Development of constructivist theory of mind from middle childhood to early adulthood and its relation to social cognition and behavior.

Two studies examined the development of constructivist theory of mind (ToM) during late childhood and early adolescence. In Study 1, a new measure was developed to assess participants' understanding of the interpretive and constructive processes embedded in memory, comprehension, attention, comparison, planning, and inference. Using this measure, Study 2 tested a mediational model in which prosocial reasoning about conflict mediated the relation between constructivist ToM and behavior problems in high school. Results showed that the onset of constructivist ToM occurs between late childhood and early adolescence and that adolescents who have more advanced constructivist ToM have more prosocial reasoning about conflict, which in turn mediated the relation with fewer serious behavior problems in high school, after controlling for academic performance and sex. In both studies, girls showed more advanced constructivist ToM than boys in high school.

Validating the Use of D for Measuring Lexical Diversity in Low-Income Kindergarten Children.

PURPOSE: Children from low-socioeconomic status families often perform poorly on standardized vocabulary assessments. The primary purpose of the study was to determine whether lexical diversity as measured by D (Malvern, Richards, Chipere, & Durán, 2004) serves as a valid measure of vocabulary in at-risk, low-income, predominantly African American kindergartners. METHOD: Kane's (1992) argument-based approach was used to validate D. Six assumptions were examined. Kindergartners (N = 210) from a high-poverty, low-achievement region of the United States were recorded narrating a wordless picture book and assessed using the Expressive Vocabulary Test, Second Edition (Williams, 2007), and the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Second Edition-Listening Comprehension subtest (Kaufman & Kaufman, 2004). RESULTS: D was distributed normally and did not vary as a function of language sample length or child ethnicity. D was significantly but weakly related to the Expressive Vocabulary Test, Second Edition, indicating some distinction between D and the Expressive Vocabulary Test, Second Edition, scores. Further, D was only marginally related to the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Second Edition-Listening Comprehension subtest. CONCLUSIONS: Although evidence was somewhat mixed, the study supported the view that D is a potentially valid measure of lexical diversity among low-income, predominantly African American kindergartners and could be a useful supplement to standardized vocabulary measures.

The impact of reading expressiveness on the listening comprehension of storybooks by prekindergarten children.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of oral reading expressiveness on the comprehension of storybooks by 4- and 5-year-old prekindergarten children. The possible impact of prosody on listening comprehension was explored. METHOD: Ninety-two prekindergarten children (M age = 57.26 months, SD = 3.89 months) listened to an expressive or inexpressive recording of 1 of 2 similar stories. Story comprehension was tested using assessments of both free recall and cued recall. RESULTS: Children showed statistically significantly better cued recall for the expressive readings of stories compared to the inexpressive readings of stories. This effect generalized across stories and when story length was controlled across both expressive and inexpressive versions. The effect of expressiveness on children's free recall was not significant. CONCLUSION: Highly expressive readings resulted in better comprehension of storybooks by prekindergarten children. Further, because recordings were used, this effect might be attributed to the facilitation of language processing rather than to enhanced social interaction between the reader and the child.

Teachers' Perceptions of Word Callers and Related Literacy Concepts.

The purpose of the study was to investigate teachers' perceptions of word callers as they relate to the concepts of reading fluency and reading comprehension. To this end, second grade students (N = 408) completed a series of reading fluency and reading comprehension assessments, and their teachers (N = 31) completed word caller nominations and a questionnaire regarding their concepts surrounding these issues. Our findings suggested that teachers often over nominated children as word callers. Further, questionnaire data indicated a great deal of ambiguity and inconsistency exists regarding teachers' understanding and use of the term word caller. By contrast, teachers seemed to possess a veridical understanding of the related terms reading fluency and reading comprehension.

Effects of a conversation intervention on the expressive vocabulary development of prekindergarten children.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a conversation intervention including 500 min of linguistically and cognitively complex talk on the expressive vocabulary growth of prekindergarten children. METHOD: Children (N = 73) were randomly assigned to control or a 10-week experimental intervention condition. Twice weekly, children in the intervention condition received 25 min of intensive conversation with an adult emphasizing use of rare words, linguistic recasts, and open-ended questions. Expressive vocabulary was measured using the Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT; Williams, 1997) and lexical diversity obtained through a language sample. RESULTS: Children in the intervention group showed greater growth on the EVT than controls. Children in the intervention group with low vocabulary at pretest also showed greater growth in lexical diversity than controls. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Findings suggest that relatively small amounts of linguistically and cognitively complex conversation with a trained adult can be a useful strategy for improving the expressive vocabulary skills of children with low vocabularies.

