Cognitive Science 301

Applied Cognitive Science and Education
Fall 2006

Reading (Chapter 9, Levine and Reed)

• Successful reading is a combination of developmental/age-dependent milestones, competency in individual neurodevelopmental constructs, and integration of these components.

Reading Sentences

• quote from Lieberman and Shankweiler 1979: "The role of the phonetic representation in speech perception is to hold information about shorter segments (say, words) in short-term memory until the meaning of longer segments (say, sentences) can be extracted" (as cited in Levine & Reed p 312)
• What does the above quote imply about the role of specific neurodevelopmental constructs in the following aspects of reading and understanding sentences?
  • phonetic representation (decoding)
  • hold information
  • meaning of longer segments
  • extraction of meaning
• How do the neurodevelopmental constructs specifically affect sentence reading? (p 314-315)
  • e.g., attention: "the reading of sentences by such students is likely to be unpredictable because of their tendency to tune in and out." (p 314).  What does this say about learning through reading?
  • Could a child who is good at decoding have trouble reading?
  • "impoverished vocabulary", fluency in access to lexicon, multiple word meanings all impact accurate and useful reading.
    • Comment on why/how someone with an "impoverished vocabulary" can fall further and further behind in school.

Reading Passages

• Utilizes all of the above skills, but the outcome and use of reading serves many different purposes (as detailed in pp 315-316).
• Subvocalization is useful in facilitating comprehension during reading passages.  Why? 
  • this also may allow better conversion of information into long term memory
  • "increase metacognitive awareness and self-monitoring of comprehension" (p 316)
• With progress through school, increasing use and demand of higher order cognitive capabilities are necessary
• Concept-driven vs data-driven reading (top down vs bottom up processing)
  • these 2 schema need to be well-balanced to be a successful reader
• Depth of processing (active reading)
  • building on background knowledge
  • creating new schema
  • recognition of specific patterns in the author's writing
  • always depends on interest, motivation, and metacognitive awareness
• Responsibilities of the instructors/teachers/professors
  • awareness of prior knowledge of each student
  • devising instruction to aid in activation of that prior knowledge
  • teach students about whether they understand the correct level and amount of information from their reading
  • teaching the 4 strategies described on p 319.
    • "strategies for concentrating on difficult and important elements"
    • "strategies for knowing what to include or exclude"
    • "determining degrees of relative importance of information within a passage"
    • "using various rules of condensation"
• Reading for examinations
  • How does one read for a multiple choice exam?  Why?
  • How does one read for an essay exam?  Why?
• Dysfunctions (p 322-323)
  • "Among students with organization problems and attention deficits, failing to remember to take the book home is a common cause of failing to remember the story."
  • Organizational skills, attention, higher order cognition, memory, effective comprehension strategies, etc.
  • See Table 9-3 on pages 322-323
  • What might a dyslexic student see?

Assessment

• An accurate assessment of reading includes all of the following
  • listening to oral reading
  • asking questions regarding comprehension
  • asking questions like, "What do you predict will happen next?"
  • analysis of decoding skills (phonological awareness and phoneme/grapheme association)
  • are context clues used when reading
  • how does the individual approach new words?
  • what is the rate and efficiency of word analysis?
  • is the individual's performance age-appropriate
• See Table 9-5 for assessment of decoding
• Assessment of comprehension
  • interpretation of sentences, paragraphs, passages
  • what are the main ideas
  • what are the details
  • how do the details relate to the main ideas
  • can the individual identify the author's point of view?
  • summarizing
  • understanding figures of speech and ambiguity

Management

• Read and know some of the ways to address reading problems in individuals with different neurodevelopmental construct weaknesses
  • Attention Deficits (p 335-336):  in what way may each of these be helpful?
  • Memory Dysfunctions (p 336-338):  in what way may each of these be helpful?
  • Visual and/or Sequential Ordering Weaknesses (p 339-340): in what way may each of these be helpful?
  • Language Disabilities (p 341-342): in what way may each of these be helpful?
  • Higher Order Cognition Weaknesses (p 342-343): in what way may each of these be helpful?

Main Ideas

1. Successful reading is a combination of developmental/age-dependent milestones, competency in individual neurodevelopmental constructs, and integration of these components.
2. Chall's developmental model of acquisition of reading skills shows the following trends: acquisition of vocabulary, increased knowledge of sight words, increasing fluency, and increasing need for application of higher cognition techniques.
3. Successful word analysis involves fluency with sight words, skill at phonologic word analysis, structural word analysis and contextual word analysis.
4. Each of Levine's neurodevelopmental constructs is involved in allowing acquisition of strong reading skills, but affects word and sentence analysis in different ways.
5. "Impoverished vocabulary" is a serious weakness that may create more and more severe deficits in reading as the individual ages.
6. Active reading facilitates comprehension.
7. Assessment of reading should involve evaluation of phonologic word analysis skills, evaluation of comprehension (using several different mechanisms outlined above), fluency, and knowledge and use of context clues.

Questions

1. Briefly explain how each of the following is important in word analysis:  phonologic analysis, structural or morphological analysis, contextual analysis.

2. Explain what Levine's statement means: Successful reading is a combination of developmental/age-dependent milestones, competency in individual neurodevelopmental constructs, and integration of these components.

3. What are some themes in the development and acquisition of reading skills between ages 5 and 18?

4. Comment on the hypothesized value of the whole language approach to reading and the phonologic processing approach to reading.

5. How do each of the following neurodevelopmental constructs impact reading words?
   • attention
   • visual processing weaknesses
   • language disabilities (re: linguistic knowledge: phonology, morphology, semantics, syntactic, metalinguistic awareness problems)
   • memory deficiencies
   • higher order cognitive weaknesses

6. Explain why depth of processing is critical in remembering what one reads.

7. What types of assessments would you use to evaluate an individual's reading skills and level?