Increasing inter-word spacing reduces migration errors and improves reading comprehension in students with dyslexia.

We report a small study in which we explored the effects of manipulating narrative text on levels of comprehension for students with and without dyslexia. Using two pieces of standardised narrative text deemed to be of similar difficulty and length, we manipulated the texts such that we could present two texts to each participant, one in each condition. The first condition was text using standard inter-word spacing; the second condition used increased inter-word spacing. Scores on standardised comprehension questions were significantly improved for participants with dyslexia. Additionally, given that there is evidence of delayed visual attention disengagement in individuals with specific forms of dyslexia, we hypothesised that the phenomena of migration of letters and words for some readers might be mitigated by increasing inter-word spacing. We did indeed find that incidence of migration was significantly reduced in this condition for all participants.

Evaluating English-language morphological awareness assessments.

Many studies have shown that morphological knowledge has effects on reading comprehension separate from other aspects of language knowledge. This has implications for reading instruction and assessment: it suggests that children could have reading comprehension difficulties that are due to a lack of morphological knowledge, and thus, that explicit instruction of morphology might be helpful for them, indeed for all children. To find children who might especially benefit from specific instruction in morphology, we would need good tests of morphological knowledge. We evaluated a set of morphological awareness assessments to determine whether they conclusively tapped into morphological knowledge, and found that it was not possible to be certain that they were accurately targeting morphological knowledge.

Graphophonological-semantic flexibility and its contribution to reading comprehension in children with dyslexia: A pilot study.

Graphophonological-semantic flexibility is the cognitive flexibility in reading that enables individuals to manage multiple phonological and semantic aspects of text simultaneously. This study investigated graphophonological-semantic flexibility and its contribution to reading comprehension in children with dyslexia, comparing them to age-matched, typically developing peers. Thirty children aged 8-11 were assessed using a reading-specific sorting task, where they categorized word cards by initial phoneme and meaning within a 2x2 matrix. After sorting, participants explained their arrangements, and their sorting speed, accuracy, and composite scores were evaluated. Additionally, reading comprehension was assessed through passages followed by questions. Results revealed significant differences between children with dyslexia and their peers in sorting accuracy and composite scores. Children with dyslexia exhibited poorer accuracy and longer sorting times, leading to lower composite scores indicative of reduced graphophonological-semantic flexibility. Age showed a positive correlation with sorting accuracy and composite scores. Moreover, sorting accuracy and composite scores were strong predictors of reading comprehension. These findings suggest that children with dyslexia face challenges in managing both phonological and semantic aspects of text concurrently, highlighting the importance of graphophonological-semantic flexibility in reading development.

Corrigendum: Impact of background music on reading comprehension: influence of lyrics language and study habits.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1363562.].

Reading acquisition among students in Grades 1-3 with intellectual disabilities in Sweden.

This study investigates the reading performance of younger students with intellectual disabilities to gain insight into their needs in reading education. Participants were 428 students in Grades 1 to 3 in Sweden. They performed LegiLexi tests measuring pre-reading skills, decoding and reading comprehension based on the model of Simple View of Reading. Results demonstrate a great variation in reading acquisition among students. Some students are able to decode single words and read shorter texts with comprehension already in Grade 1. Other students still struggle with learning letters and developing phonological awareness in Grade 3. According to their longitudinal data over grades, results show that most students progress in pre-reading skills, decoding, and reading comprehension. Hence, assessing reading skills among students with intellectual disabilities in Grades 1-3 using tools aligned with the Simple View of Reading seems applicable and informative for teachers. This study underscores the significance of informed instructional practices for empowering these students in reading education.

Appraising Linguistic and Reading Impairments in Kannada-Speaking Persons With Central Alexia.