Effects of a supplemental Spanish oral language program on sentence length, complexity, and grammaticality in Spanish-speaking children attending English-only preschools.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a supplemental Spanish language instruction program for children who spoke Spanish as their native language and were attending English-only preschool programs. Specifically, the study evaluated the program's effects on the children's Spanish sentence length in words, subordination index, and grammaticality of sentences. METHOD: Forty-five Spanish-speaking children attending English-only prekindergarten classrooms were selected for study. Of those, 15 children received 30 min of Spanish instruction 5 days a week for 16 weeks. The program targeted 5-10 vocabulary words a week, dialogic book reading, phonemic awareness, and letter knowledge. The remaining 30 children participated in regular preschool English instruction. Students were evaluated before intervention, immediately after intervention, and 4 months following intervention. RESULTS: Repeated measures analyses of variance indicated that the children who received the small-group supplemental Spanish language instruction made significant gains in their Spanish sentence length in words and subordination index when compared to those receiving regular English-only classroom instruction. There were no differences in the children's grammaticality of sentences. DISCUSSION AND CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: The findings demonstrate that a daily short native language program has significant effects on sentence length in words and subordination index in English language learners who are attending English-only preschool programs.

A Short-Term Longitudinal Study of the Relationship between Motivation to Read and Reading Fluency Skill in Second Grade.

This short-term longitudinal study investigated the relationships between students' reading self-concept, goals for reading, and reading fluency skill over the course of the second grade year. Second grade children (N=185) were administered the Test of Word Reading Efficiency, the second grade Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, and an adapted version of Motivation to Read Profile at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. Results showed that students' goals for reading were related to reading self-concept, but unrelated to reading fluency. In addition, reading self-concept was significantly related to reading fluency at each time point. Latent-variable path analysis was used to test four potential relationships between students' reading self-concept and reading fluency skill: (a) an independence model; (b) a skill development model; (c) a self-enhancement model; and (d) a reciprocal effects model. Support for a reciprocal model was found between students' reading fluency skill and reading self-concept over the second grade year. This finding also indicated that students' reading self-concept begins to influence their reading achievement earlier than previous research had indicated. Implications for educational practice and future research will also be discussed.

Insights into Fluency Instruction: Short- and Long-term Effects of Two Reading Programs.

The purpose of the study was to examine short- and long-term effects of two instructional approaches designed to improve the reading fluency of second grade children: Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (or FORI; Stahl & Heubach, 2005) and a wide reading approach (Kuhn et al., 2006). By the end of second grade, children in the wide reading classrooms showed better fluency and self-concept compared to children in control classrooms. Classroom observations indicated children in FORI classrooms were more likely to be off-task than controls. However, by the end of third grade, children in both programs displayed better comprehension. We conclude that extensive and long-term focus on the oral reading of complex texts using practices that scaffold reading in second grade is beneficial for the long-term development of reading comprehension skills.

Myth and Reality of the Word Caller: The Relation Between Teacher Nominations and Prevalence Among Elementary School Children.

The purpose of the study was to investigate (a) the prevalence of word callers in elementary school, (b) the accuracy of teachers' word caller nominations, and (c) teachers' conceptualization of reading fluency and reading comprehension. To this end, 2 cross-sectional studies of second- and third- (N = 868) and of third- and fifth-grade (N = 202) children were conducted. Our findings suggest that word callers occur infrequently in the primary grades but that they are more prevalent in late elementary school. Regardless of grade level, teachers often overnominated children as word callers. Furthermore, a great deal of ambiguity and inconsistency seems to exist regarding teachers' understanding and use of the term. These findings suggest that the term should be used relatively rarely and that reading educators should be cautious about their identification of word callers in early elementary school.

The influence of reading unit size on the development of Stroop interference in early word decoding.

The purpose of the experiments was to determine the automatic use of large or small word reading units in young readers in the absence of word decoding strategies. Picture-word Stroop interference was examined from four types of conflicting labels: (a) words containing both highly predictable grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) units and highly consistent rime units (henceforth, Hi-GPC + Hi-Rime); (b) words with highly predictable GPC units and less consistent rime units (Hi-GPC + Lo-Rime); (c) words with low predictability GPC units and highly consistent rime units (Low GPC + High Rime); (d) nonwords that contained both highly predictable GPC and highly consistent rime units. Naming time for pictures containing these labels was compared against that for pictures with random letter strings or no labels. In Experiment 1, Stroop interference was examined in first, second, and third grade children to determine whether there was developmental change in the presence of rime or GPC interference. In Experiment 2, Stroop interference was examined as a function of relative reading skill in first grade children. In Experiment 3, Stroop interference in adults was compared to the use of rime or GPC pronunciation strategies for nonword reading. In all experiments, Stroop interference in picture naming was longer for pictures with highly predictable GPC unit labels than less predictable GPC unit labels. However, in Experiment 3, even though adults showed interference from predictable GPC units in the Stroop task, they always preferred rime pronunciation for ambiguous non-words in the nonword reading task. It is argued that the current experiments provide evidence for a flexible units model.

