ORCA.IT: A New Web-Based Tool for Assessing Online Reading, Search and Comprehension Abilities in Students Reveals Effects of Gender, School Type and Reading Ability

Abstract

ORCA.IT, a new online test of online research and comprehension was developed for the Italian population. A group of 183 students attending various types of upper secondary schools in Northern Italy were tested with the new tool and underwent further cognitive and neuropsychological assessment. The different school types involved in the study are representative of the school population in the Italian system, but can also be easily compared with the educational systems of other countries. The new test turned out to have good psychometric properties after accurate item construction and final selection. In particular, Version 1 showed better characteristics than Version 2. Subsequently, comparison with one-way ANOVAs were performed to test whether differences exist between different school types, between groups with and without reading difficulties, and between males and females. Such differences are sometimes reported in the literature, but many remain controversial. Further, Pearson’s bivariate correlations were calculated to analyze associations between scores on the ORCA.IT and cognitive/neuropsychological variables. Finally, a stepwise regression analysis was performed on aggregated scores to identify the predictors of performance on each of the two versions. The test, especially in the most complete version (Version 1), appears to accurately and reliably capture students’ web searching abilities and online reading comprehension. The tool could highlight differences in online search and comprehension ability between students with and without reading difficulties, not penalizing overall performance but allowing very specific weaknesses to be pointed out. Further, it seems to be able to capture differences due to both educational pathways (different school types) and social attitudes (differences between males and females). Most interestingly, it shows to be clearly resting on specific cognitive and neuropsychological abilities, including language, memory, and attentional skills, which explain a large portion of the total variance. Offline text reading comprehension is a crucial predictor of online reading performance, while decoding ability is not. Prior knowledge also influences the results, as expected. The new tool turns out to be rather independent of previous Internet experience and to measure more cognitively grounded processes related to information gathering, processing, and communicating.

Expository multimedia comprehension in E‐learning: Presentation format, verbal ability and working memory capacity

“…This result replicates well‐known effects of verbal ability and skills (measured as Vocabulary, in this case) in digital text comprehension (Caccia et al, 2019; Hahnel et al, 2016; OECD, 2011; Salmerón, García, & Vidal‐Abarca, 2018). The expository materials in this study were of low previous knowledge for the students, but the texts were adapted from Wikipedia (e.g., not a specialized source), and their calculated reading level was ‘somewhat difficult’ and ‘pre‐university level’.…”

“…For example, in the large multinational PISA study, the overall correlation between digital and print reading performance was 0.83 (OECD, 2011). Basic reading and verbal abilities, such as word knowledge, have also been associated with digital comprehension tasks (Blom et al, 2018; Caccia et al, 2019). This is an established finding in traditional reading comprehension (Nation, 2009; Perfetti, 2007), because word knowledge reflects not only decoding but lexical and semantic verbal abilities (Carroll, 1993).…”

Influence of assistive technology applications on dyslexic students: The case of Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…However, boys exhibit a longer gaze and focus on the current target. However, Caccia et al ( 2019 ) found a contradictory result, wherein boys scored higher than girls. They noted that this was because boys were better at spatial–visual tasks than at comprehension (Caccia et al, 2019 ).…”

“…However, Caccia et al ( 2019 ) found a contradictory result, wherein boys scored higher than girls. They noted that this was because boys were better at spatial–visual tasks than at comprehension (Caccia et al, 2019 ). This result is consistent with those of Benmarrakchi et al ( 2017 ), who addressed the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in supporting dyslexic students.…”

Dyslexia Telerehabilitation during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Results of a Rhythm-Based Intervention for Reading

“…To select the appropriate patients for telerehabilitation, some feasibility criteria were followed: neuropsychological criteria, attentional, adaptive, and motivational requirements of children as well as network requirements such as connection stability, availability of devices in the family, and the children's and their families' familiarity and autonomy with new technologies. In this regard, the level of competence of children with LDs should not be overestimated, as recent studies have shown that, contrary to expectations, Italian students show little competence in the use of ICT [30].…”