READING: SKILLED

Some have argued that reading problems mainly reflect linguistic limitations (for example, a limited sight vocabulary); others that they chiefly derive from decoding limitations at word level. However, instruction in these areas does not necessarily improve overall comprehension. This suggests that the perceptual and conceptual processes involved in reading are distinct. The view is reinforced by evidence that many weak readers are weak listeners– indicating that there may be a general comprehension process which applies in both modalities. However, it may be that the pattern of deficit varies from reader to reader, with some experiencing lower-level problems, some higher-level and some both.

The following are often characteristics of unskilled reading:

An inability to decode words as automatically as a skilled reader. This can impact on the reading process in several ways. Less skilled readers might back-track too much in order to check words. The supply of words to working memory might be too slow, so that some traces decay before they can be constructed into higher-level structures. Processing that is not automatic enough might take up extra working memory resources, leaving less capacity for building meaning. Or, aware of the effort which decoding costs them, an unskilled reader might rely more heavily upon context than upon perceptual information.

Weak syntactic parsing. Poor comprehenders tend to read word by word rather than assembling the text into higher-level syntactic structures. This may be because in reading they lack the cues provided in speech by pausing, intonation etc.

Less inference. Unskilled readers make fewer of the inferences which are necessary in order to form connections between ideas in a text and to restore what a writer may have left unsaid. This seems to reflect a different style of processing rather than a more limited memory for verbatim text. Similarly, unskilled readers make much less use of instantiation, a process whereby the interpretation of a word is restricted by the context in which it appears.

Poor integration. Unskilled readers are less capable of integrating incoming ideas into the existing representation of a text and of perceiving which are main ideas and which are subsidiary. One theory, Gernsbacher’s Structure Building Framework, suggests that readers proceed by building informational substructures around a particular topic and shifting to a new substructure when information comes in that appears to be unrelated to the current one. Less skilled comprehenders fail to perceive connections and shift too often, creating too many low-level substructures. A similar view is that weak integration skills reflect difficulties in retaining information in working memory. There is evidence that poor readers find it difficult to associate a referent with a pronoun, a process termed anaphor resolution. This difficulty increases the further from the pronoun the referent occurs.

Inadequate self-monitoring. There is also evidence that poor readers fail to monitor their understanding of a text to see if it contains inconsistencies. Asked what is wrong with an anomalous text, skilled readers manage to locate the inconsistency, whereas unskilled readers tend to place the blame at word level, mentioning difficult vocabulary. As with anaphor resolution, weak readers’ inability to detect inconsistencies has been shown to increase with memory load. Thus, where an anomaly is resolved quite soon after it occurs, their comprehension differs little from that of skilled readers; but it is markedly worse when the resolving information is further away.

 A feature of many accounts of reading skill is the part played by working memory (WM). It is necessary for a reader to hold words in the mind while imposing a syntactic pattern on them and to hold propositions in the mind in order to add new information to an ongoing representation of the text. Some children with reading problems have been found to have a more limited WM capacity, as measured by a digit span technique. However, it seems likely that any deficit lies in their ability to use their WM to encode information rather than in limitations upon how much they are able to store.

Poor readers often show an inability to recall recent parts of a text. One explanation for this is that they have to give extra effort to decoding words, which limits their memory capacity for more complex operations. Another is that information in their WM decays more rapidly than is usual; or that there are limitations on how much the individual is able to turn over (rehearse) in WM at any one time.

See also: Phonological working memory, Reading: bottom-up vs top down, Reading: decoding, Reading: higher-level processes, Reading span, Reading speed

Further reading: Gathercole and Baddeley (1993); Just and Carpenter (1987); Oakhill and Garnham (1988); Perfetti (1985); Yuill and Oakhill (1992)

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الهيأة العليا لإحياء التراث تصدر العدد الثامن عشر من مجلة الخزانة التراثية

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جامعة الكفيل تبحث سبل تعزيز التعاون العلمي مع أكاديمية باريس للجغرافيا السياسية

المجمَع العلمي للقرآن الكريم ينظّم دورات وبرامج عدّة لتعزيز الثقافة القرآنية في الديوانية والمثنى

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اضطرابات النوم.. أضرار "خطيرة" تتجاوز الإرهاق الجسدي

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الآخبار التكنلوجية

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اكتشاف أول حيوان هجين يجمع بين الذئب والكلب في اليونان

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مواضيع ذات صلة

RHYME

RESTRUCTURING

RESEARCH METHODS: EXPERIMENTAL

RESEARCH METHODS: APPROACHES

REPRESENTATIONAL CODES

REPAIR2 (also SELF-REPAIR)

REPAIR1

REHEARSAL

REDUNDANCY

RECURSIVENESS

READING SPEED

READING SPAN