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Background: This trial aimed to measure the effects of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on users' comprehension of health information provided in adapted written "easy read" material. Method: Sixty adults with intellectual disabilities undertook The Easy Read Task, randomly allocated with stratification by reading ability to one of four conditions (with and without simplified language/with and without mediation). Results: Neither linguistic complexity of the text nor mediation independently or combined made a significant difference to the understanding of information. Post hoc testing revealed that the group who received simplified language with mediation performed significantly better than the group that had complex text with mediation. None of the other differences between the remaining groups were significant. Conclusions: Constructing meaning needs to extend beyond a consideration of form as found in "easy read" documents to recognize the role of individual capacity for language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world with different readers with varying needs, the idea that readers might be given the option of text formatting their own text in advance seems very appealing. In this research, differences between reading speed, reading comprehension, and reading comfort were compared with the pre-set and self-set texts. The respondents read paragraphs and identified illogical words contained therein, while reading two comparable blocks of self-set and pre-set texts. The differences in the number of paragraphs read and the mistakes made in a limited timeframe were compared using a web test that was based on the Tinker's test. The results showed that the respondents encounter different difficulties while reading digital text. We statistically proved that people with dyslexia chose larger type sizes more frequently than people without dyslexia, whereas no such statistically significant trend was observed for all other variables (typeface, tracking, and leading). We did not observe any significant differences between the reading speed associated with pre-set and self-set texts; however, the reading speed was higher in the group of people without dyslexia. A significant difference was observed in reading comprehension, because reading comprehension was better in the case of self-set text used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recent international research comparing reading abilities in children reveal distinct difficulties in reading comprehension for German students. In detail, every fifth child can only retrieve and comprehend explicit information from a written text but shows difficulties in combining information, inferencing and interpreting texts. Aims: The aim of the study is to determine specific components of language-, literacy- and cognitive skills that contribute to the difficulties in reading comprehension among students with special educational needs. Based on these specifications implications for treatment will be given. Methods: Based on the data of 184 fourth-grade students from special education school centers (Sonderpädagogische Förderzentren) correlation analysis are calculated between specific components of language-, literacy- and cognitive skills and the level of reading comprehension. Further on, regression analysis are used to determine the component with the greatest impact on reading comprehension. Results: Correlation as well as regression analysis reveal word recognition as a specific skill with the strongest influence on reading comprehension skills in students with special educational needs. Conclusion: Enhancing reading comprehension in late primary school students should especially focus on (automatized) word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed the potential transfer effects on reading comprehension skills of two different training programs administered to 9- to 10-year-old children attending fourth grade classes. One training program was based on a working memory updating paradigm (i.e., words, digits, sentence and text updating working memory tasks). The other program was based on metacomprehension activities focused on text structures, genres, text sensitivity, and text comprehension strategies. Performance was compared pre and post training on running memory, text updating, and reading comprehension tasks. The results showed that significant gains were obtained in both text updating and reading comprehension tasks, with a far transfer effect for both types of training. Limited nearest transfer effects suggest that gains could be due to acquisition of effective strategies in both programs, with training suitable for improving written text processing; however, performance did not differ between programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a set of novel regression models for readability scoring in Bengali language, which can also be used for Hindi, making use of several lexical, surface-level, syntactic and semantic features. We perform 5-fold and leave-one-out cross-validation on a human-annotated gold standard dataset of 30 passages, written by 4 eminent Bengali litterateurs. On this dataset, our best model achieves a mean squared error (MSE) of 57%, which is better than state-of-the-art results (73% MSE). We further perform feature analysis to identify potentially useful features in learning a regression model for Bengali readability. Ablation studies indicate the importance of compound characters (Juktakkhors) in readability assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explored the inflectional morphological awareness of Greek-speaking children with dyslexia in grade 3. The sample consisted of 24 dyslexic children and 32 chronological age-matched typically developing readers. All participants completed two oral experimental tasks of inflectional morphological awareness (i.e., verb inflections and noun-adjective inflections). The noun-adjective inflection task assessed children's ability to produce the plural of articles, adjectives, and nouns in the context of a sentence. The verb inflection task required children to change the tense of the verb in a sentence. Furthermore, phonological awareness and oral receptive vocabulary were assessed. Greek-speaking children with dyslexia faced difficulties in both inflectional tasks and in receptive vocabulary. They appeared to have greater difficulty in elicitation of non-past tense from past tense. Binary logistic regression targeted at understanding whether dyslexia can be predicted based on phonological and non-phonological oral language skills revealed that phonological awareness had a significant effect on distinguishing dyslexics from typically developing readers. Overall, our findings lead us to suggest that in an alphabetic language with a shallow orthographic system and rich morphology, children with dyslexia appear to have impaired inflectional morphological awareness and impaired vocabulary in comparison to their peers. Moreover, these results suggest the significance of teaching morphological skills in improving reading skills. However, further research is needed to substantiate these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examined three instructional approaches for improving teachers' curriculum-based measurement (CBM) graph comprehension, each differing in the extent to which reading the data, interpreting the data, and linking the data to instruction were emphasized. Participants were 164 elementary school teachers who were randomly assigned to one of three CBM instructional approaches or a control condition. Instruction was delivered via videos. Prior to and after receiving instruction, teachers completed a CBM graph-comprehension task. They also evaluated the instructional videos. Teachers in the three instructional groups improved more in CBM graph comprehension than control teachers. Improvements were seen primarily in interpreting and linking the data to instruction, two important but difficult aspects of CBM graph comprehension. Differences between the instructional groups were found for interpreting the data. Teachers evaluated the videos positively. Results indicate that teachers' CBM graph comprehension can be improved via video instruction. Implications for teaching teachers to implement CBM