ABSTRACT
Elementary school multicultural reading curricula include characters with diverse proper names, which are often unfamiliar and differ phonetically from students' native language. These names could impact reading outcomes by increasing students' cognitive load and/or creating cognitive disfluency. In Study 1, students in grades 1 through 2 read a standard passage including common names and a matched passage including unfamiliar names of Russian origin. A paired samples t test indicated unfamiliar diverse names in grade-level passages significantly reduced students' reading comprehension. Study 2 was designed to determine if preteaching diverse names would mitigate their adverse effects on reading comprehension. Results indicated second-grade students who received preteaching comprehended significantly more of the passage than those who did not receive preteaching. Discussion focuses on the need for research clarifying the relationship between multicultural learning materials and academic outcomes and validating efficient methods for familiarizing students with difficult, phonetically unfamiliar words. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Subject(s)
Comprehension , Cultural Diversity , Curriculum , Names , Reading , Students , Child , Female , Humans , MaleABSTRACT
A concurrent multiple-baseline across-tasks design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer flash-card sight-word recognition intervention with elementary-school students with intellectual disability. This intervention allowed the participants to self-determine each response interval and resulted in both participants acquiring previously unknown words across all word sets. Discussion focuses on the need to evaluate and compare computer flash-card sight-word recognition interventions with fixed and self-determined response intervals across students and dependent variables, including rates of inappropriate behavior and self-determination in students with intellectual disability. (PsycINFO Database Record
