FAILURE IN BEGINNING READING: PROBLEMS IN MASTERING A COMPLEX COGNITIVE TASK.
Item
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Title
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FAILURE IN BEGINNING READING: PROBLEMS IN MASTERING A COMPLEX COGNITIVE TASK.
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Identifier
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AAI8423077
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identifier
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8423077
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Creator
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KILIAN, LAWRENCE JOHN.
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Contributor
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Shirley Feldmann
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Date
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1984
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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, Reading
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Abstract
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Children's problems in mastering beginning reading skills were studied by examining the correlates of the performance of second and third grade average and poor readers on a list of words commonly found in basal readers in grades one through four. The approach taken was to use characteristics of persons (such as, their phonemic segmentation skill) to predict their performance reading the word list and to use the characteristics of words such as, the complexity of their letter-sound correspondences to predict the number of errors made on each word.;The results suggest, as hypothesized, that the complexity of letter-sound correspondences within words is a critical factor in beginning reading failure. Students who had not mastered the complex letter-sound correspondence system were less likely to read words correctly than students who had mastered the correspondences. Also, words which are more complex in terms of the number and difficulty of their letter-sound correspondences were less likely to be read correctly than words with few and simple correspondences.;Grade level also emerged as an important variable. As hypothesized, the categorization of the words according to the grade level at which they are typically included in basal readers was a powerful predictor of reading errors on individual words and the grade level of the subjects was also a good predictor of subjects' success on the word list. Third-grade subjects read 85 percent of the words correctly, while second-grade subjects read only 58 percent correctly. This suggests that instruction may play a role in beginning reading failure.;Other variables were not found to be related to beginning reading failure. As hypothesized, phonemic segmentation skill was not related to performance on the word list. Contrary to what was hypothesized, however, vocabulary knowledge, and intellectual ability, as represented by a score on the Cognitive Abilities Test, were not related to the subjects' performance on the word list.;Taken together, the analyses of both person and task characteristics suggest that failure in beginning reading results from the increasing complexity of letter-sound correspondences in words and students' problems mastering that complexity through instruction.
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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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Educational Psychology