are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We investigated the relationships between text reading comprehension and oral idiom comprehension in adolescents. We also examined the more specific relationships between inference in text comprehension and inference in idiom comprehension. Method: We selected participants from an initial sample of 140 students aged 13-15 years to form 2 groups, according to their decoding and reading comprehension abilities: 1 group of good comprehenders/good decoders (n = 49) and 1 group of less skilled comprehenders but with adequate decoding skills (n = 20). The reading comprehension task comprised both literal and inferential (text-based and knowledge-based) questions. These 2 groups were then compared on an idiom comprehension task. In this task, idioms were presented orally, and students were placed in a situation that simulated a real-life oral interaction. The idioms were novel for the students (translated from a foreign language), either transparent or opaque, and presented either with a supportive context or without any context. Results: Good reading comprehenders outperformed less skilled ones on the idiom task. Both groups benefited from the supportive context, especially the good comprehenders. Knowledge-based inferences in written text comprehension were related to contextual inferences for opaque idioms, while semantic inferences for transparent idioms were related to literal text comprehension, but not to textconnecting inferences. Conclusion: These results are discussed both theoretically, in terms of cross-modal comprehension processes, and practically, in terms of implications for remediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Three readings can be experimentally distinguished for scalar implicatures. • The strongest reading is accessible even if the speaker is not presented as fully knowledgeable. • Alleged scalar items differ in the accessibility of the three readings. Abstract An utterance of Some of the students are home usually triggers the inference that it is not the case that the speaker believes that all students are home (Primary Scalar Implicature). It may also license a stronger inference: that the speaker believes that not all students are home (Secondary Scalar Implicature). Using an experimental paradigm which allows to distinguish between these three distinct readings as such (literal reading, primary SI, secondary SI), we show that the secondary SI can be accessed even in contexts where the speaker is not presented as being well-informed, a result which goes against classical neo-Gricean pragmatic approaches to Scalar Implicature, but is compatible with both the 'grammatical' approach to Scalar Implicatures and some more recent game-theoretic pragmatic models in which speakers and listeners engage in sophisticated higher-order reasoning about each other. Second, we use this paradigm to compare standard scalar items such as some and expressions whose interpretation has been argued to involve SIs, but controversially: almost , numerals and plural morphology. For some and almost , we find that speakers do access three distinct readings, but for numerals and plural morphology, only the literal reading and the secondary implicature could be detected, and no primary implicature, which suggests that the pragmatic and semantic mechanisms at play are different for both types of items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Eliciting and analyzing narratives can be used to assess children with DS. • The NAP is useful for fine grained sentence structure analysis beyond MLU. • Narrative microstructure and macrostructure contributed to word level reading. • Only macrostructure contributed to reading comprehension for children with DS. • Not only is it valuable to analyze receptive language, but also expressive language. Children with Down syndrome (DS) exhibit below average nonverbal intelligence and impaired language skills; however, their spoken narrative production is a relative strength. We examined expressive language skills produced during fictional narrative retells and analyzed the unique contribution of expressive language skills to word-level reading and reading comprehension of children with DS. The microstructure and macrostructure of fifteen, 8- to 18-year-old children with DS's narrative retells were analyzed. Receptive vocabulary, word-level reading, and reading comprehension also were measured. Narrative microstructure analyses revealed restricted syntactic and semantic diversity. Further analyses of sentence complexity revealed that children with DS predominately produced prepositional phrases and produced more verbs than nouns. Narrative macrostructure analysis revealed participants use of episodic components; however, their stories did not include mental state references. Narrative microstructure contributed unique variance to word-level reading, whereas narrative macrostructure contributed unique variance to word-level reading and reading comprehension. Additionally, strong correlations were found between narrative skills and literacy skills. Findings from this study support the use of narrative microstructure and macrostructure analyses as a valuable clinical tool to guide assessment and intervention planning for school-aged children with DS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined eye movements and comprehension of temporary syntactic ambiguities in individuals with dyslexia, as few studies have focused on sentence-level comprehension in dyslexia. We tested 50 participants with dyslexia and 50 typically developing controls, in order to investigate (a) whether dyslexics have difficulty revising temporary syntactic misinterpretations and (b) underlying cognitive factors (i.e., working memory and processing speed) associated with eye movement differences and comprehension failures. In the sentence comprehension task, participants read subordinate-main structures that were either ambiguous or unambiguous, and we also manipulated the type of verb contained in the subordinate clause (i.e., reflexive or optionally transitive). Results showed a main effect of group on comprehension, in which individuals with dyslexia showed poorer comprehension than typically developing readers. In addition, participants with dyslexia showed longer total reading times on the disambiguating region of syntactically ambiguous sentences. With respect to cognitive factors, working memory was more associated with group differences than was processing speed. Conclusions focus on sentence-level syntactic processing issues in dyslexia (a previously under-researched area) and the relationship between online and offline measures of syntactic ambiguity resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite the importance of written healthcare information in improving an individual's health status, patients may not be able to sufficiently utilize available resources because of a disparity between the accessibility of online written materials and patients' ability to process that information. For individuals with impairments in written language comprehension, such as persons with aphasia, this disparity may be magnified. It is crucial that written health resources be cognitively accessible, accurate, and understandable for persons with aphasia. Aims: The aims of this study were to: (1) objectively measure the accessibility of current written educational materials for persons with aphasia and (2) examine the relationship between levels of readability, validity, and user-friendliness of materials accessed. Methods & Procedures: Aphasia-related webpages likely to be accessed during an Internet search were retrieved and analysed. These webpages were determined by selecting the first 10 search results generated from entering the terms: "aphasia", "aphasia treatment", and "aphasia help", into Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This method resulted in 30 website resources per search engine. For each webpage, readability was evaluated using the following readability formulae: Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (F-K), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, and FORCAST. Additionally, validity and user-friendliness were evaluated for each webpage using the following measures: Site, Publisher, Audience, Timeliness (SPAT) and Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM), respectively. Outcomes & Results: A significant disparity was found between the desired and current level of readability, validity, and user-friendliness of the written information provided within the top search results related to aphasia. Based on the readability formulae output the average reading grade level of 10th grade was well above the average 5th grade reading level recommended for written materials. A third of the websites were unacceptable using the SPAT's quality standards and overall user-friendliness was deemed poor with an average SAM score of 27.4 out of 52 total points. No relationship was found between the validity or user-friendliness of websites and their readability. Conclusions: These data clearly demonstrate inadequacies in written web-based information about aphasia across several measures and provide insight into how the presentation of this information can be improved to facilitate useful information dissemination. Highlighting these disparities is important for promoting increased consideration and improvement in the usefulness and accessibility of healthcare information for persons with aphasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract We explored the relationship between goal specificity, flow experience and learning outcomes in educational computer games (ECGs). Our first aim was to analyze how goal specificity affects learning performances and reading activities in an ECG. Our second aim was to assess the effects of flow experience on learning with an ECG. Concerning our first aim, results indicated that a nonspecific goal, as opposed to one that is specifically defined in the task, enhances comprehension, but not memorization. It also affects reading strategies, leading to less scrolling back. Concerning our second aim, results highlighted a beneficial influence of flow experience on both memorization and comprehension. We did not observe any effect of goal specificity on flow experience. The results for goal specificity are discussed with respect to the dual space and cognitive load explanations. The relevance of using flow experience to assess motivation in ECGs is also addressed. Highlights • We explored the links between goal specificity, flow and learning outcomes in ECGs. • A goal-specific effect was found for comprehension but not for memorization. • A specific goal produced more scrolling back, a suboptimal reading strategy. • Flow experience positively influenced memorization and comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although readability has been traditionally operationalized and even become synonymous with the concept of word and sentence length, modern text analysis theory and technology have shifted toward multidimensional comprehension-based analytic techniques. In an effort to make use of these advancements and demonstrate their general utility, 6 commonly used measures of gambling disorder were submitted to readability analyses using 2 of these advanced approaches, Coh-Metrix and Question Understanding Aid (QUAID), and one traditional approach, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. As hypothesized, significant variation was found across measures, with some questionnaires emerging as more appropriate than others for use in samples that may include individuals with low literacy. Recommendations are made for the use of these modern approaches to readability to inform decisions on measure selection and development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have notable language difficulties, including with understanding narratives. However, most narrative comprehension studies have used written or spoken narratives, making it unclear whether narrative difficulties stem from language impairments or more global impairments in the kinds of general cognitive processes (such as understanding meaning and structural sequencing) that are involved in narrative comprehension. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we directly compared semantic comprehension of linguistic narratives (short sentences) and visual narratives (comic panels) in adults with ASD and typically-developing (TD) adults. Compared to the TD group, the ASD group showed reduced N400 effects for both linguistic and visual narratives, suggesting comprehension impairments for both types of narratives and thereby implicating a more domain-general impairment. Based on these results, we propose that individuals with ASD use a more bottom-up style of processing during narrative comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial amount of variation in reading comprehension skill is explained by listening comprehension skill, suggesting tight links between printed and spoken discourse processing. In addition, both word level (e.g., vocabulary) and discourse-level sub-skills (e.g., inference-making) support overall comprehension. However, while these contributions to variation in comprehension skill have been well-studied behaviorally, the underlying neurobiological basis of these relationships is less well understood. In order to examine the neural bases of individual differences in reading comprehension as a function of input modality and processing level, we examined functional neural activation to both spoken and printed single words and passages in adolescents with a range of comprehension skill. Data driven Partial Least Squares Correlation (PLSC) analyses revealed that comprehension skill was positively related to activation in a number of regions associated with discourse comprehension and negatively related to activation in regions associated with executive function and memory across processing levels and input modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the etiology of longitudinal relations among kindergarten prereading skills, first-grade word level reading skills, and seventh-grade reading comprehension in 265 monozygotic and 459 dizygotic twin pairs (Mage  = 6.29 years in kindergarten) from the Florida Twin Project on Reading. Using a quadvariate Cholesky decomposition, results showed genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental overlap among prereading skills, word level reading skills, and reading comprehension. In addition, genetic and shared environmental overlap was indicated among word level reading skills and reading comprehension, outside the influence of prereading skills. After accounting for overlapping, there remained moderate genetic and nonshared environmental influence specific to reading comprehension. Implications for reading education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the associations of cardiometabolic risk factors with academic achievement and whether motor performance, cardiorespiratory fitness, physical activity, or sedentary behaviour mediated these associations. Altogether 175 children 6-8 years-of-age participated in the study. We assessed body fat percentage (BF%), waist circumference, insulin, glucose, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure, leptin, alanine aminotransferase, and gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT). Reading fluency, reading comprehension, and arithmetic skills were assessed using standardized tests. Speed/agility, balance, and manual dexterity test results were used to calculate motor performance score and physical activity was assessed by combined heart rate and movement sensor and cardiorespiratory fitness by maximal cycle ergometer test. In boys, BF% was inversely associated with reading fluency (β = −0.262, P = 0.007) and reading comprehension (β = −0.216, P = 0.025). Motor performance mediated these associations. Leptin was inversely related to reading fluency (β = −0.272, P = 0.006) and reading comprehension (β = −0.287, P = 0.003). The inverse association of leptin with reading fluency was mediated by motor performance. In girls, GGT was inversely associated with reading fluency independent of confounders (β = −0.325, P = 0.007). The inverse association of BF% with academic achievement among boys was largely explained by motor performance. Leptin in boys and GGT in girls were inversely associated with academic achievement independent of confounding factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we performed a latent profile analysis of reading and related skills in a large (n = 733) sibpair