Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

A Response to Perfetti’s (1985)   Chapter 9 of Reading Ability : “Dyslexia” The Process of Reading and How It is Changed for Dyslexics According to Perfetti (1985) Summary In this chapter, Perfetti defines dsylexia, explores various theories concerning its cause, and looks at various types of subgroups.   Also, it is argued that reading ability is a continuum, rather than there being sharp differences between low-readers and dyslexics. In order to be considered dyslexic, a child must be of normal intelligence, and must read at least two years below grade level.   However, there are problems with this definition because a reader in second grade will have a hard time meeting the two-years-or-more-below-grade-level criterion, and IQ measured on verbal items may not be normal because these items will presumably show the same deficiencies as found in reading measures.   Thus, nonverbal IQ scores should be used for classification, but they aren’t always....

Knowledge is in the driver's seat; Verbal Efficiency Theory Represented Concretely as a School Bus A Response to Chapter 6 of Perfett's (1985) Reading Ability : “Verbal Efficiency Theory.” see also Perfetti's (2007) "Reading Ability: Lexical Quality to Comprehension,"in Scientific Studies of Reading.   Summary and Response. In this chapter, Perfetti outlines verbal efficiency theory as a way to explain individual reading differences. He explains that reading ability is multi-faceted, and that reading can be understood in terms of cost and product (comprehension). If memory and attention is reduced, processing will be inefficient. In order for a process to be efficient, comprehension quality is considered in relation to the level of expenditure within each processing resource. Schema activation and lexical access should be ideally low in energy expenditure while propositional encoding should take the bulk of the effort. When these processes are o...

A Response to Chapter One of Reading Ability : "Reading Ability: Cognitive and Psycholinguistic Perspectives," pp. 3-10.                                   in  Charles A. Perfett i's Reading Ability .   Oxford University Press , 1985 -   Language Arts & Disciplines   -   282 pages. My Reading Response           Summary                     In chapter one, Perfetti (1985) presents a picture of reading ability in terms of the cognitive processes of reading.  Lexical access processes encompass the ability to identify words, and comprehension,  which is a multi-faceted component of reading that allows the reader to construct a text model.  Reading ability and language are related, and comprehension processes and word recognit...

. "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 ...