PSYCHOLINGUISTIC BASES OF READING DISABILITY: A STUDY IN SENTENCE COMPREHENSION.
Item
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Title
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PSYCHOLINGUISTIC BASES OF READING DISABILITY: A STUDY IN SENTENCE COMPREHENSION.
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Identifier
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AAI8103930
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identifier
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8103930
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Creator
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GOLDSMITH, SHARON C.
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Contributor
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Arthur Bronstein | Harry Beilin, Paula Menyuk
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Date
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1980
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Education, Special
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Abstract
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This study explored the relationship between language and reading by providing information on listening and reading comprehension processes in normally achieving and reading disabled school age children. The study examines the language comprehension strategies reflecting competing views of language processing. These emphasized: (a) The influence of syntactic information within a transformational framework, (b) The influence of semantic constraints, and, (c) The influence of noun function and perceived temporal order of elements. In particular, the study examined the degree of comprehension difficulty (as predicted by these views) which children encountered when listening to and reading relative clause sentences.;One hundred and sixty reading disabled and normally achieving subjects from third and sixth grades manipulated toy objects to act out thirty-two auditorily presented and thirty-two visually presented relative clause and conjoined control sentences. The design of the study permitted study of the following effects on performance, the last three variables being repeated measures: GROUP: normally achieving vs. reading disabled; GRADE: third grade vs. sixth grade; SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY: six types of relative clause sentences; SEMANTIC CONSTRAINTS: reversible vs. non-reversible sentences; MODE OF PRESENTATION: listening vs. reading.;Using analysis of variance it was found that all main effects except mode of presentation are significant. Neither the reading disabled nor normally achieving groups displayed significant differences in reading comprehension as compared to auditory comprehension. Disabled readers exhibited a depressed ability in comprehending written material and an equally depressed ability in comprehending spoken material. Significant correlations between mean scores as well as major strategies used in listening and reading tasks were obtained. Duncan Multiple Range procedures provided significant rankings of sentence complexity which were consistent with performance predictions from a theory of sentence comprehension positing a strategy of assigning actor-action-object relationships based on perceived temporal order of elements. Chi square tests on proportions of strategy overuse confirmed group differences in patterns of strategy preference.;The research provided evidence to support previously developed theories concerning the view of language comprehension based on temporal ordering of elements and semantic cueing and demonstrated that such theories are relevant for visually presented information. Reading comprehension and language comprehension are parallel processes which are linked by a common method of representation. This link, on the level of sentence comprehension, is characterized by the use of identical comprehension strategies for facilitating syntactic analysis.;Reading disabled and normally achieving subjects had identical repertories of comprehension strategies available to them. Strategies used by younger children appear to be integrated in the repertory and reappear when complex material is presented. Reading disability was demonstrated to be related to a bi-modality deficit in the ability to appropriately select or utilize strategies from this repertory. The reading disabled subjects demonstrated increased use of nonefficient and immature strategies suggesting the need for further research on the role of maturation as a factor in reading disability. Comprehension problems of reading disabled subjects reflect greater difficulty in ordering of elements than in utilizing semantic information. This suggests that two sentence comprehension systems operate utilizing and integrating aspects of both systems. Implications for a theory of language acquisition and instructional practices are presented.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Speech and Hearing Sciences