sample of Russian readers at risk for reading difficulties. The analysis suggested the presence of seven latent profiles, of which two were characterized by relatively high performance on measures of spelling and reading comprehension and the remaining five included severely as well as moderately affected readers with deficits in the domains of phonological, orthographic, and morphological processing. The results suggest that the development and manifestation of reading difficulties in Russian is mappable on a complex pattern of interactions between different types and severities of processing deficits. The results point to the psychological reality of multiple different suboptimal patterns of deficits in reading and reading-related skills and support the multifactorial view of the disorder, with intriguing implications for future neurobiological studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments were conducted to explore whether perspective influences the way readers engage with and process emotional information while reading. Texts presenting characters in an emotional situation from either a personal or an onlooker perspective were presented and reading times were measured for each sentence. Participants also provided emotional self-ratings after reading. In the first experiment, positive texts were processed with greater ease, especially when readers experienced the texts from a personal perspective. In Experiment 2, an emotional match/mismatch was inserted so that a final explicit emotion word either matched or mismatched the emotional valence of the text. Mismatch effects were stronger and more consistent for the personal perspective. The two experiments provide evidence that the perspective of the reader can influence emotion processing. Processing of emotional information was easier for the personal perspective, and readers were more sensitive to inconsistent emotional information from that perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous developmental studies have revealed variation in children's ability to compute scalar inferences. While children have been shown to struggle with standard scalar inferences (e.g., with scalar quantifiers like "some") (Chierchia, Crain, Guasti, Gualmini, & Meroni, 2001; Guasti et al., 2005; Noveck, 2001; Papafragou & Musolino, 2003), there is also a growing handful of inferences that children have been reported to derive quite readily (Barner & Bachrach, 2010; Hochstein, Bale, Fox, & Barner, 2016; Papafragou & Musolino, 2003; Singh, Wexler, Astle-Rahim, Kamawar, & Fox, 2016; Stiller, Goodman, & Frank, 2015; Tieu, Romoli, Zhou, & Crain, 2016; Tieu et al., 2017). One recent approach, which we refer to as the Alternatives-based approach, attributes the variability in children's performance to limitations in how children engage with the alternative sentences that are required to compute the relevant inferences. Specifically, if the alternative sentences can be generated by simplifying the assertion, rather than by lexically replacing one scalar term with another, children should be better able to compute the inference. In this paper, we investigated this prediction by assessing how children and adults interpret sentences that embed disjunction under a universal quantifier, such as "Every elephant caught a big butterfly or a small butterfly". For adults, such sentences typically give rise to the distributive inference that some elephant caught a big butterfly and some elephant caught a small butterfly (Crnič, Chemla, & Fox, 2015; Fox, 2007; Gazdar, 1979). Another possible interpretation, though not one typically accessed by adults, is the conjunctive inference that every elephant caught a big butterfly and a small butterfly (Singh, Wexler, Astle-Rahim, Kamawar, & Fox, 2016). Crucially, for our purposes, it has been argued that both of these inferences can be derived using alternatives that are generated by deleting parts of the asserted sentence, rather than through lexical replacement, making these sentences an ideal test case for evaluating the predictions of the Alternatives-based approach. The findings of our experimental study reveal that children are indeed able to successfully compute this class of inferences, providing support for the Alternatives-based approach as a viable explanation of children's variable success in computing scalar inferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of text readability is important for assigning texts at the appropriate level to readers at different proficiency levels. The present research approached readability assessment from the lexical perspective of word frequencies derived from corpora assumed to reflect typical language experience. Three studies were conducted to test how the word‐level feature of word frequency can be aggregated to characterise text‐level readability. The results show that an effective use of word frequency for text readability assessment should take a range of characteristics of the distribution of words frequencies into account. For characterizing text readability, taking into account the standard deviation in addition to the mean word frequencies already significantly increases results. The best results are obtained using the mean frequencies of the words in language frequency bands or in bands obtained by agglomerative clustering of the word frequencies in the documents – though a comparison of within‐corpus and cross‐corpus results shows the limited generalizability of using high numbers of fine‐grained frequency bands. Overall, the study advances our understanding of the relationship between word frequency and text readability and provides concrete options for more effectively making use of lexical frequency information in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Delays in expressive vocabulary have been associated with lower outcomes in reading.Aim: The aim is to conduct a long-term follow-up study to investigate if early expressive vocabulary delay (late talking) predicts reading development in participants age 16 and under. We examine further if the prediction is different in the presence of family risk for dyslexia (FR) and early receptive vocabulary delay.Methods: Expressive and receptive vocabulary skills were assessed at the age of 2-2.5 years, and reading skills in Grades 2, 3, 8 and 9 (age 8-16). The longitudinal sample consisted of 200 Finnish-speaking children, of which 108 had FR for dyslexia and 92 came from families without reading difficulties. We compared the reading development of five subgroups: 1) FR and no vocabulary delay; 2) FR and late talkers, 3) FR, late talkers and co-existing receptive vocabulary delay; 4) no FR and late talkers; and 5) no FR and no vocabulary delay.Results: The group with FR and expressive and receptive vocabulary delay had difficulties in reading comprehension, but not in reading fluency. The late talkers without receptive vocabulary difficulties tended to become typical readers.Conclusions and Implications: Delays in early vocabulary can lead to a reading comprehension deficit, with the specification that expressive vocabulary deficit alone can alleviate in time, whereas the combined deficit is a stronger risk marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence suggests that oral narrative skills are a linguistic strength for African American children, yet few studies have examined how these skills are associated with reading for African American boys and girls. The current study uses longitudinal data of a sample of 72 African American 4-year-olds to examine how preschool oral narrative skills predict reading from first through sixth grades and explores differences by gender. Findings indicate that although girls demonstrated stronger narrative skills, their narrative skills did not moderate change in reading. For boys, narrative skills moderated change in reading over time such that as preschool narrative skills increased, their reading scores showed greater change over time. Educational implications and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although an abundant literature documents preliterate children's word learning success from shared storybook reading, a full synthesis of the factors which moderate these word learning effects has been largely neglected. This meta-analysis included 38 studies with 2.455 children, reflecting 110 effect