A Longitudinal Study of the Development of Reading Prosody as a Dimension of Oral Reading Fluency in Early Elementary School Children.

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of reading prosody and its impact on later reading skills. Suprasegmental features of oral reading were measured for 92 children at the end of grades 1 and 2 and oral reading fluency and reading comprehension assessments at the end of the third-grade school year. Tests were carried out to determine (a) the manner in which the key features of oral reading prosody unfold with development and (b) the extent to which the development of reading prosody is predictive of later oral reading fluency and comprehension outcomes beyond word reading skills alone. Path model tests found a relationship between the presence of fewer pausal intrusions during oral reading in first grade and subsequent development of an adult-like intonation contour in second grade. Outcome model tests indicated that the intonation contour was a significant predictor of later fluency once word reading skills were taken into account. Decreases in the number of pausal intrusions between the first and second grades and early acquisition of an adult-like intonation contour predicted better comprehension later. Thus, prosodic oral reading might signal that children have achieved fluency and are more capable of understanding what they read. Results of this study support the inclusion of prosody in formal definitions of oral reading fluency.

Sound-symbolism: a piece in the puzzle of word learning.

Sound-symbolism is the idea that the relationship between word sounds and word meaning is not arbitrary for all words, but rather that there are subsets of words in the world's languages for which sounds and their symbols have some degree of correspondence. The present research investigates sound-symbolism as a possible route to the learning of an unknown word's meaning. Three studies compared the guesses that adult participants made regarding the potential meanings of sound-symbolic and non-sound symbolic obsolete words. In each study, participants were able to generate better definitions for sound-symbolic words when compared to non-sound symbolic words. Participants were also more likely to recognize the meanings of sound symbolic words. The superior performance on sound-symbolic words held even when definitions generated on the basis of sound association were eliminated. It is concluded that sound symbolism is a word property that influences word learning.

Performance on the PPVT-III and the EVT: applicability of the measures with African American and European American preschool children.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine whether two vocabulary measures were appropriate for the evaluation of African American children and children whose mothers have low education levels, regardless of gender. METHOD: Data were collected for 210 high-risk, preschool children from a southeastern state in the United States on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test--Third Edition (PPVT-III; L. M. Dunn & L.M. Dunn, 1997) and the Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT; K. T. Williams, 1997). RESULTS: Results indicated that African American children and children whose mothers had low education levels tended to score lower on both measures than did children from European American backgrounds and children whose mothers had a high school or higher education; however, this effect was larger for the PPVT-III. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Data suggest that the EVT is a better indicator of a child's "vocabulary" skill, and that the PPVT-III has a greater tendency than the EVT to place African American children and children whose mothers have low education levels at risk for being unfairly identified as presenting with a potential language disorder. These data indicate that practitioners should use alternative assessment methods such as nonstandard and dynamic assessments to test children's vocabulary skill. In particular, if they use the PPVT-III, practitioners should take great caution in interpreting test results as evidence of a vocabulary problem in African American children and children whose mothers have low education levels.

Prosody of Syntactically Complex Sentences in the Oral Reading of Young Children.

Prosodic, or expressive, reading is considered to be one of the essential features of the achievement of reading fluency. The purpose of this study was to determine (a) the degree to which the prosody of syntactically complex sentences varied as a function of reading speed and accuracy and (b) the role that reading prosody might play in mediating individual differences in comprehension. Spectrographic analysis of 80 third graders' and 29 adults' reading of a syntactically complex text was carried out. Oral reading skill was measured through standardized assessments. Pitch changes (changes in fundamental frequency) and pause duration were measured for sentence-final words of basic declarative sentences, basic declarative quotatives, wh questions, and yes-no questions; words preceding commas in complex adjectival phrases; and words preceding phrase-final commas. Children who had quick and accurate oral reading had shorter and more adultlike pause structures, larger pitch declinations at the end of basic declarative sentences, and larger pitch rises at the end of yes-no questions. Furthermore, children who showed larger basic declarative sentence declinations and larger pitch rises following yes-no questions tended to demonstrate greater reading comprehension skills.

