Applications of Latent Class Modeling to Investigate the Structure Underlying Reading Comprehension Items

This article demonstrates the usefulness of latent class modeling in addressing several measurement issues, particularly those related to hierarchical structures among skills. A study is described that explores a variety of previously proposed hypotheses regarding the structural relations among multiple-choice items used in the assessment of reading comprehension. The posited relations investigated were either compatible with a holistic or a subskill view of reading comprehension. Two types of literal comprehension items (tapping important and unimportant information) and two types of inferential comprehension items (within-sentence inferences and main idea inferences) were assessed relative to various hierarchical relation models. For two respondent groups (good and poor readers), all item types appeared to be measures of a single underlying atttribute. Furthermore, evidence indicated that reader groups differed in the latent proportion of acquirers of the underlying attribute. Finally, in terms of error rates, particular items and passages appeared to be better than others for assessing individuals with regard to the attribute.     

Using Restricted Latent Class Models to Map the Skill Structure of Achievement Items

This paper presents a new method for using certain restricted latent class models, referred to as binary skills models, to determine the skills required by a set o f test items. The method is applied to reading achievement data from a nationally representative sample o f fourth-grade students and offers useful perspectives on test structure and examinee ability, distinct from those provided by other methods o f analysis. Models fitted to small, overlapping sets o f items are integrated into a common skill map, and the nature o f each skill is then inferred from the characteristics o f the items for which it is required. The reading comprehension items examined conform closely to a unidimensional scale with six discrete skill levels that range from an inability to comprehend or match isolated words in a reading passage to the abilities required to integrate passage content with general knowledge and to recognize the main ideas o f the most difficult passages on the test.     

Using the Attribute Hierarchy Method to Make Diagnostic Inferences about Examinees’ Cognitive Skills in Critical Reading

The purpose of this study is to apply the attribute hierarchy method (AHM) to a subset of SAT critical reading items and illustrate how the method can be used to promote cognitive diagnostic inferences. The AHM is a psychometric procedure for classifying examinees’ test item responses into a set of attribute mastery patterns associated with different components from a cognitive model. The study was conducted in two steps. In step 1, three cognitive models were developed by reviewing selected literature in reading comprehension as well as research related to SAT Critical Reading. Then, the cognitive models were validated by having a sample of students think aloud as they solved each item. In step 2, psychometric analyses were conducted on the SAT critical reading cognitive models by evaluating the model‐data fit between the expected and observed response patterns produced from two random samples of 2,000 examinees who wrote the items. The model that provided best data‐model fit was then used to calculate attribute probabilities for 15 examinees to illustrate our diagnostic testing procedure.     

Construct Equivalence of PISA Reading Comprehension Measured With Paper‐Based and Computer‐Based Assessments

For many years, reading comprehension in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was measured via paper‐based assessment (PBA). In the 2015 cycle, computer‐based assessment (CBA) was introduced, raising the question of whether central equivalence criteria required for a valid interpretation of the results are fulfilled. As an extension of the PISA 2012 main study in Germany, a random subsample of two intact PISA reading clusters, either computerized or paper‐based, was assessed using a random group design with an additional within‐subject variation. The results are in line with the hypothesis of construct equivalence. That is, the latent cross‐mode correlation of PISA reading comprehension was not significantly different from the expected correlation between the two clusters. Significant mode effects on item difficulties were observed for a small number of items only. Interindividual differences found in mode effects were negatively correlated with reading comprehension, but were not predicted by basic computer skills or gender. Further differences between modes were found with respect to the number of missing values.     

Computerized Mastery Testing Using Fuzzy Set Decision Theory

Lewis and Sheehan (1990) developed a computerized sequential mastery test procedure that utilizes Bayesian decision theory to make "master," "nonmaster," or "continue testing" decisions. While maintaining their general framework of administering sequential testlets, a fuzzy set approach was used to develop an alternative computerized mastery test. This new procedure differs from Lewis and Sheehan's in that the decision rule is determined using fuzzy set decision theory, and ability estimates are obtained using the Rasch model rather than a three-parameter logistic model. This article describes this new approach and illustrates the differences between the fuzzy set and Bayesian methods by way of an example.     