sizes, investigating how reading styles, story repetitions, tokens and related factors moderate children's word comprehension, while adjusting for the number of target words. Dialogic reading styles, tokens, and the number of words tested all moderated word learning effects. Children's age, who read the story, and time between story and test were not moderators. We identify story repetition and word types as topics which merit further research. These results provide information to guide researchers and educators alike to the factors with the greatest impact on improving word learning from shared storybook reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is easy enough to theorize about the impact of literary reading on empathic reactions, but to empirically prove such effects is more difficult. This article provides a concise overview of the theoretical and empirical evidence that literary reading has an effect on empathy (in its multiple forms), distinguishing between the effects of literariness, narrativity and fictionality. Subsequently, it discusses the results of 2 recently conducted studies into reading and empathic understanding. As will become clear, we are still quite a long way from knowing when and how (literary) reading has an effect on empathy for others. Suggestions are offered how future studies can tackle this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reading of fiction has been found to confer benefits, including increased empathy and understanding of others. Among ongoing research questions are those of how people engage in imagined worlds while keeping in touch with the currently perceived world, as well as how far stories were important in human evolution and how the brain is involved understanding them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report an eye-tracking experiment that examined argument linking and the role of prominence in Spanish sentence comprehension by testing the interplay between word order and verb type. Previous evidence from a self-paced reading study (Gattei, Dickey, Wainselboim, & París, 2015). showed that comprehenders use morphosyntactic information to form predictions about the thematic structure of the upcoming verb. In this study we focussed on the time course of this process. Results showed an interaction between verb type and word order for late eye movement measures but not for early eye movement measures. Participants regressed more and for longer time when word order did not match the canonical order for each verb class. This interaction is observed from the verb region onwards, independently of word order. We interpret that these effects take place due to the misinterpretation of the prominence status of the preverbal argument, leading to differential reading strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the processing of derivational morphology and its association with measures of morphological awareness and literacy outcomes in 30 Dutch-speaking high-functioning dyslexics, and 30 controls, matched for age and reading comprehension. A masked priming experiment was conducted where the semantic overlap between morphologically related pairs was manipulated as part of a lexical decision task. Measures of morphological awareness were assessed using a specifically designed sentence completion task. Significant priming effects were found in each group, yet adults with dyslexia were found to benefit more from the morphological structure than the controls. Adults with dyslexia were found to be influenced by both form (morpho-orthographic) and meaning (morphosemantic) properties of morphemes while controls were mainly influenced by morphosemantic properties. The reports suggest that morphological processing is intact in high-functioning dyslexics and a strength when compared to controls matched for reading comprehension and age. Thus, reports support morphological processing as a potential factor in the reading compensation of adults with dyslexia. However, adults with dyslexia performed significantly worse than controls on morphological awareness measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The current study investigated the effect of text variables including length, readability, propositional content, and type of information on the reading comprehension of people with aphasia. Method: The performance of 75 people with aphasia was compared with 87 healthy, age-matched control participants. Reading comprehension was considered in terms of both accuracy in responding to questions tapping comprehension and reading time. Participants with aphasia (PWA) were divided into 2 groups (no reading impairment [PWA:NRI] and reading impairment [PWA:RI]) depending on whether their performance fell within the 5th percentile of control participants. Results: As groups, both PWA:NRI and PWA:RI differed significantly from control participants in terms of reading time and comprehension accuracy. PWA:NRI and PWA:RI differed from each other in terms of accuracy but not reading time. There was no significant effect of readability or propositional density on comprehension accuracy or reading time for any of the groups. There was a significant effect of length on reading time but not on comprehension accuracy. All groups found main ideas easier than details, stated information easier than inferred, and had particular difficulty with questions that required integration of information across paragraphs (gist). Conclusions: Both accuracy of comprehension and reading speed need to be considered when characterizing reading difficulties in people with aphasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to determine whether cumulative structural priming effects and trial-to-trial lexically-mediated priming effects are produced by the same mechanism in comprehension. Participants took part in a five-session eye tracking study where they read reduced-relative prime-target pairs with the same initial verb. Half of the verbs in these sentences were repeated across the five sessions and half were novel to each session. Total fixation times on the syntactically challenging parts of prime sentences decreased across sessions, suggesting participants implicitly learned the structure. Additional priming was also observed at the critical regions of the target sentences, and the magnitude of this effect did not change over the five sessions. These finding suggests long-lived adaptation to structure and short-lived lexically-mediated priming effects are caused by separate mechanisms in comprehension. A dual mechanism account of syntactic priming effects can best reconcile these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate how age at cochlear implantation (CI) and age at exposure to Cued Speech (CS, Manual system that resolves the ambiguity inherent lipreading) could impact literacy skills in deaf children. Ninety deaf children fitted with CI (early vs late) and exposed to CS (early vs late) from primary schools (from Grade 2 to Grade 5) took part in this study. Five literacy skills were assessed: phonological skills through phoneme deletion, reading (decoding and sentence comprehension), word spelling and vocabulary. The results showed that both age at CI and age at first exposure to CS had some influence on literacy skills but there was no interaction between these factors. This implies that the positive effects of age at CI, especially on all literacy skills in the younger children, were not strengthened by age at exposure to CS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Components of reading proficiency such asaccuracy, fluency, and comprehension require the successful coordination of numerous, yet distinct, cortical regions. Underlying white matter tracts allow for communication among these regions. This study utilized unique residualized tract - based spatial statistics methodology to identify the relations of white matter microstructure integrity to three components of reading proficiency in 49 school - aged children with typically developing phonological decoding skills and 27 readers with poor decoders. Results indicated that measures of white matter integrity were differentially associated with components of reading proficiency. In both typical and poor decoders, reading comprehension correlated with measures of integrity of the right uncinate fasciculus; reading comprehension