INTRODUCTION: Alexia is an acquired condition resulting in impaired abilities to comprehend and/or read aloud written scripts secondary to lesions in the brain involved in reading processes. Just as how linguistic aspects are multi-faceted in persons with aphasia (PWAs), the reading impairments also vary extensively across each PWA depending on the type and nature of the language deficits. Each language has its unique linguistic properties. Whether the impairment is in the spoken form or written form, the dissociations in both aspects across the linguistic distinctions are paramount. Given the diverse orthographic features of Kannada, alongside inquiries into the impairment in oral language skills among individuals with acquired reading difficulties, the study emphasizes distinguishing the concurrent language processes associated with reading impairment. AIM: The study aimed to explore the relationship between spoken language and reading abilities in Kannada-speaking post-stroke survivors with acquired alexia. METHOD: The study recruited 15 Kannada-speaking adults with complaints of reading impairment post-ictus through convenient sampling. The enrolled participants included both males and females with a mean age of 42.2 years (SD=15.58; range=20-68) with 16 years of formal education. The study performed three primary investigations; a) linguistic, b) oral reading, and c) reading comprehension. Linguistic tasks entailed semantics, syntax, and phonological tasks. Oral reading entailed real word and non-word reading tasks. Reading comprehension tasks entailed single-word level, sentence-level, and paragraph-level tasks. RESULTS: Results of overall domain performance across linguistics, oral reading, and reading comprehension revealed superior performance in linguistics (M=71.77, SD=19.18) followed by reading comprehension (M=70.55, SD=24.10) and oral reading (M=41.55, SD=24.66), which was significant (p<0.05). Performance in phonology was weakest (M=58.06, SD=12.44) compared to syntax (M=71.13) and semantics (M=85.33) on comparing PWAs' abilities within the linguistic domain. Reading abilities were compared across oral reading and reading comprehension, which significantly varied (p<0.05), and reading comprehension abilities were superior (M=72.65, SD=24.10). Task-specific variabilities were significant (p<0.05) in both oral reading and reading comprehension, wherein, real word reading (M=58.22) and comprehension at a single level (M=80.22) were better performed. Results of correlation analysis revealed semantics (r=0.494, p<0.05) and phonology (r=0.428, p>0.05) were highly positively correlated to oral reading abilities. Syntax (r=0.412, p>0.05), and semantics (r=0.377, p>0.05) were strongly positively correlated to reading comprehension abilities. CONCLUSION: The study has convincingly shown that performance on reading-related tasks reflects the functionality of central semantic, phonological, and syntactic processing elements. The literate adults routinely interact with both spoken and written language and a comprehensive assessment framework of language processing must encompass both modalities (linguistic and reading) for individuals with alexia, specific to Indian languages. Owing to the transparent writing system of the Kannada language, a multimodal phonological and lexical-based reading treatment may prove to be beneficial in remediating reading impairments among adult post-stroke survivors.

Unlocking narratives: Longitudinal associations between theory of mind and reading comprehension.

This study explores the longitudinal association between Theory of Mind (ToM) and reading comprehension (RC) in middle childhood, focusing on three advanced ToM (AToM) components: social reasoning, reasoning about ambiguity and recognition of social norm transgressions. Over the course of a year, 112 nine-year-olds (61 girls, 51 boys; Mage = 9; 0 years, ±4 months at wave 1) were followed from Grade 3 to Grade 4 and assessed for AToM predictors of Grade-4 RC. Findings show that only social reasoning predicts RC, independent of general intelligence and prior RC performance. In turn, RC did not predict any AToM component. These findings contribute to understanding cognitive development in educational contexts, emphasizing the significance of AToM, particularly social reasoning, in RC.

Application of machine reading comprehension techniques for named entity recognition in materials science.