Mode of acquisition as a factor in deaf children's reading comprehension

This article examines the role of mode of acquisition (MoA) of word meanings in reading comprehension: children acquire word meanings using perceptual information (e.g., hearing, seeing, or smelling the referent) and/or linguistic information (e.g., verbal explanations). A total of 72 deaf and 99 hearing children between 7 and 15 years of age performed a self-paced reading task. Comprehension scores increased with age in both groups, but reading speed increased over age only for the hearing participants. For both groups, reading times on linguistically acquired words were longer than on perceptually acquired words. Although deaf children scored lower than hearing children in both conditions, comprehension scores for both groups were lower on linguistic items than on perceptual items. Thus, MoA influences reading comprehension, but the deaf show difficulty on both the perceptual and the linguistic items.     

Predicting individual differences in reading comprehension: a twin study

We examined the Simple View of reading from a behavioral genetic perspective. Two aspects of word decoding (phonological decoding and word recognition), two aspects of oral language skill (listening comprehension and vocabulary), and reading comprehension were assessed in a twin sample at age 9. Using latent factor models, we found that overlap among phonological decoding, word recognition, listening comprehension, vocabulary, and reading comprehension was primarily due to genetic influences. Shared environmental influences accounted for associations among word recognition, listening comprehension, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Independent of phonological decoding and word recognition, there was a separate genetic link between listening comprehension, vocabulary, and reading comprehension and a specific shared environmental link between vocabulary and reading comprehension. There were no residual genetic or environmental influences on reading comprehension. The findings provide evidence for a genetic basis to the “Simple View” of reading.     

Relations Among Oral Reading Fluency,Silent Reading Fluency,and Reading Comprehension: A Latent Variable Study of First-Grade Readers

In the present study, we examined oral and silent reading fluency and their relations with reading comprehension. In a series of structural equation models with latent variables using data from 316 first-grade students, (a) silent and oral reading fluency were found to be related yet distinct forms of reading fluency, (b) silent reading fluency predicted reading comprehension better for skilled readers than for average readers, (c) list reading fluency predicted reading comprehension better for average readers than for skilled readers, and (d) listening comprehension predicted reading comprehension better for skilled readers than for average readers.     

Using OpenAI GPT to Generate Reading Comprehension Items

The purpose of this study is to introduce and evaluate a method for generating reading comprehension items using template-based automatic item generation. To begin, we describe a new model for generating reading comprehension items called the text analysis cognitive model assessing inferential skills across different reading passages. Next, the text analysis cognitive model is used to generate reading comprehension items where examinees are required to read a passage and identify the irrelevant sentence. The sentences for the generated passages were created using OpenAI GPT-3.5. Finally, the quality of the generated items was evaluated. The generated items were reviewed by three subject-matter experts. The generated items were also administered to a sample of 1,607 Grade-8 students. The correct options for the generated items produced a similar level of difficulty and yielded strong discrimination power while the incorrect options served as effective distractors. Implications of augmented intelligence for item development are discussed.     

Reading for different goals: the interplay of EFL college students' multiple goals,reading strategy use and reading comprehension

This study explored the effects of achievement goals on English as a foreign language (EFL) college students' reading strategy use and reading comprehension from the perspective of multiple goals. Fifty‐seven participants verbalised their thoughts while reading an English expository essay. They also completed assessments on their reading goal profiles and reading proficiency. The results of stimulated recall indicated that participants with profiles characterised by strong mastery and strong performance goals used intra‐sentential, inter‐paragraph, intra‐paragraph and monitoring/evaluating strategies significantly more frequently than did their counterparts. In contrast, participants with profiles characterised by strong mastery but weak performance goals utilised these strategies more often than those participants with weak mastery but strong performance goals. The strong‐mastery–strong‐performance goal profile served as a significant, positive predictor for degrees of reading comprehension. In line with these findings, suggestions for EFL reading pedagogy are provided.     

The effects of age and sublexical automaticity on reading outcomes for students with reading disabilities

For students with reading disabilities, reading fluency has proven difficult to remediate. The current study examined age‐related effects on measures of word and text‐reading outcomes, within the context of a phonologically based remedial reading program. The contribution of speeded‐reading of sublexical sound–spelling patterns to fluency outcomes was also examined. The youngest group of participants showed better outcomes on measures of word and pseudoword reading. All age groups made significant and meaningful improvements on measures of reading fluency and reading comprehension. Participants' mastery of speeded, sublexical sound–spelling reading contributed variance to fluency outcomes beyond pre‐intervention fluency scores. Practice with sublexical spelling patterns may be one important component of programs directed at remediating accuracy and fluency deficits for students with reading disabilities. What is already known about this topic

• Reading fluency has proven difficult to remediate for students with reading disabilities.
• Training with sublexical sound–spelling patterns has increased recognition of the trained patterns, but transfer has been limited.
• Young children with reading difficulties appear to have an advantage at closing the reading achievement gap; however, there are some inconsistencies in the literature.

