Discourse processing in poor comprehenders: An eye movement study
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Experimental Psychology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Holly Joseph (Principal Investigator) | |
| Kate Nation (Co-Investigator) |
Publications
Joseph H
(2021)
Online inference making and comprehension monitoring in children during reading: Evidence from eye movements.
in Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)
Joseph HS
(2015)
Working memory, reading ability and the effects of distance and typicality on anaphor resolution in children.
in Journal of cognitive psychology (Hove, England)
Joseph, H
(2021)
Online inference making and comprehension monitoring in children during reading: Evidence from eye movements
in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Joseph, H. S . S. L.
(2013)
Using eye movements to investigate word frequency effects in children's sentence reading
in School Psychology Review
Pérez A
(2015)
Evaluation and revision of inferential comprehension in narrative texts: an eye movement study
in Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
Reichle ED
(2013)
Using E-Z Reader to examine the concurrent development of eye-movement control and reading skill.
in Developmental review : DR
Wonnacott E
(2016)
Is children's reading "good enough"? Links between online processing and comprehension as children read syntactically ambiguous sentences.
in Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)
| Description | The scientific impact of our studies was to provide empirical evidence regarding exactly when during the reading process, and where in the text, children with poor comprehension diverge from those with good comprehension in their reading behaviour, to what extent online measures of reading comprehension are associated with offline comprehension, and whether prompts or characteristics of the text help children with poor comprehension to read more effectively. Our findings clearly demonstrate that children with poor comprehension skills do not differ from their peers in their initial reading of text, but do differ in how much time they spend reading text overall (Joseph, Liversedge, Bremner & Nation, submitted; Wonnacott, Joseph, Adelman & Nation, submitted), and how often they make a regression back to informative parts of text when making inferences (Joseph, Wonnacott & Nation, in prep.), and when using context to resolve implausibilities (Joseph & Nation, in prep.). We have also shown for the first time, that online measures of reading do not necessarily correlate with or predict offline comprehension; that is, spending longer re-reading or making more regressions back to a key part of text is not associated with answering a comprehension question correctly, although spending longer reading the question itself is (Wonnacott et al., submitted), and spending longer reading less informative parts of text is associated with answering a comprehension question incorrectly (Joseph, Wonnacott & Nation, in prep.). Finally, we have shown that presenting a comprehension question before (rather than after) a text does not help children with good or poor comprehension to answer the question correctly, although it does result in a different pattern of reading whereby children spend more time reading the question initially, and less time reading the relevant part of the text before answering the question (Joseph, Wonnacott & Nation, in prep). |
| Exploitation Route | Our findings impact primarily on teachers and other professionals working in education to promote higher literacy levels. While children who have difficulty learning to decode fluently are now relatively well-supported at primary school, the needs of children who have specific difficulties understanding what they read are often neglected. Our research project has highlighted to a number of local schools and practitioners the importance of comprehension, how children with comprehension difficulties might be helped (although this is still an open question), and what strategies might be less useful. The most important beneficiaries of our project are clearly the affected children themselves. On an individual level, we hope that our participants have benefitted somewhat from taking part in our experiments and engaging in additional reading practice. More broadly, the project has shown that this group of children read in a qualitatively different way from their peers, and this knowledge should impact future research and inform future interventions to directly benefit children with specific comprehension difficulties. |
| Sectors | Education |
| Description | This project addressed questions in basic science, but the results have clear implications for educational policy and practice, and therefore indirect economic and societal impacts. In conducting our research, the children who took part, often children with very poor reading skills benefited from one-to-one reading practice. The schools we worked with also benefited from the detailed summaries of experimental results and conclusions that we sent after data analysis. Many teachers, SENCOs and literacy support specialists were especially interested in our finding that children with poor comprehension skills show a qualitatively different pattern of reading behaviour, and that presenting the question before a text did not help children to provide a correct response. |
| Sector | Education |
| Impact Types | Economic |
| Description | Online inference-making in children with and without comprehension difficulties |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Each year the Centre for Developmental Science at the University of Oxford hosts a 'Making Links' day, which brings together local practitioners (educationists, teachers, SENCOs, speech therapists, educational psychologists, etc.) and research psychologists. We also invite those local teachers and clinicians who have helped with our research, as well as representatives from local parent groups for children with language, literacy or and communication impairments. We also prepare newsletters and information sheets for schools and families, and present overviews of our findings to teachers in schools we visit. The rationale for the project and the methodology (using eye movements to examine online comprehension processes during reading) of this project were reported at the 2011 Making Links meeting, and the results were presented at the 2013 meeting. The research also featured in the associated newsletters and research reports. Approximately 120 practitioners, SENCOs, teachers and others attended both meetings are were very interested in our innovative methodology and findings. This has led to some potential collaborations and some very interesting discussions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011,2013 |