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...
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