Two pup vocalization types are genetically and functionally separable in deer mice.

Vocalization is a widespread social behavior in vertebrates that can affect fitness in the wild. Although many vocal behaviors are highly conserved, heritable features of specific vocalization types can vary both within and between species, raising the questions of why and how some vocal behaviors evolve. Here, using new computational tools to automatically detect and cluster vocalizations into distinct acoustic categories, we compare pup isolation calls across neonatal development in eight taxa of deer mice (genus Peromyscus) and compare them with laboratory mice (C57BL6/J strain) and free-living, wild house mice (Mus musculus domesticus). Whereas both Peromyscus and Mus pups produce ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), Peromyscus pups also produce a second call type with acoustic features, temporal rhythms, and developmental trajectories that are distinct from those of USVs. In deer mice, these lower frequency "cries" are predominantly emitted in postnatal days one through nine, whereas USVs are primarily made after day 9. Using playback assays, we show that cries result in a more rapid approach by Peromyscus mothers than USVs, suggesting a role for cries in eliciting parental care early in neonatal development. Using a genetic cross between two sister species of deer mice exhibiting large, innate differences in the acoustic structure of cries and USVs, we find that variation in vocalization rate, duration, and pitch displays different degrees of genetic dominance and that cry and USV features can be uncoupled in second-generation hybrids. Taken together, this work shows that vocal behavior can evolve quickly between closely related rodent species in which vocalization types, likely serving distinct functions in communication, are controlled by distinct genetic loci.

Exploring Thresholds in the Foundational Skills for Reading and Comprehension Outcomes in the Context of Postsecondary Readers.

There is a range of reasons why college students may be underprepared to read, but one possibility is that some college students are below a threshold of proficiency in the component skills of reading. The presence of thresholds means that when students fall below that threshold, their proficiency in that component skill of reading is not sufficient for there to be a relationship with comprehension performance. The present study assessed (a) whether there were thresholds in proficiencies in foundational skills, (b) whether students falling below the thresholds were disproportionately in developmental literary programs (i.e., institutionally designated as underprepared), and (c) the implications of being below the thresholds on engaging in strategic processing during reading. College students were administered assessments of foundational literacy skills, text comprehension, and strategic processing of texts. The sample included students who were enrolled in developmental literacy programs and students who were not. Thresholds were found in the foundational skills associated with word-, sentence-, and discourse-level processing. Participants below these thresholds were represented disproportionately by students determined to be underprepared for college and assigned to developmental literacy programs. Finally, students falling below the thresholds demonstrated lower reading strategy scores than students above the threshold.

The impact of computer-assisted technology on literacy acquisition during COVID-19-related school closures: Group-level effects and predictors of individual-level outcomes.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic led to school closure and loss of in-person instruction during the 2019-2020 academic year across the United States, which had a profound impact on the reading development of beginning readers. In this study we tested if a research-informed educational technology (EdTech) program-GraphoLearn-could help alleviate the COVID-19 slide. We also sought to understand the profiles of children who benefitted most from this EdTech program. Methods: We tested participants' (N = 172 K-2 children) early literacy skills using a standardized measure (STAR) before and after playing GraphoLearn, and used the pre to post difference as the dependent variable. We first compared children's STAR actual and expected growth. Then we conducted a multiple regression analysis with data about engagement with GraphoLearn included as predictors. Additional predictors were extracted from GraphoLearn performance at study onset to assess children's letter-sound knowledge, rime awareness, and word recognition. Results: The difference between actual average reading growth and expected growth in a regular school year was not statistically significant. This suggests that children in our sample seem to be gaining reading skills as expected in a regular school year. Our multiple linear regression model (which accounted for R2 = 48% of reading growth) showed that older children, with higher baseline GraphoLearn word recognition, who played more units in a fixed number of days, made significantly more early literacy progress. Discussion: While lacking a control group, our preliminary results suggest that an EdTech program such as GraphoLearn may be a useful reading instructional tool during school shutdowns. In addition, our results suggest that practice with GraphoLearn was more effective and efficient when foundational instruction was already in place.

Educational Psychology Is Evolving to Accommodate Technology, Multiple Disciplines, and Twenty-First-Century Skills.

This article covers recent research activities in educational psychology that have an interdisciplinary emphasis and that accommodate twenty-first-century skills in addition to the traditional foundations of literacy, numeracy, science, reasoning (problem-solving), and academic subject matter. We emphasize digital technologies because they are capable of tracking learning data in rich detail and reliably delivering interventions that are tailored to individual learners in particular sociocultural contexts. This is a departure from inflexible pedagogical approaches that previously have been routinely adopted in most classrooms and other contexts of instruction with no precise record of learning and instructional activities. A good design of educational technology embraces the principles of learning science, identifies the basic types of learning that are needed, implements relevant technological affordances, and accommodates feedback from different stakeholders. This article covers research in literacy, collaborative problem-solving, motivation, emotion, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) areas.

Automated Disengagement Tracking Within an Intelligent Tutoring System.

