Applying a Multiple Group Causal Indicator Modeling Framework to the Reading Comprehension Skills of Third, Seventh, and Tenth Grade Students

Exploring reading profiles of rural school students

This study investigates the reading profiles of rural Grade 5 and 6 students (N = 262), a sample with a high proportion of English language learners. We administered a battery of reading and cognitive assessments to classify students' reading profiles and evaluate if performance on cognitive measures predicted membership in particular profiles. Data were analyzed using latent profile analysis. Latent profile analysis showed four distinct reading profiles in our sample: students with severe reading disabilities (< 2%), students at high risk of reading disability (14%), students at some-risk of reading disability (46%), and students who are typical readers (38%). Lower performance on cognitive measures was associated with group membership in the severe reading profile group compared to the group of students at some-risk of reading failure. In contrast, higher performance on cognitive measures was associated with group membership in the typical reader group compared to students at some-risk of reading failure. In keeping with the findings from past studies documenting reader profiles, we found heterogeneity in the reading profiles of rural upper-elementary grade students. We discuss the need for multicomponent interventions that target all areas of reading with some flexibility in the dosage of each reading component dependent on the reader profiles established prior to intervention.

The adolescent behavioral index: Identifying students at risk for disengagement in high school

BACKGROUND: Proposed frameworks of college and career readiness include aspects of school climate perceptions and behavioral engagement. School climate initiatives emphasize the importance of healthy learning environments; while behavioral indicators tend to be used to identify students at-risk for disengagement, established early warning systems include few, if any, behavioral indicators. A promising and useful screening mechanism that combines behavioral indicators along with school climate perceptions may enhance identification of adolescents at risk for disengagement, academic failure, and dropout, and may ultimately improve college and career readiness. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between self-reported adolescent perceptions of school climate and extant high school academic and behavioral data to create an index score which could be used as an early warning system for student disengagement. METHODS: To accomplish the stated objective, we employed structural equation modeling to estimate a multiple indicators multiple causes model using a sample of high school students (n = 5039) with and without disabilities. Extant school data included grade point average, attendance, tardies, and office discipline referrals, while school climate was measured using the Georgia Brief School Climate survey. RESULTS: Findings show evidence of a robust Adolescent Behavioral Index when controlled for disability status as those with disabilities are expected to have lower index scores indicating greater risk for school disengagement. CONCLUSION: Implications for research and practice are focused on the Adolescent Behavioral Index as a mechanism for systematic data collection that may underlie early warning systems in high schools specifically when designing college and career readiness interventions for adolescents and when identifying students who may be at risk for disengagement.

The Importance of Baseline Word Reading Skills in Examining Student Response to a Multicomponent Reading Intervention

To address the needs of a diverse group of students with reading difficulties, a majority of researchers over the last decade have designed and implemented multicomponent reading interventions (MCRIs) that provide instruction in multiple areas of reading yielding mixed results. The current study evaluates whether students' baseline word reading skills predict their response to a MCRI. Data from a randomized controlled trial for third- and fourth-grade students with reading difficulties (N = 128) were analyzed. Results demonstrate that baseline word reading was a significant predictor of students' end-of-year reading comprehension performance. Treatment group students who had lower baseline word reading compared with those students with comparatively higher word reading scores performed significantly lower on posttest reading comprehension. Findings denote the importance of word reading instruction for upper elementary students who are below-average word readers and also indicate the need for tailoring reading intervention to align with individual reader needs.

Contributions of Demographics, Language Learning Experience, and Cognitive Control to Chinese Reading Comprehension

The study investigates whether learners' demographics (e.g., age, education, and intelligence-IQ), language learning experience, and cognitive control predict Chinese (L2) reading comprehension in young adults. Thirty-four international students who studied mandarin Chinese in mainland China (10 females, 24 males) from Bangladesh, Burundi, Congo, Madagascar, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe were tested on a series of measures including demographic questionnaires, IQ test, two cognitive control tasks [Flanker Task measuring inhibition and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) measuring mental set shifting], and a Chinese reading comprehension test (HSK level 4). The results of correlation analyses showed that education, L2 learning history, L2 proficiency, and previous category errors of the WCST were significantly correlated with Chinese reading comprehension. Further multiple regression analyses indicated that Chinese learning history, IQ, and previous category errors of the WCST significantly predicted Chinese reading comprehension. These findings reveal that aside from IQ and the time spent on L2 learning, the component mental set shifting of cognitive control also predicts reading outcomes, which suggests that cognitive control has a place in reading comprehension models over and above traditional predictors of language learning experience.

The roles of decoding and vocabulary in Chinese reading development: Evidence from a 3-year longitudinal study

BACKGROUNDS

Decoding and vocabulary are two essential abilities to reading comprehension. Investigating the roles of decoding and vocabulary in Chinese reading development can not only provide empirical evidence to enrich the current reading theories but also have implications for educational practice.

AIMS

To examine the developing importance of decoding and vocabulary to reading comprehension and the reciprocal relationship between decoding and vocabulary across the reading development.

SAMPLE

A total of 186 Chinese children were followed from grade 1 to grade 3 (aged 6.5 to 8.5 years).

METHODS

Participants' decoding, vocabulary, and reading comprehension abilities were measured once a year for three years. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to obtain the unique contributions of decoding and vocabulary to reading comprehension in the different grades. A cross-lagged structural equation model was used to explore the reciprocal relationship between decoding and vocabulary over the three years.