Materials science is an interdisciplinary field that studies the properties, structures, and behaviors of different materials. A large amount of scientific literature contains rich knowledge in the field of materials science, but manually analyzing these papers to find material-related data is a daunting task. In information processing, named entity recognition (NER) plays a crucial role as it can automatically extract entities in the field of materials science, which have significant value in tasks such as building knowledge graphs. The typically used sequence labeling methods for traditional named entity recognition in material science (MatNER) tasks often fail to fully utilize the semantic information in the dataset and cannot effectively extract nested entities. Herein, we proposed to convert the sequence labeling task into a machine reading comprehension (MRC) task. MRC method effectively can solve the challenge of extracting multiple overlapping entities by transforming it into the form of answering multiple independent questions. Moreover, the MRC framework allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the contextual information and semantic relationships within materials science literature, by integrating prior knowledge from queries. State-of-the-art (SOTA) performance was achieved on the Matscholar, BC4CHEMD, NLMChem, SOFC, and SOFC-Slot datasets, with F1-scores of 89.64%, 94.30%, 85.89%, 85.95%, and 71.73%, respectively in MRC approach. By effectively utilizing semantic information and extracting nested entities, this approach holds great significance for knowledge extraction and data analysis in the field of materials science, and thus accelerating the development of material science.Scientific contributionWe have developed an innovative NER method that enhances the efficiency and accuracy of automatic entity extraction in the field of materials science by transforming the sequence labeling task into a MRC task, this approach provides robust support for constructing knowledge graphs and other data analysis tasks.

Latent profiles as predictors of response to instruction for students with reading difficulties.

The program code developed by others is appropriately cited in the text and listed in the references section. The raw and processed data on which study conclusions are based are not available. The statistical syntax needed to reproduce analyses in the article is available upon request. The methods section provides references for the materials described therein. We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions, all manipulations, and all measures in the study, and we follow APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards. This study's design, hypotheses, and data analytic plan were not pre-registered. Prior research supports the need for elementary-aged students with reading difficulties (RD) to receive explicit systematic small group evidence-based reading instruction. Yet for many students, simply receiving an evidence-based reading instruction in a small group setting is insufficient to reach the progress milestones needed to meet grade level reading standards. The current study examined whether: (1) elementary school students with RD constitute a homogeneous or heterogeneous groups when considering their basic language and cognitive skills (using a latent profile analysis), and (2) if latent profiles are predictive of response to reading comprehension instruction (using a mixed modeling approach). The sample consisted of 335 students, including students with RD and typical students (n = 57). The results revealed heterogeneity within students with RD - there were two distinct profiles, with one having higher basic language (reading fluency and decoding) and cognitive (verbal domain productivity, cognitive flexibility, working memory) skills and lower attention skills, and the other having stronger attention skills and lower basic language and cognitive skills. The findings also suggested that latent profiles were predictive of response to reading comprehension instruction. Our results provide a convincing argument for leading the field in the direction of developing customized interventions. It is conceivable, but remains to be further examined, that researchers and educators could potentially improve reading outcomes through providing a customized reading intervention to a student based on their cognitive-language profile.

Early skills that predict English reading ability: A longitudinal study of bilingual children from 5 to 10 years.

Despite substantial research, the contribution of oral language skills acquired in Spanish to Spanish-English bilingual children's acquisition of English reading skill is unclear. The current study addressed this question with data on the oral language and pre-literacy skills of 101 Spanish-English bilingual learners at 5 years of age and their English word reading (i.e., decoding) and reading comprehension skills at 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 years. Separate multilevel models using English language, Spanish language, and pre-literacy skills as predictors of these outcomes identified English phonological awareness, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts of print knowledge as positive predictors of word reading. A final model including all these significant predictors found only Spanish phonological awareness and concept of print to be significant predictors. Significant predictors of reading comprehension in separate models were English vocabulary, Spanish phonological awareness, and concepts about print. In the final model, only English vocabulary and Spanish phonological awareness predicted English reading comprehension. These findings provide evidence that phonological awareness is a language-general skill that supports reading across languages, consistent with the common underlying proficiency model of bilingual reading development. The finding that only English vocabulary predicts English reading comprehension suggests that vocabulary knowledge is not part of a common underlying proficiency but is language specific in its value to reading ability.

