Comprehension skill and word‐to‐text integration processes

Abstract

SUMMARYWe examine comprehension skill differences in the processes of word-to-text integration, the connection of the meaning of a word, as it is read, to a representation of the text. We review two 'on-line' integration studies using event related potentials (ERPs) to provide fine-grain temporal data on the word-to-text processes of adult readers. The studies demonstrate indicators for word-to-text integration and show differences in these indicators as a function of adult reading comprehension skill. For skilled comprehenders, integration processes were reflected in N400 indicators when a critical word had an explicit link to a word in the prior text and by both N400 and P300 indicators when its meaning was a paraphrase of a prior word. When forward inferences were required for subsequent word-to-text integration, effects for skilled comprehenders were not reliable. Less skilled comprehenders showed delayed and less robust ERP effects, especially when meaning paraphrase was the basis of the integration. We discuss the significance of skill differences in integration processes with a focus on the use of context-dependent word meaning as a possible source of these differences. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Text integration processes are essential to reading comprehension skill. Indeed, a widely shared view in reading education is that there are children who read words seemingly without comprehending them. Such readers are said to have good word-level and decoding skills, reading each successive word as if it were unrelated to the words already read. This description also may fit at least some adults with comprehension problems.As a generalization on comprehension skill, however, word level skill is typically not very strong in readers who have problems in comprehension (Perfetti, 1985) and word level skill is sometimes overestimated in research that targets comprehension-specific reading problems (Perfetti, 1995). Nevertheless, the evidence seems clear that there are both children (Cain & Oakhill, 1999;Nation & Snowling, 1998;Stothard & Hulme, 1992) and adults (Hart, 2005; whose problems with comprehension are not associated with word level decoding.Our purpose here is to examine a specific sense in which this characterization of comprehension problems might be understood: Some readers fail to effectively integrate words with prior context. Furthermore, this integration failure may involve word processing-not decoding, but the ability to link word meanings appropriately in sentence contexts. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Reading skill components and impairments in middle school struggling readers

“…Fluency is the fifth component, although its role requires further investigation. For example, fluency is likely to be an outgrowth and extension of word recognition, but may also represent the speed by which the reader is effectively able to generate a meaningful representation of text (Perfetti, et al, 2008; van den Broek et al, 2005). It is clear, however, that students who are accurate but slow in decoding can be identified (Wolf & Bowers, 1999), and that different types of fluency may play different roles for comprehension (Kim, Wagner, & Foster, 2011).…”

What First Grade Teachers Reveal About Vocabulary Instruction: Aligning Instruction to the Common Core State Standards

“…That is, it is important to intervene in the early grades as research suggests the strong relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, is strengthened over time (Baumann & Kame'enui, 2004). However, learning oral vocabulary is not a simple process (Hart & Risley, 1995), nor is accessing and comprehending the meaning of words in texts (Perfetti, Yang, & Schmalhofer, 2008). Despite the complexity of vocabulary acquisition, research shows that rich vocabulary instruction does support students' ability to learn new words (Beck & McKeown, 2007).…”

La comprensión del discurso escrito: Una propuesta teórico-metodológica para su evaluación

“…Aquí, la percepción, la atención y la memoria de corto plazo juegan un rol central en el reconocimiento y asociación de sílabas y palabras. Si bien, nuestra perspectiva no se focaliza en los procesos de decodificación, no se debe restar importancia al rol que estos tienen en lo que se entiende por comprensión profunda de un texto escrito, en cuanto resultan fundamentales para la generación de la representación global de la situación descrita en el texto (Perfetti, Yang & Schmalhofer, 2008).…”