What this paper adds

• Automaticity with sublexical patterns made a unique contribution to fluency outcomes in this sample of students with reading disabilities.
• In the context of the reading program examined, all age groups made significant and meaningful standard score gains on reading fluency.
• Young children did not score higher than the two older groups on measures of oral reading fluency or reading comprehension; bringing into question conclusions drawn from prevention versus intervention studies.

Implications for theory and practice

• Findings lend support to models of reading acquisition that emphasize multilayered, sublexical spelling–sound knowledge as important to reading fluency, beyond that of sight‐word reading efficiency.
• Including speeded practice of a broad range of sublexical sound–spelling patterns and training these to mastery deserves further study as one potential approach to improving fluency interventions for students with reading disabilities.
• We suggest that this sublexical training may mimic reading practice in terms of building orthographic representations that support fluent reading.

     

Using Prompt Fading to Teach Self‐Questioning to Fifth Graders with LD: Effects on Reading Comprehension

Students with LD who struggle with reading comprehension can benefit from instruction on how to read strategically. One strategy that has been demonstrated to increase reading comprehension is self‐questioning. In this study, two fifth graders with LD were taught to self‐generate questions using a prompt fading procedure. The participants were provided with expository reading passages with embedded questions. As each participant demonstrated proficiency with answering the embedded questions correctly, the embedded questions were systematically faded and replaced with a prompt for the students to generate their own questions. A multiple baseline across participants design demonstrated that the self‐questioning intervention resulted in improvements in reading comprehension for both students. Additionally, the students demonstrated evidence of maintenance and generalization of reading comprehension outcomes.     

Effect of delay on search decisions in a task-oriented reading environment

The goal of this study was to determine the effect of setting a delay between reading a text and answering comprehension questions on when-to-search and what-to-search decisions in a task-oriented reading environment. Fifty-five eighth-grade students were randomly divided into two groups. One group read one text, answered comprehension questions regarding the text with the text available, and subsequently repeated the procedure with a second text (immediate condition). The other group read both texts first and then answered, with the texts available, the questions for the first text and then for the second text (delayed condition). In both conditions, the readers’ actions during the task were recorded. The results demonstrated that the students in the delayed condition made more search decisions. In addition, moderated mediation analyses indicated that setting a delay had a positive indirect effect on performance via increased searching only for the students with average and high comprehension skills. Moreover, decisions regarding what information to search for depended exclusively on comprehension skill. Instructional implications are discussed.     

Fluency Has a Role in the Simple View of Reading

The Simple View of Reading (SVR) suggests that the components of reading comprehension are decoding and linguistic comprehension. Given research that suggests that fluency is a separate construct from decoding and linguistic comprehension in fourth grade, the aim of this study was to examine the role of fluency in the SVR model. Analyses of data from 248 fourth-grade children explored whether the influence of fluency on reading comprehension is direct or whether fluency plays an indirect role on reading comprehension as a mediator or moderator of decoding. Structural equation modeling and latent regression analyses revealed that reading fluency plays a mediating role in explaining the relation between decoding and reading comprehension. This novel finding is placed in the context of studies that reported either a direct effect or no effect of reading fluency in SVR.     

Examining a motivational treatment and its impact on adolescents' reading comprehension and fluency

The authors' purpose was to examine adolescents' reading motivation in relation to standardized assessments of reading comprehension and fluency. After a reading pretest, 60 ninth-grade students (M age = 14.9 years) were randomly assigned to two groups. Compared to those in the control condition, those administered brief oral feedback intended to improve motivation indicated an increased focus on mastery goals and greater perceived control during a reading posttest. No differences were found with regard to four other aspects of motivation. Students in the treatment condition, including struggling readers more specifically, did not score better on the posttest measures of reading comprehension or fluency. Hence, results failed to replicate Zentall and Lee's (2012 Zentall, S. S., &; Lee, J. (2012). A reading motivation intervention with differential outcomes for students at risk for reading disabilities, ADHD, and typical comparisons: ‘Clever is and clever does’. Learning Disability Quarterly, 35, 248–259. doi:10.1177/0731948712438556[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) findings with younger readers. Findings are discussed with regard to the theoretical and practical implications for understanding reading motivation.     