RESULTS

Decoding and vocabulary explained nearly 40% of the variance to reading comprehension across grades, and the unique contribution of decoding decreased over the grades (from 29% to 8%) while that of vocabulary increased (from 3% to 9%). Moreover, vocabulary always predicted decoding from grade 1, but decoding predicted later vocabulary only started in grade 2.

CONCLUSIONS

Decoding skills are important to reading comprehension in the early learn-to-read grades. However, vocabulary becomes more critical for reading comprehension in later grades. Larger oral vocabularies promote the development of decoding skills, and vice versa.

Examining Sources and Mechanisms of Reading Comprehension Difficulties: Comparing English Learners and Non-English Learners within the Simple View of Reading

In the present study, we compared the extent to which linguistic comprehension (vocabulary and listening comprehension) and word reading explain reading comprehension differentially for English learners (ELs) and non-ELs with reading difficulties, and we investigated whether different mechanisms of reading comprehension failure exist for each group. Using the simple view of reading as our framework, we tested a model in which vocabulary exerts a direct effect on reading comprehension and indirect effects through listening comprehension and word reading. Results from a multigroup structural equation model with a sample of 446 struggling fourth-grade readers (n = 229 for ELs; n = 211 for non-ELs) demonstrated both similarities and differences in the sources and mechanisms of reading comprehension difficulties for ELs and non-ELs with reading problems. Word reading was an important source of reading comprehension difficulty for both groups. For non-ELs, the effect of word reading was larger than the effects of linguistic comprehension (vocabulary and listening comprehension combined); however, for ELs, the effects of linguistic comprehension were greater than the effect of word reading. Vocabulary had indirect effects via both listening comprehension and word reading for ELs, but it demonstrated a direct effect on reading comprehension for non-ELs. These results suggest that developing a range of linguistic comprehension skills (e.g., word-level and sentence-level language skills) may be important for ELs with reading comprehension difficulties in the upper-elementary grades.

Birth weight, verbal cognition in early adolescence, and lexical and reading skills in late adolescence: a formal mediation analysis using a potential outcomes approach

BACKGROUND

Oral and written language in late adolescence are influenced by many pre- and postnatal factors, including cognitive performance at earlier ages. We investigated whether the association between birth weight and lexical knowledge and reading comprehension in late adolescence (14-16 years) is mediated by verbal cognition during early adolescence (10-11 years).

METHODS

We conducted a mediation analysis via a potential outcomes approach to data from three United Kingdom (UK) prospective birth cohorts - The National Child Development Study (NCDS; year of birth (Y.B.) = 1,958; analytic sample size (A.N.) = 9,399; original sample size (O.N.) = 18,558), British Cohort Study (BCS70; Y.B. = 1,970; A.N. = 6,591; O.N. = 17,196), and Millennium Cohort Study (MCS; Y.B. = 2,000-2,001; A.N. = 3,950; O.N. = 18,552) - to evaluate the indirect effects of birth weight on lexical knowledge (BCS and MCS) and reading comprehension measures (NCDS) in adolescence.

RESULTS

We found an indirect effect but no statistically significant direct effects for the BCS and MCS cohorts. The proportion of the effect of birth weight on oral and written language in late adolescence mediated by early adolescence verbal cognition was 59.19% (BCS) and 8.41% (MCS) for lexical knowledge and 61.00% when the outcome was reading comprehension (NCDS). Sensitivity analyses, used to assess whether unmeasured variables could have affected our mediation estimates, showed that for reading comprehension, in NCDS, the indirect effect is robust; only unmeasured confounders highly correlated with the mediator and outcome (ρ = .68) would explain away the indirect effect. For lexical knowledge, smaller correlations with hypothetical confounders (ρ = .33 for BCS) would suffice to render the indirect effect non-significant; the indirect effect for MCS non statistical significant.

CONCLUSIONS

Birth weight affects oral and written language skills (lexical knowledge and reading comprehension) in late adolescence via verbal cognition in early adolescence in two cohorts born in 1958 and 1970, but not in a cohort born at the turn of the millennium. These indirect effects were stronger than the direct effects and are unlikely to be explained by unmeasured confounders when the outcome involves complex skills such as reading comprehension.

Growth in Reading Comprehension and Verbal Ability From Grades 1 Through 9

We systematically assessed the relationships between growth of four components of verbal ability—Information, Similarities, Vocabulary, and Comprehension subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale–Revised—and longitudinal growth from Grades 1 to 9 of the Woodcock–Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery Passage Comprehension subtest while controlling for Word Identification and Word Attack, using multilevel growth models on a sample of 414 children. Growth was assessed over all grades (1-9), and separately for early grades (1-5) and later grades (5-9). Over all grades, growth in Word Identification had a substantial standardized loading to Passage Comprehension, and all four verbal abilities had smaller, but significant standardized loadings to Passage Comprehension ( p < .05), with Information and Vocabulary having slightly higher loadings than Similarities and Comprehension. For early grades, results were similar to the overall results, with the exception of Vocabulary, which had a nonsignificant loading to Passage Comprehension. For later grades, Word Identification again had the largest, but substantially smaller standardized loading on Passage Comprehension and standardized loadings of all four verbal abilities were statistically significant with Vocabulary and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Revised (WISC-R) Comprehension having appreciably higher loadings than in the previous analyses. Conversation- and interaction-based intervention and instruction in oral language in general, and vocabulary in particular throughout early childhood and continuing throughout the school years, combined with evidence-based instruction that systematically develops the skills of phonologic awareness, decoding, word reading, fluency, and comprehension in school, may provide a pathway to reducing the achievement gap in reading.