This paper describes a new automated disengagement tracking system (DTS) that detects learners' maladaptive behaviors, e.g. mind-wandering and impetuous responding, in an intelligent tutoring system (ITS), called AutoTutor. AutoTutor is a conversation-based intelligent tutoring system designed to help adult literacy learners improve their reading comprehension skills. Learners interact with two computer agents in natural language in 30 lessons focusing on word knowledge, sentence processing, text comprehension, and digital literacy. Each lesson has one to three dozen questions to assess and enhance learning. DTS automatically retrieves and aggregates a learner's response accuracies and time on the first three to five questions in a lesson, as a baseline performance for the lesson when they are presumably engaged, and then detects disengagement by observing if the learner's following performance significantly deviates from the baseline. DTS is computed with an unsupervised learning method and thus does not rely on any self-reports of disengagement. We analyzed the response time and accuracy of 252 adult literacy learners who completed lessons in AutoTutor. Our results show that items that the detector identified as the learner being disengaged had a performance accuracy of 18.5%, in contrast to 71.8% for engaged items. Moreover, the three post-test reading comprehension scores from Woodcock Johnson III, RISE, and RAPID had a significant association with the accuracy of engaged items, but not disengaged items.

How Much Knowledge Is Too Little? When a Lack of Knowledge Becomes a Barrier to Comprehension.

Have you ever found it difficult to read something because you lack knowledge on the topic? We investigated this phenomenon with a sample of 3,534 high school students who took a background-knowledge test before working on a reading-comprehension test on the topic of ecology. Broken-line regression revealed a knowledge threshold: Below the threshold, the relationship between comprehension and knowledge was weak (ß = 0.18), but above the threshold, a strong and positive relation emerged (ß = 0.81). Further analyses indicated that certain topically relevant words (e.g., ecosystem, habitat) were more important to know than others when predicting the threshold, and these keywords could be identified using natural-language-processing techniques. Collectively, these results may help identify who is likely to have a problem comprehending information on a specific topic and, to some extent, what knowledge is likely required to comprehend information on that topic.

Examining the Relationship Between Word Reading Efficiency and Oral Reading Rate in Predicting Comprehension Among Different Types of Readers.

To further explore contextual reading rate, an important aspect of reading fluency, we examined the relationship between word reading efficiency (WRE) and contextual oral reading rate (ORR), the degree to which they overlap across different comprehension measures, whether oral language (semantics and syntax) predicts ORR beyond contributions of word-level skills, and whether the WRE-ORR relationship varies based on different reader profiles. Assessing reading and language of average readers, poor decoders, and poor comprehenders, ages 10 to 14, ORR was the strongest predictor of comprehension across various formats; WRE contributed no unique variance after taking ORR into account. Findings indicated that semantics, not syntax, contributed to ORR. Poor comprehenders performed below average on measures of ORR, despite average WRE, expanding previous findings suggesting specific weaknesses in ORR for this group. Together, findings suggest that ORR draws upon skills beyond those captured by WRE and suggests a role for oral language (semantics) in ORR.

Relative Effectiveness of Reading Intervention Programs for Adults with Low Literacy.

To compare the efficacy of instructional programs for adult learners with basic reading skills below the seventh grade level, 300 adults were randomly assigned to one of three supplementary tutoring programs designed to strengthen decoding and fluency skills, and gains were examined for the 148 adult students who completed the program. The three intervention programs were based on or adapted from instructional programs that have been shown to benefit children with reading levels similar to those of the adult sample. Each program varied in its relative emphasis on basic decoding versus reading fluency instruction. A repeated measures MANOVA confirmed small to moderate reading gains from pre- to post-testing across a battery of targeted reading measures, but no significant relative differences across interventions. An additional 152 participants who failed to complete the intervention differed initially from those who persisted. Implications for future research and adult literacy instruction are discussed.

Relationships among reading skills of adults with low literacy.

In this study, confirmatory factor analyses were used to examine the interrelationships among latent factors of the simple view model of reading comprehension (word recognition and language comprehension) and hypothesized additional factors (vocabulary and reading fluency) in a sample of 476 adult learners with low literacy levels. The results provided evidence for reliable distinctions between word recognition, fluency, language comprehension, and vocabulary skills as components of reading. Even so, the data did not support the hypothesis that the simple view needs to be expanded to include vocabulary or fluency factors, as has been posited in a few prior studies of younger and more able readers. Rather, word recognition and language comprehension alone were found to account adequately for variation in reading comprehension in adults with low literacy.

Developing an illustrated version of the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans (CAHPS).

BACKGROUND: The most commonly used tool for assessing member satisfaction with health plans in the United States is the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans (CAHPS). Yet its complexity exceeds the abilities of many patient populations. An illustrated version of the CAHPS instrument was designed for low-literacy audiences; the illustrations were tested and were then revised toreflect respondents' feedback. METHODS: Ilustrattions were developed to support the central themes in each of 63 CAHPS text items. The cognitive testing approach was used to create a systematic method to analyze key features of an item and develop the corresponding interview procedure. RESULTS: Following cognitive interviews on subsets of illustrations and items with more than 900 patients, all but 7 (11%) of the 63 items met the criterion that no more than 25% of the sample who saw the illustration could be rated as having "limited/no understanding." By the final pilot, a median of 66% had "full understanding," 20% had "partial understanding," and 14% had "limited/no understanding" of the 43 illustrations needing revision. CONCLUSIONS: The protocol helped improve the respondents' understanding of the illustrations. The experiences and lessons learned can guide design of illustration-enhanced materials for low-literacy populations.