ACQ Vol 11 no 2 2009

developmental stage the child is at might influence the child’s test performance. Four different reading comprehension tests were administered to a sample of 510 children, ranging in age from 8 to 18 years. The tests were: • GORT–3 (see table 1); • Qualitative Reading Inventory – 3 (Leslie & Caldwell, 2001), in which the students read long passages out loud; it involves two assessments of comprehension: open-ended short-answer questions and retelling of one of the passages; • Peabody Individual Achievement Test (Dunn & Markwardt, 1970, cited in Keenan et al., 2008); the student silently reads single sentences and short passages and indicates comprehension by selecting from four pictures the one that best fits the meaning of the sentence/passage just read; • WRMT–R Passage Comprehension subtest (see table 1). In addition, children’s listening comprehension (at passage level) and word recognition skills were assessed. Consistent with previous studies, it was found that tests using a cloze format were more heavily dependent on word recognition skill. More particularly, tests using very short passages (one to two sentences) were the most sensitive to word recognition ability. Keenan et al. (2008) reasoned that the longer the passages are, the more chance the child has to use the context (and thus demonstrate his listening comprehension skills) to understand the passage, even if he has trouble decoding one or two specific words. In contrast, in very short passages, a child may fail to understand the meaning of the material when unable to decode one or two keywords. Unfortunately, these researchers did not investigate whether oral or silent reading of the text influenced task performance. It can be argued that reading out loud may distract some children from attending to the meaning of the text. Further research is required to test this hypothesis. When examining developmental differences (as a function of chronological age and of reading age) in test performance, Keenan et al. (2008) found that, consistent with the simple view of reading, word recognition skills accounted for more variance in reading comprehension in the younger age group (mean age 9;1 years) than in the older age group (mean age 13;1). In addition, the findings demonstrated that tests using cloze formats were more dependent on word recognition ability in young children or in children with reading difficulties than those tests using longer passages and question and answer formats. Passage dependency and previous world knowledge Question-and-answer tests can be divided into multiple choice tasks and open-ended-question tasks. For example, the GORT–4 uses multiple choice questions following the reading of a passage, whereas the NARA requires the child to answer a set of open-ended questions about a passage, immediately after the child has read the passage out loud. Keenan and Betjemann (2006) conducted a study to investigate if the multiple choice format that is used by the GORT–4 would be passage dependent. Passage dependent (PD) questions can only be answered correctly by using information from the passage, whereas passage independent (PI) questions can also be answered without reading the text. A total of 77 undergraduate students in Education participated in a passageless administration of the GORT–4. This procedure involved asking the students the comprehension questions without exposing them to the

corresponding passage. The results indicated that 86% of the questions used in the GORT–4 were answered correctly more than 25% of the time (i.e., above chance level). No significant correlations were found between performance on the PI items and other spoken language comprehension test measures, and performance on the PI items was not sensitive to reading disability (as identified by word recognition difficulties). Keenan and Betjemann (2006) concluded that performance on the reading comprehension measure of the GORT–4 yields information about the child’s previous general world knowledge, rather than the child’s ability to derive meaning from a written text. Box 1. The simple view of reading Reading comprehension = Word recognition X Listening comprehension Source: Gough & Tunmer, 1986 The contribution of pre-existing content-relevant knowledge was highlighted in a study investigating the comprehension and memory for spoken and written texts of 181 adults, aged between 18 and 86 years (Hambrick & Engle, 2002). Hambrick and Engle found that the participants’ knowledge of the game of baseball significantly facilitated their performance on questions (tapping their memory of the game details) following exposure to a tape- recorded narration of a baseball match. Participants who were familiar with the game of baseball were better able to answer questions related to the progress of the game as well as more specific questions related to the performance of the batsmen. Test taking strategies To determine if children’s test taking strategies would influence their performance on a reading comprehension test, Bornholt (2002) administered the Test of Reading Comprehension (TORCH; Mossenson, Hill, & Masters, 1987) to 30 children (aged 9 and 10) attending year 4 of their local primary school. The TORCH uses a story booklet and an answer booklet and children have to fill in blanks left in a passage. In addition, children’s test-taking strategies were observed, including procedural initiative, task involvement and item responses (e.g., number of questions attempted). Following the pre-test, all children participated in two 1-hour class discussions about test-taking strategies and were reassessed in week 4. Results indicated that most improvement in reading test scores was observed for children with initially poor test-taking strategies. Post- intervention these children showed higher test completion rates, and were more likely to attempt various items rather than persisting with the items in a set order. Increased awareness of this possibility in clinical practice may thus help improve the accuracy of diagnosis. Summary This paper has discussed issues that may influence children’s performance on tests of reading comprehension. Research clearly indicates that the choice of reading comprehension assessment in clinical and research practice is critical as some tests may incorrectly identify children as demonstrating good or poor reading comprehension skills (Cutting & Scarborough, 2006; Keenan et al., 2008). The test format plays an important role. To ensure adequate detection of a child’s strengths and weaknesses in word recognition

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ACQ Volume 11, Number 2 2009

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