Embracing the Complexity of Instruction: A Study of the Effects of Teachers' Instruction on Students' Reading Comprehension

The purpose of this study was to determine whether third-grade teachers' instructional actions during reading comprehension lessons contributed to their students' reading comprehension achievement. Our framework focused on teachers' emphasis on three dimensions of instruction (pedagogical structure, teacher-directed instruction, and support for student learning), as observed in comprehension lessons across a year. Third-grade teachers' instruction was analyzed first by measuring their latent propensity to engage in instructional actions in the three dimensions and then by using these latent variables in a multilevel model to examine their students' gains in reading comprehension. Results provided support for the theoretical dimensions, taking into account contextual variables including lesson, student, and teacher characteristics; teachers' engagement in teacher-directed instruction and their support for student learning significantly contributed to their students' reading comprehension. Results suggest that analysis of teachers' instructional actions within and across lessons is a promising approach for the study of effective reading instruction.     

How simple is reading in Arabic? A cross‐sectional investigation of reading comprehension from first to sixth grade

This study aimed to examine, from a cross‐sectional perspective, the extent to which the simple view of reading (SVR) model can be adapted to the Arabic language. This was carried out by verifying, in both beginning and more skilled readers, whether the unique orthographical and morphological characteristics of Arabic contribute to reading comprehension beyond decoding and listening comprehension abilities. Reading comprehension was evaluated in a large sample of first to sixth‐grade Arabic‐speaking children. The participants' decoding and listening comprehension abilities were investigated together with their orthographic and morphological knowledge. Path analysis indicated that reading comprehension was moderately explained by the SVR (56–38%). Orthographic and morphological knowledge explained an additional 10–22% of the variance beyond that explained by the basic SVR components. These findings demonstrate that certain linguistic aspects of Arabic impact reading processes differently when compared with other languages. The psycholinguistic implications of these findings are discussed in the light of previous findings in the literature.

What is already known about this topic?

• The ‘simple view of reading’ model explains reading comprehension as the product of decoding and listening comprehension.
• This model explains between 70% and 83% of the variance in reading comprehension in English, in which the contribution of decoding and listening comprehension varies as a function of the level of the readers.
• Orthographic transparency and other unique characteristics of the languages studied might influence reading comprehension in these languages

What does this paper add?

• Arabic is a diglossic language that is characterised by relatively unique orthographic and morphological features for which the validity of the simple view of reading (SVR) has not been tested.
• The basic components of the SVR (decoding and listening comprehension) have explained between 56% and 38% of the variance in reading comprehension in children from the first to the sixth grade.
• Decoding, as one of the basic components of the SVR, failed to contribute to reading comprehension when orthography and morphology were considered.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• This large‐scale cross‐sectional study is the first of its type to assess reading comprehension in Arabic.
• The study justifies the necessity to assess the suitability of the SVR in languages with very specific linguistic characteristics such as Arabic.
• The results emphasise the necessity of considering the complex orthography and the rich morphology of Arabic for improving teaching, assessment and intervention.

     

Proximal and Distal Predictors of Reading Comprehension: Evidence from Young Korean Readers

The present study investigated proximal and distal predictors of reading comprehension by including latent factors such as alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, semantic knowledge, word reading, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension. The sample consisted of 79 five-year-old Korean-monolingual children who were assessed at the end of the school year. The results showed that alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and semantic knowledge latent variables were all positively and highly related to word-reading skills, but phonological awareness made a unique contribution above and beyond alphabet knowledge and semantic knowledge. Word reading was highly related to oral reading fluency and directly related to reading comprehension. Oral reading fluency, although a separate construct from word reading accuracy, was not uniquely related to reading comprehension after accounting for the effects of word reading and semantic knowledge. Semantic knowledge was fairly strongly and uniquely related to reading comprehension.     

命题者：影响阅读理解测试效度的一个因素

本研究应用项目反应理论,从被试的阅读能力值和题目的难度值这两个方面,分析阅读理解测试中多项选择题命题者对考试效度的影响。实验设计中,将两组被试同时施测于一项“阅读水平测试”,根据测试结果估计出的两组被试能力值之间无显著性差异。再次将这两组被试分别施测于两位不同命题者所命制的题目,尽管这些题目均产生于相同的阅读材料,且题目的难度值之间并没有显著性差异,被试的表现却显著不同。Rasch模型认为,被试表现由被试能力和试题难度共同决定。因此,可以推测,这是由于不同命题者所命制的题目影响了被试的表现,并进而影响了使用多项选择题进行阅读理解测试的效度。