What I Learned About Reading This Summer: A Reflection on the Psychological Processes of Reading

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 that lower level processes such as decoding must be overlearned so that conscious attention can be paid to the attainment of comprehension (Tracey & Morrow, 2006). Perfetti’s (1985) Verbal Efficiency Theory builds on this idea of limited resources (Tracey & Morrow). Although these theories remain useful lenses with which to view reading, new connectionist models of reading are neither top down or bottom up; rather, as the title suggests, the different processes are integrated (Tracey & Morrow). Adam’s (1990) model of reading is one such model. Prior to taking this course, I had studied her model, but now I understand how former and current research fits into her model of reading. Adam’s model involves four processors: the orthographic, the phonological, the meaning, and the context processors. Each of these processors interacts with the others bi-directionally, although the orthographic processor is the first to be used when a text is read as it is here that a text begins to be visually processed. However, Adams model supports both Automaticity Theory and Verbal Efficiency Theory in that processes such as the decoding of words efficiently are integral to comprehension.

An early study that established the connection between automaticity of decoding and reading ability was done by Perfetti and Hogoboam (1975) and led to the development of Verbal Efficiency Theory. In this study, skilled and less skilled comprehenders were presented with high and low frequency words as well as non-words, and their vocalization latency was recorded. Because data for each participant was only recorded for words they knew the definitions for, vocabulary size could be ruled out as a contributing factor to their overall differences in vocalization latency. The more skilled readers recognized all word types fastest, and the skilled readers and less skilled readers were most different in their vocalization latencies of low-frequency words and non-words. The results of this study indicated that the automaticity of decoding is a key component of skilled reading. Prior to this course, I knew that this premise was truth; however, I was not familiar with the study that produced the support.

However, Joshi’s (2005) article "Vocabulary: A Critical Component of Comprehension" explores the crucial role vocabulary knowledge plays in reading comprehension. In this article, Joshi laments that we need more research to see how vocabulary affects reading comprehension, but explains that a synthesis of research shows that there is a causal relationship--that those with poor vocabulary knowledge also have poorer reading comprehension skills and vice versa. Compounding the issue is what is known as the Matthew Effect--the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In reading, the better comprehenders read more widely, and their vocabulary increases. Poorer comprehenders avoid reading (or read easier materials) and do not make gains in vocabulary. Thus, the gulf widens. And, as I learned from other class readings regarding the connection between socioeconomic status, vocabulary development, and reading skill, this gulf is present from the very start of schooling in America and is even present before formal schooling begins (Hart & Risley, 1995; Beck &McKeown, 2007).



Joshi (2005) discusses ways of teaching vocabulary, though noting that most vocabulary knowledge isn't directly taught. Rather, it is acquired with each contact with a word, and, as neural network models would argue, each time the word is encountered in context, the meaning of that word is strengthened in memory.



Nevertheless, Joshi (2005) urges teachers to continue teaching word meanings and other vocabulary knowledge; however, they should abandon the ineffective practice of having students look up word meanings in the dictionary for a test on Friday. Rather, strategies such as teaching the use of context clues, teaching prefixes, suffixes, and root words, and teaching the etymology of a word are recommended. Also, graphic organizers, such as those found at Inspiration, are particularly effective tools when teaching word meanings. Finally, instructional focus should be on Tier 2 words, words that are content words and are comprised of the 60% of our English words that are derived from Latin. However, as the studies done by Beck and McKeown (2007) indicate, even with intense vocabulary instruction such as their More Rich Vocabulary Instruction, which provided protracted contact with a select few words each week for about 20 contacts per word, gains were minimal, with 5.58 words gained over the control group’s 1.04 words.

