working memory constructs meaning by assembling propositions (sentences or meaning units like phrases).  This model is from the constructivist school of thought, which espouses the idea that we create meaning from the world around us rather than discover a meaning that was intended from the beginning.  In other words, a reader brings his or her background knowledge to the text, and in that manner, he or she will have a unique reading experience no matter the book.  If a sentence says "dog," one child might envision a poodle while another envisons a pit bull.  Therefore, each reader interacts with and experiences the text differently. In order to understand this model, it is necessary to understand some key terminology. textbase or microst...

How Does The Brain Work? If I could answer that question, I could probably be cooling my heels on a nice island somewhere, mimosa in hand,  Instead, I am left to read research and theories about how the brain (and reading) operates.  One can dream, though..... For years, researchers delineated memory into two types:  short term and long term.  More recently, after the advent of LaBerge and Samuels Automaticity Theory (1974) and Perfetti's Verbal Efficiency Theory (1988), this construct was re-imagined as working memory --which adds the dimension of processing to the function of storage ( Daneman & Carpenter , 1980).  As they explain, "Working memory is assumed to have processing as well as storage functions; it serves as the site for executing processes and for storing the products of these processes" (p. 450).  Working memory is active rather than passive.   Tanabe , Azumi , Osaka, & Naoyuki (2009) explain that workin...