was also related to the left inferior longitudinal fasciculus in poor decoders. Also in poor decoders, word reading fluency was related to the right uncinate and left inferior fronto - occipital fasciculi. Word reading was unrelated to white matter integrity in either group. These findings expand our knowledge of the association between white matter integrity and different elements of reading proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigated the neural basis of reading performance in 60 school-age Spanish-speaking children, aged 6 to 9years. By using a data-driven approach and an automated matching procedure, we identified a left-lateralized resting state network that included typical language regions (Wernicke's and Broca's regions), prefrontal cortex, pre- and post-central gyri, superior and middle temporal gyri, cerebellum, and subcortical regions, and explored its relevance for reading performance (accuracy, comprehension and speed). Functional connectivity of the left frontal and temporal cortices and subcortical regions predicted reading speed. These results extend previous findings on the relationship between functional connectivity and reading competence in children, providing new evidence about such relationships in previously unexplored regions in the resting brain, including the left caudate, putamen and thalamus. This work highlights the relevance of a broad network, functionally synchronized in the resting state, for the acquisition and perfecting of reading abilities in young children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The development of understandable informed consent (IC) documents has proven to be one of the most important challenges in research with humans as well as in healthcare settings. Therefore, evaluating and improving understanding has been of increasing interest for empirical research on IC. However, several conceptual and practical challenges for the development of understandable IC documents remain unresolved.Methods: In this paper, we will outline and systematize some of these challenges. On the basis of our own experiences in empirical user testing of IC documents as well as the relevant literature on understanding in IC, we propose an integrated conceptual model for the development of understandable IC documents.Results: The proposed conceptual model integrates different methods for the participatory improvement of written information, including IC, as well as quantitative methods for measuring understanding in IC.Conclusions: In most IC processes, understandable written information is an important prerequisite for valid IC. To improve the quality of IC documents, a conceptual model for participatory procedures of testing, revising, and retesting can be applied. However, the model presented in this paper needs further theoretical and empirical elaboration and clarification of several conceptual and practical challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to (a) explore the roles of cognitive and language variables in predicting reading abilities of two groups of individuals with reading disabilities (i.e., dyslexia and specific language impairment) and (b) examine which variable(s) is the most predictive in differentiating two groups. Inclusion/exclusion criteria applied to categorize the two groups yielded a total of 63 participants (n = 44 for the dyslexia; n = 19 for the specific language impairment). A stepwise multiple regression approach was conducted to examine which cognitive and/or language variables made the largest contribution to reading abilities (i.e., Phonetic Decoding Efficiency, Word Attack, Sight Word Efficiency, and Passage Comprehension). Results revealed that there were significant differences in which measures of cognitive and language ability predicted individuals with dyslexia and speech and language impairments reading ability, showing that the cognitive and language variables underlying their difficulty with reading abilities were not the same across the two groups. A discriminant function analysis showed that a measure of Verbal Comprehension, Phonological Awareness, and Phonetic Decoding Efficiency can be used to differentiate the two groups. These findings support the tenet that dyslexia and specific language impairment are two subgroups of reading disabilities and that thorough diagnostic evaluations are needed to differentiate between these two subgroups. Distinctions of this nature are central to determining the type and intensity of language-based interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty years ago in this journal, Aylett Royall Cox reported on the development of Alphabetic Phonics, a revision of the existing Orton Gillingham treatment for children with dyslexia. This paper continues that discussion and reports on the evolution of that curriculum as it is represented in a comprehensive dyslexia treatment program informed by intervention research. The paper describes the curriculum and reports data from a hospital-based learning disabilities clinic that provides qualified support for treatment efficacy and the value of added comprehension instruction. The results are then discussed in the context of current and future issues in dyslexia intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: In Japan, the HPV vaccination rate has sharply fallen to nearly 0% due to a series of sensational media reports of adverse events. Online anti-HPV-vaccination activists often warn readers of the vaccine's dangers. We aimed to examine distribution and readability of pro-and anti-vaccination online messages with relation to these authors' professional expertise.Methods: We conducted online searches via two major search engines. Identified sites were classified as "anti," "pro," or "neutral" depending on their claims, and "health professional" or "non-health professional" depending on their authors' expertise. Readability was determined using a validated measure of Japanese readability. Statistical analysis was conducted using two-way analysis of variance and Tukey's test.Results: Of the total 270 sites analyzed, up to 137 (50.7%) were deemed anti- and 101 (37.4%) pro-HPV-vaccination. Of the pro-vaccination sites 71% were written by health professionals. Anti-vaccination messages were found to be considerably easier to read than pro-vaccination ones; both among those by health professionals and non-health professionals.Conclusion: Our findings substantiate concern that the anti messages may serve to prolong the HPV vaccination crisis.Practice Implications: We recommend that health professionals use readability assessment tools and improve the text for easier reading if necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research documents impaired language among children with prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) relative to nondrug exposed (NDE) children, suggesting that cocaine alters development of neurobiological systems that support language. The current study examines behavioral and neural (electrophysiological) indices of language function in older adolescents. Specifically, we compare performance of PCE (N = 59) and NDE (N = 51) adolescents on a battery of cognitive and linguistic assessments that tap word reading, reading comprehension, semantic and grammatical processing, and IQ. In addition, we examine event related potential (ERP) responses in in a subset of these children across three experimental tasks that examine word level phonological processing (rhyme priming), word level semantic processing (semantic priming), and sentence level semantic processing (semantic anomaly). Findings reveal deficits across a number of reading and language assessments, after controlling for socioeconomic status and exposure to other substances. Additionally, ERP data reveal atypical orthography to phonology mapping (reduced N1/P2 response) and atypical rhyme and semantic processing (N400 response). These findings suggest that PCE continues to impact language and reading skills into the late teenage years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most of the existing behavioral and cognitive intervention programs in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have not been tested at the neurobiological level, thus falling short of finding quantifiable neurobiological changes underlying behavioral improvement. The