The effects of question previewing on response accuracy and text processing: An eye-movement study.

The present study investigated the impact of manipulating reading strategies (i.e., reading the questions first [QF] or reading the passage first [PF]) during a reading comprehension test where we explored how reading strategy was related to student characteristics (i.e., reading achievement and working memory capacity). Participants' eye movements were monitored as they read 12 passages and answered multiple-choice questions. We examined differences in (a) response accuracy, (b) average total time on words in the text, (c) total task reading time, and (d) time reading text relevant to questions as a function of PF and QF strategies. Analyses were conducted to examine whether findings varied as a function of student characteristics (i.e., reading achievement and working memory capacity) and grade level (Grades 3, 5, and 8). Several interesting findings emerged from our study, including a limited effect of reading strategy use on response accuracy, with only eighth graders demonstrating better accuracy in the QF condition, and several demonstrations of PF leading to more efficient test-taking processes, including (a) longer average total reading times on words in the passage in the PF condition that could be associated with creating a better mental model of the text, (b) often being associated with less total-task time, and (c) being associated with more successful search strategies. Implications for providing teachers and students with strategies are discussed.

Morphological Assessment Features and their Relations to Reading: A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling Study.

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful unit of language (e.g., affixes, base words) that express grammatical and semantic information. Additionally, morphological knowledge is significantly related to children's word reading and reading comprehension skills. Researchers have broadly assessed morphological knowledge by using a wide range of tasks and stimuli, which has influenced the interpretation of the relations between morphological knowledge and reading outcomes. This review of 103 studies used meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) to investigate the relations between commonly occurring morphological knowledge assessment features (e.g., written versus oral, spelling versus no spelling) in the literature to reading outcomes, including word reading and reading comprehension. Meta-regression techniques were used to examine moderators of age and reading ability. Morphological assessments that used a written modality (e.g., reading, writing) were more predictive of word reading outcomes than those administered orally. Assessments of morphological spelling were more predictive of both word reading and reading comprehension outcomes than those that did not examine spelling accuracy. Age was a significant moderator of the relation between morphology and word reading, such that the relation was stronger for the younger than the older children. Younger children also demonstrated higher relations between multiple task dimensions and reading comprehension, including oral tasks, tasks without decoding, and tasks that provided context clues. These findings have important implications for future morphological intervention studies aimed to improve children's reading outcomes, in particular the use of orthography and spelling within the context of teaching morphology.

The effects of a tier 2 reading comprehension intervention aligned to tier 1 instruction for fourth graders with inattention and reading difficulties.

This study reports a secondary analysis from a quasi-experimental design study (N = 13 schools) to examine the effects of aligned Tier 1 (T1) and Tier 2 (T2) instruction for a subsample of fourth graders with inattention and reading difficulties. Of this sample (N = 63 students), 100% received free- or reduced-price lunch, 92% identified as Hispanic, and 22% received special education services. T1 instruction focused on implementing practices to support reading comprehension and content learning during social studies instruction. The aligned T2 intervention focused on remediating reading comprehension difficulties using the same evidence-based practices implemented in T1, thus supporting students with connecting learning and applying skills across settings. Schools were assigned to one of three conditions: (a) aligned T1-T2 instruction; (b) nonaligned T1-T2 instruction, in which T1 and T2 practices were not intentionally aligned; or (c) business-as-usual (BaU) T1 and T2 practices. No significant differences were detected between the nonaligned T1-T2 and BaU conditions on student outcomes. However, large, statistically significant effects were detected in favor of the aligned T1-T2 condition compared to BaU on measures of content knowledge (Unit 1 ES = 0.85; Unit 2 ES = 1.46; Unit 3 ES = 0.79), vocabulary (Unit 1 ES = 0.88; Unit 2 ES = 0.85), and content reading comprehension (ES = 0.79). The aligned T1-T2 condition also outperformed the nonaligned T1-T2 condition on content knowledge (Unit 2 ES = 1.35; Unit 3 ES = 0.56), vocabulary (Unit 1 ES = 0.82), and the content reading comprehension assessment (ES = 0.69). Various effect sizes were not different from zero after correcting for clustered data. Although the magnitude of the effect sizes suggested promise, additional research is needed to fully understand the effects of aligned instruction on the reading outcomes of students with inattention and reading difficulty.

