The role of inferencing in struggling adult readers' comprehension of different texts: A mediation analysis

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“…This aligns with previous research indicating that individuals with learning difficulties (e.g., Ziegler et al, 2006) andolder adults (e.g., Comings et al, 1999;Sabatini et al, 2011;Greenberg et al, 2013) tend to exhibit better attendance in adult literacy intervention studies and educational classes. Moreover, daily exposure to printed materials among adult literacy students correlates with increased persistence and engagement in adult education (Greenberg et al, 2013), which aligns with our findings highlighting a connection between frequent engagement in writing activities at Additionally, recent research suggests that adults with low literacy skills who identify as Black tend to demonstrate better attendance in adult literacy programs across the state of Georgia compared to those who identify as White (Tighe et al, 2023b). Taken together, our study's results and prior literature suggest that these groups exhibit higher levels of persistence, albeit being disproportionately represented among adults with lower literacy skills.…”

It’s about time! Exploring time allocation patterns of adults with lower literacy skills on a digital assessment

“…Preliminary evidence from paper-based reading assessments with adults who exhibit lower literacy skills has reported different profiles of literacy performance that also varied by age and native language status (e.g., MacArthur et al, 2012 ; Talwar et al, 2020 ). In addition, Tighe et al (2022) reported that adults with lower literacy levels demonstrated the lowest performance on a paper-based literacy assessment when they exhibited lower educational attainment, self-reported a learning disability, were non-native English speakers, self-reported fair/poor health status, had lower or unknown parental education levels, and identified as Hispanic ethnicity.…”

“…Second, this study investigated whether adult respondents with lower literacy skills (who scored Levels 2 and below on the literacy scale) were heterogeneous in terms of the amount of time they spent on a digital literacy assessment. Previous studies with adults who have lower literacy skills suggest that this population is diverse in terms of their reading skills and various individual, demographic characteristics (e.g., MacArthur et al, 2012 ; Talwar et al, 2020 ; Tighe et al, 2022 ), thus we anticipated that adults with lower literacy skills may also reveal different patterns of time spent on a digital assessment. Specifically, we expected that some of the respondents would spend substantially more time on digital literacy items than others.…”

“…Specifically, our findings emphasize the importance of adopting a “literacy-in-use” framework, which can help adults with lower literacy skills improve their reading and writing in different types of contexts and situations, some of which may occur in a digital environment, such as reading memos, emails, and interpreting instructions, diagrams, and/or maps ( Trawick, 2019 ). This type of framework transcends instruction that is only focused on the foundational skills of reading (e.g., decoding, vocabulary knowledge), and emphasizes other higher-order skills that are necessary for adults with lower literacy skills ( Tighe et al, 2023a , c ), including making inferences, relating different pieces of a text or multiple texts to each other, and evaluating the quality of information in texts ( Trawick, 2019 ).…”