Teaching Children to Become Fluent and Automatic Readers.

The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of two instructional approaches designed to improve the reading fluency of 2nd-grade children. The first approach was based on Stahl and Heubach's (2005) fluency-oriented reading instruction (FORI) and involved the scaffolded, repeated reading of grade-level texts over the course of each week. The second was a wide-reading approach that also involved scaffolded instruction. hut that incorporated the reading of 3 different grade-level texts each week and provicled significantly less opportunity for repetition. By the end of the school year. FORI and wide-reading approaches showed similar benefits for standardized measures of word reading efficiency and reading comprehension skills compared to control approachcs. although the benefits of the wide-reading approach emerged earlier and included oral text reading fluency skill. Thus, we conclude that fluency instruction that emphasizes extensive oral reading of grade-level text using scaffolded approaches is effective for promoting reading development in young learners.

Becoming a fluent and automatic reader in the early elementary school years.

The goals of this study were to (a) develop an empirically based model regarding the development of fluent and automatic reading in the early elementary school years and (b) determine whether fluent text-reading skills provided benefits for reading comprehension beyond those accounted for by fluent word decoding. First-, second-, and third-grade children completed a series of reading tasks targeting word and nonword processing, text reading, spelling knowledge, autonomous reading, and reading comprehension. Structural equation modeling was carried out to evaluate how these skills operated together to produce fluent text reading and good comprehension. Evidence supported a simple reading fluency model for the early elementary school years suggesting that fluent word and text reading operate together with autonomous reading to produce good comprehension.

The development of interpretations for novel noun-noun conceptual combinations during the early school years.

This research investigates issues surrounding early school children's use of the similarity between head and modifier terms in deriving interpretations for novel noun-noun conceptual combinations. In these experiments, 6- and 9-year-olds and adults were asked to formulate interpretations of similar and dissimilar conceptual combinations. Both children and adults were sensitive to the similarity aspect of conceptual combinations, although the children had some difficulty with the property interpretations that high-similarity combinations require. Next, we examined 40 popular children's books for the presence of noun-noun conceptual combinations. Adult participants provided interpretations for these combinations and rated the similarity of the head and modifier nouns. Results indicated that there were few high-similarity combinations and few combinations requiring property interpretations, suggesting that children have limited exposure to highly similar combinations and property interpretations. Further analysis of children's interpretations indicates that they may have difficulty in selecting and integrating properties of the modifier onto the head, a process required by property interpretations.

Becoming a Fluent Reader: Reading Skill and Prosodic Features in the Oral Reading of Young Readers.

Prosodic reading, or reading with expression, is considered one of the hallmarks of fluent reading. The major purpose of the study was to learn how reading prosody is related to decoding and reading comprehension skills. Suprasegmental features of oral reading were measured in 2nd- and 3rd-grade children (N = 123) and 24 adults. Reading comprehension and word decoding skills were assessed. Children with faster decoding speed made shorter and less variable intersentential pauses, shorter intrasentential pauses, larger sentence-final fundamental frequency (F(0)) declinations, and better matched the adult prosodic F(0) profile. Two structural equation models found evidence of a relationship between decoding speed and reading prosody as well as decoding speed and comprehension. There was only minimal evidence that prosodic reading was an important mediator of reading comprehension skill.

Interaction Quality during Partner Reading.

The influence of social relationships, positive interdependence, and teacher structure on the quality of partner reading interactions was examined. Partner reading, a scripted cooperative learning strategy, is often used in classrooms to promote the development of fluent and automatic reading skills. Forty-three pairs of second grade children were observed during partner reading sessions taking place in 12 classrooms. The degree to which the partners displayed social cooperation (instrumental support, emotional support, and conflict management) and on/off task behavior was evaluated. Children who chose their own partners showed greater social cooperation than those children whose teacher selected their partner. However, when the positive interdependence requirements of the task were not met within the pair (neither child had the skills to provide reading support or no one needed support), lower levels of on-task behavior were observed. Providing basic partner reading script instruction at the beginning of the year was associated with better social cooperation during partner reading, but providing elaborated instruction or no instruction was associated with poorer social cooperation. It is recommended that teachers provide basic script instruction and allow children to choose their own partners. Additionally, pairings of low ability children with other low ability children and high ability children with other high ability children should be avoided. Teachers may want to suggest alternate partners for children who inadvertently choose such pairings or adjust the text difficulty to the pair. Overall, partner reading seems to be an enjoyable pedagogical strategy for teaching reading fluency.