Quality and Readability of Online Health Information on Common Urologic Cancers: Assessing Barriers to Health Literacy in Urologic Oncology.

INTRODUCTION: A growing number of Americans search online for health information related to urologic oncologic care each year. The American Medical Association recommends that medical information be written at a maximum sixth-grade level in order to be comprehensible by the majority of patients. As such, it is important to assess the quality and readability of online patient education material that patients are being exposed to. METHODS: A Google search was performed using the terms "testicular cancer," "prostate cancer," "kidney cancer," and "bladder cancer," and the top 30 results for each were reviewed. Websites were categorized based on their source. Readability was assessed using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, the Gunning Frequency of Gobbledygook, and the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook indices. Quality was assessed using the DISCERN Quality Index (1-5 scale). RESULTS: A total of 91 websites were included in our analysis. On average, online health information pertaining to urologic cancers is written at a 10th- to 11th-grade reading level, which is significantly higher than that of an average American adult and that recommended by the American Medical Association (P < .01). The overall quality of websites was 3.4 ± 0.7, representing moderate to high quality. There was no significant difference in readability based on cancer type or information source. CONCLUSIONS: Despite being of moderate to high quality, online patient education materials related to common urologic cancers are often written at a grade level that exceeds the reading level of an average American adult. This presents as a barrier to online health literacy and calls into question the utility of these resources.

Corrigendum: L2 Arabic learners' processing of Arabic garden-path sentences: a consistent reading pattern.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1333112.].

The Relationships of Oral Reading Fluency at Word, Sentence, and Passage Levels and Reading Comprehension in Chinese.

This study aims to expand our understanding of the relations of oral reading fluency at word, sentence, and passage levels to reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking secondary school-aged students. In total, 80 participants (46 males and 34 females) ranging from 13 to 15 years old joined this study and were tested on tasks of oral reading fluency at three levels, reading comprehension, and nonverbal IQ. Our results showed a clear relationship from fluency at the level of the word to the sentence and then the passage in oral reading fluency as well as both the direct and indirect importance of word-level oral reading fluency in reading comprehension. Only the indirect effect from word-level oral reading fluency to reading comprehension through passage-level oral reading fluency was significant. Our findings suggest that sentence-level oral reading fluency is the crucial component to reading comprehension in Chinese. Additionally, recognition of the potential value of unique features, such as syntactic awareness and word segment accuracy, that happen at the sentence level should be integrated into instructional activities for reading.

Predictors of reading comprehension and profiling of poor readers in Croatian: educational and clinical perspectives.

Introduction: Reading is an important academic skill. Children who exhibit reading difficulties are more likely to experience various negative professional and personal consequences. To successfully identify children with reading problems as early as possible, one must first understand how reading skills can be mastered, as well as the course of reading development in children with typical reading skills from the beginning of their formal reading instruction. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine the influence of decoding and language comprehension on reading comprehension ability. In addition, this study aimed to determine types of profiles among poor readers and estimate their frequency in the study sample. Methods: Based on the Simple View of Reading model, we developed decoding, language comprehension, and reading comprehension tasks. Participants included 100 typical readers (TR) and 95 poor readers (PR) in the second grade in Croatian schools. Phonemic awareness, phonological working memory, and rapid automatized naming tasks were used to test underlying abilities of decoding skills in both groups of participants. Results: As expected, PRs showed significantly lower performance on all variables than TRs. The correlations between decoding, language comprehension and reading comprehension are significant in the PR group. The linear regression analysis showed that language comprehension was a significant predictor of reading comprehension for TRs, while decoding and language comprehension were significant predictors of reading comprehension for PRs. The profiling of reading difficulties revealed five different profiles, the most common of which was a mixed reading difficulty, i.e., difficulties in both decoding and language comprehension. Discussion: In line with theoretical expectations, success in reading comprehension in TRs at the end of the second grade depends mainly on language comprehension. To achieve this complex cognitive skill, PRs' language comprehension alone is not sufficient, so they still rely on their decoding skills. Among the poor readers, there was a high prevalence of children with decoding problems (i.e., three out of five profiles). Teachers should be able to identify and monitor decoding difficulties in children, since these difficulties are associated with noticeable manifestations, unlike those associated with comprehension difficulties.