current study takes a translational neuroimaging approach to test the impact of a structured visual imagery-based reading intervention on improving reading comprehension and assessing its underlying local neural circuitry. Behavioral and resting state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) data were collected from children with ASD who were randomly assigned to an Experimental group (ASD-EXP; n=14) and a Wait-list control group (ASD-WLC; n=14). Participants went through an established reading intervention training program (Visualizing and Verbalizing for language comprehension and thinking or V/V; 4-h per day, 10-weeks, 200h of face-to-face instruction). Local functional connectivity was examined using a connection density approach from graph theory focusing on brain areas considered part of the Reading Network. The main results are as follows: (I) the ASD-EXP group showed significant improvement, compared to the ASD-WLC group, in their reading comprehension ability evidenced from change in comprehension scores; (II) the ASD-EXP group showed increased local brain connectivity in Reading Network regions compared to the ASD-WLC group post-intervention; (III) intervention-related changes in local brain connectivity were observed in the ASD-EXP from pre to post-intervention; and (IV) improvement in language comprehension significantly predicted changes in local connectivity. The findings of this study provide novel insights into brain plasticity in children with developmental disorders using targeted intervention programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language assessment has a critical role in the clinical diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, in particular, in the case of Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). The current diagnostic criteria (Gorno-Tempini et al., 2011) identify three main variants on the basis of clinical features and patterns of brain atrophy. Widely accepted tools to diagnose, clinically classify, and follow up the heterogeneous language profiles of PPA are still lacking. In this study, we develop a screening battery, composed of nine tests (picture naming, word and sentence comprehension, word and sentence repetition, reading, semantic association, writing and picture description), following the recommendations of current diagnostic guidelines and taking into account recent research on the topic. All tasks were developed with consideration of the psycholinguistic factors that can affect performance, with the aim of achieving sensitivity to the language deficit to which each task was relevant, and to allow identification of the selective characteristic impairments of each PPA variant. Normative data on 134 Italian subjects pooled across homogeneous subgroups for age, sex, and education are reported. Although further work is still needed, this battery represents a first step towards a concise multilingual standard language examination, a fast and simple tool to help clinicians and researchers in the diagnosis of PPA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The facilitation of word processing by sentence context reflects the interaction between the build-up of message-level semantics and lexical processing. Yet, little is known about how this effect varies through adulthood as a function of reading skill. In this study, Participants 18-64 years old with a range of literacy competence read simple sentences as their eye movements were monitored. We manipulated the predictability of a sentence-final target word, operationalized as cloze probability. First fixation durations showed an interaction between age and literacy skill, decreasing with age among more skilled readers but increasing among less skilled readers. This pattern suggests that age-related slowing may impact reading when not buffered by skill, but with continued practice, automatization of reading can continue to develop in adulthood. In absolute terms, readers were sensitive to predictability, regardless of age or literacy, in both early and later measures. Older readers showed differential contextual sensitivity in regression patterns, effects not moderated by literacy skill. Finally, comprehension performance increased with age and literacy skill, but performance among less skilled readers was especially reduced when predictability was low, suggesting that low-literacy adults (regardless of age) struggle when creating mental representations under weaker semantic constraints. Collectively, these findings suggest that aging readers (regardless of reading skill) are more sensitive to context for meaning-integration processes; that less skilled adult readers (regardless of age) depend more on a constrained semantic representation for comprehension; and that the capacity for literacy engagement enables continued development of efficient lexical processing in adult reading development. (PsycINFO Database Record [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are increasingly used to quantify patients' perceptions of functional ability. The American Medical Association and NIH suggest patient materials be written at or below 6th to 8th grade reading levels, respectively, yet one recent study asserts that few PROMs comply with these recommendations, and suggests that the majority of PROMs are written at too high of a reading level for self-administered patient use. Notably, this study was limited in its use of only one readability algorithm, although there is no commonly accepted, standard readability algorithm for healthcare-related materials. Our study, using multiple readability equations and heeding equal weight to each, hopes to yield a broader, all-encompassing estimate of readability, thereby offering a more accurate assessment of the readability of orthopaedic PROMS.Questions/purposes: (1) What proportion of orthopaedic-related PROMs and orthopaedic-related portions of the NIH Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) are written at or below the 6th and 8th grade levels? (2) Is there a correlation between the number of questions in the PROM and reading level? (3) Using systematic edits based on guidelines from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, what proportion of PROMs achieved American Medical Association and NIH-recommended reading levels?Methods: Eighty-six (86) independent, orthopaedic and general wellness PROMs, drawn from commonly referenced orthopaedic websites and prior studies, were chosen for analysis. Additionally, owing to their increasing use in orthopaedics, four relevant short forms, and 11 adult, physical health question banks from the PROMIS®, were included for analysis. All documents were analyzed for reading grade levels using 19 unique readability algorithms. Descriptive statistics were performed using SPSS Version 22.0.Results: The majority of the independent PROMs (64 of 86; 74%) were written at or below the 6th grade level, with 81 of 86 (94%) written at or below the 8th grade level. All item banks (11 of 11) and short forms (four of four) of the PROMIS® were written below the 6th grade reading level. The median reading grade level of the 86 independent PROMs was 5.0 (interquartile range [IQR], 4.6-6.1). The PROMIS® question banks had a median reading grade level of 4.1 (IQR, 3.5-4.8); the Adult Short Forms had a median reading grade level of 4.2 (IQR, 4.2-4.3) There was no correlation appreciated between the median reading grade level and the number of questions contained in a PROM (r = -0.081; p = 0.460). For PROMs above NIH-recommended levels, following edits, all (five of five) achieved NIH reading level goals and three (three of five) achieved American Medical Association goals. Editing of these PROMs improved readability by 4.3 median grade level (before, 8.9 [IQR, 8.4-9.1], after 4.6 [IQR, 4.6-6.4], difference of medians, 4.3; p = 0.008).Conclusions: Patient literacy has great influence on healthcare outcomes, and readability is an important consideration in all patient-directed written materials. Our study found that more than 70% of PROMs commonly used in orthopaedics, and all orthopaedic-related portions of the PROMIS® are written at or below the most stringent recommendations (≤ 6th grade reading level), and more than 90% of independent PROMs and all PROMIS® materials are written at or below an 8th grade level. Additionally, the