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 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...