The relationship between vocabulary depth knowledge, word reading, and reading comprehension in Chinese.

Although vocabulary depth (VD) is recognized as a crucial factor in reading comprehension, the investigation of its role in reading comprehension remains insufficient. This study aimed to address two significant research gaps in this domain. First, empirical evidence is needed to explore the construct of VD knowledge, particularly within the Chinese language. Second, the underlying mechanism that connects VD and reading comprehension requires further clarification. In this study, a sample of 326 native Chinese students from Grade 4 participated in a comprehensive battery of tests assessing VD knowledge, word reading, and reading comprehension. Based on theoretical frameworks of VD knowledge, we measured six subtypes of VD knowledge: polysemy, collocation, word register, part-of-speech, semanticassociations, and homonyms. The results of factor analysis revealed that Chinese VD knowledge can be conceptualized as a two-factor construct, encompassing in-depth semantic knowledge (VD-meaning) and knowledge of word usage (VD-usage). Both VD-meaning and VD-usage demonstrated significant direct effects on reading comprehension, highlighting the critical role of VD in determining reading comprehension outcomes in Chinese. Furthermore, our findings indicated an indirect contribution of VD to reading comprehension, specifically through the mediating effect of word reading on the relationship between VD-meaning and reading comprehension. This study represents a pioneering empirical investigation that delved into the construct of VD in Chinese. In addition, we discuss the role of VD knowledge and its interaction with word reading in the context of Chinese reading comprehension, which could significantly enhance our understanding of the underlying mechanism that links vocabulary knowledge to reading comprehension.

Reading comprehension improvement in autism.

Introduction: A subset of autistic children excel at word decoding but have difficulty with reading comprehension (i.e., the discrepant poor comprehender reading profile). Prior research suggests the Visualizing and Verbalizing (V/V) for language comprehension and thinking intervention helps improve reading comprehension in autistic children with this reading profile. Previous studies have demonstrated the role of vocabulary, memory, and social functioning in reading comprehension; however, predictors and moderators of reading comprehension within this specific profile of autistic readers have not been thoroughly explored. Methods: In this study, we examined the effectiveness of the V/V intervention by comparing reading comprehension scores between groups and across time. Participants included a sample of autistic children (AUT-EXP; n=22) and a waitlist control group of autistic children (AUT-WLC; n=17) with reading comprehension difficulties, as well as a sample of non-autistic children (Non-AUT; n=26) (all age 8-13 years). AUT-EXP and AUT-WLC groups completed a battery of cognitive assessments during pre and post tests. We also analyzed whether cognitive assessment scores predicted reading comprehension, and examined the moderating effects of group (AUT-EXP vs. AUT-WLC) on these relationships. Results: The AUT-EXP group significantly improved in their pre to post reading comprehension scores (t(21)=4.19, p<.001, d=.89), whereas the AUT-WLC group did not. Verbal memory significantly predicted reading comprehension, though group did not moderate relationships between cognitive test performance and reading comprehension. Discussion: Results suggest that the V/V intervention may help improve reading comprehension for autistic children with the discrepant poor comprehender reading profile. Additionally, strategies for improving verbal memory may indirectly enhance reading comprehension in autistic children with this reading profile.