Speaking Up for Vocabulary

Abstract

This study is part of a broader project aimed at developing cognitive and neurocognitive profiles of adolescent and young adult readers whose educational and occupational prospects are constrained by their limited literacy skills. We explore the relationships among reading-related abilities in participants ages 16 to 24 years spanning a wide range of reading ability. Two specific questions are addressed: (a) Does the simple view of reading capture all nonrandom variation in reading comprehension? (b) Does orally assessed vocabulary knowledge account for variance in reading comprehension, as predicted by the lexical quality hypothesis? A comprehensive battery of cognitive and educational tests was employed to assess phonological awareness, decoding, verbal working memory, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, word knowledge, and experience with print. In this heterogeneous sample, decoding ability clearly played an important role in reading comprehension. The simple view of reading gave a reasonable fit to the data, although it did not capture all of the reliable variance in reading comprehension as predicted. Orally assessed vocabulary knowledge captured unique variance in reading comprehension even after listening comprehension and decoding skill were accounted for. We explore how a specific connectionist model of lexical representation and lexical access can account for these findings.

Individual Differences in Subphonemic Sensitivity and Phonological Skills

“…by Braze et al, 2007). The visual world task was presented on a desktop computer and 381 participants' eye movements were tracked using an SR-Research Eyelink II head-mounted eye 382…”

“…Second, we employ a community-based sample with 285 greater variability in linguistic and cognitive abilities, as well as demographics, than typical 286 psycholinguistic samples, potentially providing a more representative picture of reading-related 287 ability in the population and enhancing statistical power for investigating individual differences 288 (cf. Braze et al, , 2007Johns et al, 2018;Johns, Matsuki, & Van Dyke, 2015;Kukona et 289 al., 2016;Van Dyke, Johns, & Kukona, 2014). By comparing individuals' online speech 290 processing to outcome measures of phonological skills more typically used in reading research, 291 we aim to probe the relationship between phonological representations and phonological skills 292 (see Ramus et al, 2013 decoding and reading comprehension).…”

“…Braze et al, 2007). Note that we report these 373 measures for completeness, but, as we discuss in more detail later, only the measures for 374 phonological skills are used as an indicator of individual differences in further analyses.…”

“…Of course, factors other than phonology are certainly required to achieve skilled reading 18 (Braze, Tabor, Shankweiler, & Mencl, 2007;Kieffer, Petscher, Proctor, & Silverman, 2016), and 19 are often implicated in failure to do so (Catts & Adolph, 2011;Elwér et al, 2015;Pennington, 20 2006;Snowling, 2008). Indeed, we assume that a multivariate continuum of skills, capacities, 21…”

Orthography, Word Recognition, and Reading

“…There has been considerable work indicating that the two components of the Simple View, decoding and language comprehension, are correlated but nonetheless distinct capacities for a variety of populations and developmental stages (e.g., Braze et al, 2007;Braze et al, 2016;Catts et al, 2006;Dreyer & Katz, 1992;Joshi & Aaron, 2000;Landi, 2010). The SVR also makes an interesting prediction with regard to developmental changes in the specific contributions of oral language comprehension capacity and decoding skill.…”