use of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services guidelines for editing high reading level PROMs yields satisfactory results.Clinical Relevance: Fears of widely incomprehensible PROMs may be unfounded. Future research to identify the most appropriate readability algorithm for use in the healthcare sector, and revalidation of PROMs after readability-improving edits is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perspective is a crucial feature for communicating about events. Yet it is unclear how linguistically encoded perspective relates to cognitive perspective taking. Here, we tested the effect of perspective taking with short literary stories. Participants listened to stories with 1st or 3rd person pronouns referring to the protagonist, while undergoing fMRI. When comparing action events with 1st and 3rd person pronouns, we found no evidence for a neural dissociation depending on the pronoun. A split sample approach based on the self-reported experience of perspective taking revealed 3 comprehension preferences. One group showed a strong 1st person preference, another a strong 3rd person preference, while a third group engaged in 1st and 3rd person perspective taking simultaneously. Comparing brain activations of the groups revealed different neural networks. Our results suggest that comprehension is perspective dependent, but not on the perspective suggested by the text, but on the reader's (situational) preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language comprehension is largely supported by predictive mechanisms that account for the ease and speed with which communication unfolds. Both native and proficient non-native speakers can efficiently handle contextual cues to generate reliable linguistic expectations. However, the link between the variability of the linguistic background of the speaker and the hierarchical format of the representations predicted is still not clear. We here investigate whether native language exposure to typologically highly diverse languages (Spanish and Basque) affects the way early balanced bilingual speakers carry out language predictions. During Spanish sentence comprehension, participants developed predictions of words the form of which (noun ending) could be either diagnostic of grammatical gender values (transparent) or totally ambiguous (opaque). We measured electrophysiological prediction effects time-locked both to the target word and to its determiner, with the former being expected or unexpected. Event-related (N200-N400) and oscillatory activity in the low beta-band (15-17Hz) frequency channel showed that both Spanish and Basque natives optimally carry out lexical predictions independently of word transparency. Crucially, in contrast to Spanish natives, Basque natives displayed visual word form predictions for transparent words, in consistency with the relevance that noun endings (post-nominal suffixes) play in their native language. We conclude that early language exposure largely shapes prediction mechanisms, so that bilinguals reading in their second language rely on the distributional regularities that are highly relevant in their first language. More importantly, we show that individual linguistic experience hierarchically modulates the format of the predicted representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite intact decoding ability, deficits in reading comprehension are relatively common in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, few neuroimaging studies have tested the neural bases of this specific profile of reading deficit in ASD. This fMRI study examined activation and synchronization of the brain's reading network in children with ASD with specific reading comprehension deficits during a word similarities task. Thirteen typically developing children and 18 children with ASD performed the task in the MRI scanner. No statistically significant group differences in functional activation were observed; however, children with ASD showed decreased functional connectivity between the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the left inferior occipital gyrus (LIOG). In addition, reading comprehension ability significantly positively predicted functional connectivity between the LIFG and left thalamus (LTHAL) among all subjects. The results of this study provide evidence for altered recruitment of reading-related neural resources in ASD children and suggest specific weaknesses in top-down modulation of semantic processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prisoners are at higher risk of mental health problems than people in the general community. One possible way of optimising mental health care resources in prisons is to offer self-help materials. In order for these to be effective, they must be appropriate for the reading ability of the patient. This study aimed to determine, by way of a survey distributed to Scottish mental health care teams, how self-help resources are being used currently in the Scottish prison system, and to analyse the materials using four different readability tools: FRE, FKGL, SMOG and the Drivel Defence programme. It was found that there is currently widespread provision of self-help to Scottish prisoners; however, only 53% of these materials are suitable for the quoted average prisoner reading age. Mental health practitioners should be aware of this when providing self-help to patients, and consider easy-read options where available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the N400 event-related brain potential has provided fundamental insights into the nature of real-time comprehension processes, and its amplitude is modulated by a wide variety of stimulus and context factors. It is generally thought to reflect the difficulty of semantic access, but formulating a precise characterization of this process has proved difficult. Laszlo and colleagues (Laszlo & Plaut, 2012; Laszlo & Armstrong, 2014) used physiologically constrained neural networks to model the N400 as transient over-activation within semantic representations, arising as a consequence of the distribution of excitation and inhibition within and between cortical areas. The current work extends this approach to successfully model effects on both N400 amplitudes and behavior of word frequency, semantic richness, repetition, semantic and associative priming, and orthographic neighborhood size. The account is argued to be preferable to one based on "implicit semantic prediction error" (Rabovsky & McRae, 2014) for a number of reasons, the most fundamental of which is that the current model actually produces N400-like waveforms in its real-time activation dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examined younger and older adults’ error detection accuracy, prediction calibration, and postdiction calibration on a proofreading task, to determine if age-related differences would be present in this type of common error detection task. Participants were given text passages, and were first asked to predict the percentage of errors they would detect in the passage. They then read the passage and circled errors (which varied in complexity and locality), and made postdictions regarding their performance, before repeating this with another passage and answering a comprehension test of both passages. There were no age-related differences in error detection accuracy, text comprehension, or metacognitive calibration, though participants in both age groups were overconfident overall in their metacognitive judgments. Both groups gave similar ratings of motivation to complete the task. The older adults rated the passages as more interesting than younger adults did, although this level of interest did not appear to influence error-detection performance. The age equivalence in both proofreading ability and calibration suggests that the ability to proofread text passages and the associated metacognitive monitoring used in judging one’s own performance are maintained in aging. These age-related similarities persisted when younger adults completed the proofreading tasks on a computer screen, rather than with paper and pencil. The findings provide novel insights regarding the influence that cognitive aging may have on metacognitive accuracy and text processing in an everyday task. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]