The finding in the Beck and McKeown (2007) study mirrors that of Morris & Gaffney’s (in press) in the sense that any gains in reading requires targeted, expert instruction at a child’s reading level and is an arduous task for student and teacher once a child is more than a grade level behind. From experience, I know that making any reading gain with a student takes time, and though a student’s improvement may not “wow” researchers, using scientifically based instruction and interventions to target a student’s strengths and weaknesses has allowed me to move a student two and even three grade levels in reading, which is significant to them. When a person can read any level higher (which involves a combination of rate, word recognition accuracy, and comprehension), they stand more of a chance to read more often, and will therefore continue to read better. I will continue to use research to inform my practice, and know that I know more about designing research studies, I hope to conduct research rooted in my classroom to help me help my high school students read better.



Joshi (2005) also discusses Drop Everything and Read (D.E.A.R.) and Drop Everything and Write (D.E.A.W.) as two instructional practices that have resulted in vocabulary gains for students involved. Both wide reading (receptive) and wide-writing (expressive) increases vocabulary, a fact I find encouraging, as I LOVE to write and frequently incorporate writing in my classes. Now I have further reason to do so, and I plan to investigate the correlations between reading and writing.

Ehri and Wilce (1979) explored the role orthography plays for beginning readers and found that the letters in a word are significant factors in reading, disproving Goodman’s theory that reading doesn’t take place at even a word level. Ehri and Wilce explain that prior to formal schooling, words have three identities (acquired with oral language) in a child’s lexicon—phonological, syntactic, and semantic. As children learn to read, they gain an orthographic identity—the visual image of a word (not to be confused with word shape theory, Larson, 2004) that becomes amalgamated with the other identities of that word and speeds the automaticity of word recognition. Ehri and Wilce argue that the letters themselves act as a mnemonic device to help students overlearn words, and they proved this with a study using nonsense words and different types of cues: squiggles, initial letter, initial letter + spelling, and initial letter + misspelling). Prior to this course, I was familiar with Ehri’s stage theory of spelling development, but I had not read any of the research that gave rise to this theory, a theory that guides my understanding of a child’s reading ability based on his orthography and therefore guides my teaching. This study has made the “glued to print” stage much more meaningful for me.

The most foreign territory for me this semester was the research on working memory. I knew working memory contributes to reading ability, but I wasn’t quite sure what this term entailed, nor was I familiar with its research base. Daneman and Carpenter (1980) explain that working memory is more than short term memory—it is the area of the brain where information is actively processed. It is here that amalgamations are created, that propositions are encoded, that meaning is attained. Daneman and Carpenter tested the reading span of college students to get an idea of the average amount of information that good and bad readers can hold in working memory, and found that the reading span measure was a more robust measure of working memory than the traditional digit and word span tests. Reading spans ranged from 2-5 final words of sentences being held in active memory, and students with smaller reading spans performed significantly poorer on reading measures (comprehension tests and verbal SAT scores). This research helped me to understand my EC students who have legitimate cognitive limitations that hinder their reading skills. It is with these students especially that the road to good reading will be paved with detours, and road construction (intervention). It will take them longer to attain reading goals, but if we persist, they WILL get there.


References

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Beck & McKeown (2007).  Increasing young low-income children’s oral vocabulary repertoires through rich and focused instruction.  The Elementary School Journal, 107,  3, 251-271.

Daneman, M. & Carpenter, P.A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal Of Verbal Learning And Verbal Behavior, 19, 450-466

Ehri, L.C., & Wilce, L. S. (1979). The mnemonic value of orthography among beginning readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 1, 26-40.

Joshi, R.M. (2005). Vocabulary: A critical component of comprehension. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 21, 209-219.

Larson (2004).  The science of word recognition. Advanced Reading Technology, Microsoft Corporation, http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/wordrecognition.aspx

Morris, D. & Gaffney M. (2008) Building Reading Fluency In A Disabled Middle-School Reader in press.

Perfetti, C. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford University Press

Perfetti, C. A., & Hogaboam, T. W. (1975). Relationship between single word decoding and reading comprehension skill. Journal of Educational Psychology, 67(4), 461-469.


Samuels, S. J. (1994). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading, revisited. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, and H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed.) (pp. 816-837). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.


Tracey, D. H. & Morrow, L. M. (2006). Lenses on Reading (pages 131-147). New York, The Guilford Press