Fluency has recently been operationalized in terms of the acquisition of performance rates that predict a number of learning outcomes, depicted in the acronym RESAA, which represents skill retention, endurance, stability, application and adduction (Johnson & Layng, 1996). The RESAA model has not yet been adequately researched under controlled, experimental conditions. A preliminary study (Study 1) compared two rate-building procedures, under experimental conditions, with five Year 2 children with a mean age of six years eight months and seven pre-primary children with a mean age of four years seven months. The effects of practice and reinforcement were controlled. Long-term follow-up RESAA measures were conducted three months after the completion of the intervention. The major study in this research project (Study 2) is an empirical investigation of the effects on RESAA measures of increasing the performance rates of a component skill in reading to specific, incremental rate aims with twelve Year 2 children aged between six years eight months and eight years one month who were categorized into three levels of reading ability. Speeded practice was compared to slow-paced constrained-rate practice. The effects of practice and reinforcement were controlled. The utility of learning channel analysis for defining measures of application and adduction, and for measuring adduction on two composite tasks involving topographically dissimilar sensory and response dimensions was examined. Long-term follow-up RESAA measures were conducted three months after the completion of the intervention. The results of Study 1 indicated a procedure in which accuracy and rate were trained simultaneously was more efficient in increasing component skill rates and produced higher rates on the RESAA measures than training accuracy to 100% in a stage before rate-building commenced for the Year 2 children and two pre-primary children. Training accuracy to 100% before rate-building was marginally more efficient for five of the pre-primary children. Adduction was greater for a one learning-channel cross than for a two learning-channel cross. The results of Study 2 demonstrated that systematic increases in component skill rates were produced by both the rate-building and constrained-rate procedures, although higher rates were produced by the rate-building procedures for eleven of the twelve children. Higher training rates of the component skills produced concurrently higher rates on repeated RESAA measures during the intervention and on RESAA follow-up measures. Adduction was greater for a two learning-channel cross than for a one learning-channel cross. The level of reading ability of the children did not influence training rates of the component skill but did affect performances on the RESAA measures. Comparisons indicated that different training rates predicted different RESAA outcomes for all of the children.

Intraverbal behavior governs core elements of academic and intellectual behavior. These intraverbal relations can be explicitly taught when an individual is prompted to provide an appropriate response with pictures, text, or other stimuli following a verbal stimulus. It is possible that a focus on fluency of the target repertoires may lead to more conclusive data. the current study assessed the effects of precision teaching based instruction for component textual repertoires on the acquisition of intraverbal relations. Specifically, this study compared the effectiveness of two textual prompting procedures (with and without fluency-based instruction) on the acquisition and application of intraverbal relations using time-delay and a carefully controlled set of intraverbal stimuli. Results indicate that the use of textual prompts and an errorless time-delay transfer of stimulus control procedure were effective strategies for teaching intraverbal responses regardless of the inclusion of fluency-based instruction.

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Outcomes for ten adult males who used the SpeechEasy fluency device for one year were investigated. Outcomes were determined from qualitative analysis of responses to open-end questions developed from a content analysis of the Perceptions of Stuttering Inventory (PSI) and the Locus of Control of Behavior (LCB) and portions of the Stuttering Severity Instrument-Third Edition (SSI-3). These survey instruments are commonly administered to adults who stutter to determine their levels of struggle, avoidance, anticipation of stuttering and personal locus of control of behavior. The results of the survey instruments were triangulated with interview responses to establish reliability of responses. Changes in stuttering severity following treatment with the SpeechEasy fluency device were compared to changes in perceptions of struggle, avoidance, anticipation of stuttering and personal locus of control of behavior. Data from the interviews and survey instruments revealed patterns of responses that may assist clinicians who treat individuals who stutter in determining those clients who might benefit from treatment using the SpeechEasy fluency device.

EEG activation studies suggest cerebral lateralization of emotions with greater left than right prefrontal activation during positive mood states and greater right than left prefrontal activation during negative mood states (Davidson et al., 1990). Cerebral lateralization is also observed in cognitive tasks, with verbal fluency associated with left frontal activation and design fluency associated with right frontal activation (Baldo et al., 2001). Further, there are lateralized associations between emotion and cognition; that is, verbal fluency is positively associated with induced positive mood, whereas design fluency is positively associated with induced negative mood (Bartolic et al., 1999). The current study expected naturally occurring mood states to be differentially associated with performance on executive function fluency tasks, and based on previous findings (Cabeza, 2002), that age would moderate the association between emotion and fluency. Results suggest a trend for a positive association between positive affect (PA) and verbal fluency. Age did not moderate associations between emotion and cognitive tasks, although greater interdependence between cognitive and emotion variables in older relative to middle-aged adults suggests decreased lateralization in older adults; however differences in interdependence between older and younger adults were negligible. These results suggest that PA may positively influence some areas of cognition, although age may not moderate these results. Sample and measurement limitations may have contributed to this finding.

This study presents a multicase study that looked at the fluency development of three fourth grade readers of varying reading abilities. The participants were chosen based on two scores, their words correct per minute (WCPM) score and their Multidimensional Fluency Scale score (MFS). The three students participated in an eight-week intervention in which readers theaters were used for fluency instruction and practice. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used as the researcher observed the students during the literacy block of the day; interviewed the three participants three times; one-on-one, gathered self-report sheets that the participants filled out weekly; and recorded their WCPM and MFS scores weekly. Findings of this study suggest that students' engagement in readers theater helped develop various aspects of fluency: expression, volume, and pace. Motivation and confidence were also found to increase through the use of readers theaters.

Fluent component performances may be more readily available for recombination into more complex repertoires. This experiment considered the stimulus equivalence preparation as a laboratory analog for the co-adduction said to occur in generative instruction. Seven adults received minimum training on 18 conditional discriminations, components of 9 potential stimulus equivalence classes. Training was interrupted periodically with tests to determine whether fluency of original relations predicted emergence of derived relations. Fluency predicted emergence in 2 of 17 instances of emergent derived relations for 4 subjects. One subject demonstrated fluency without derived relations. Training accuracies as low as 58% preceded emergence for 3 subjects. Fluency appears to be neither necessary nor sufficient for derived relations. Fluency's role may be in retention and complex application tasks rather than acquisition of behavioral relations.

Magister Educationis - MEd / Reading is one of the components of literacy that plays a crucial role in accessing knowledge. It develops the children’s mind and stimulates their understanding of the reading content and enables them to function and communicate effectively in society. Research conducted in the field of literacy suggests that there is a literacy crisis (especially in reading), around the world. Recent research indicates that South African Foundation Phase learners perform poorly in reading comprehension. Considering poor literacy results observed in South Africa, it is important to explore reading as a socio-cultural and cognitive practice and to identify the factors that contribute towards adequate acquisition of reading comprehension skills in the Foundation Phase. Thus the focus of this study is on reading comprehension in isiXhosa Home Language which is used as the main language of learning and teaching from Grade R - 3. I have used a qualitative approach as an underpinning research methodological framework for this study. Data was collected by means of interviews and classroom observations from two selected Grade three classrooms in one primary school in the Western Cape. The findings of this study illustrate the significance of learners’ prior knowledge and the use of adequate resources to enhance learners’ reading comprehension. The study concludes that reading comprehension is a cognitive process that demands innovative teaching approaches that will facilitate meaningful learning across the curriculum.

This dissertation study examined the predictive validity of alphabetic knowledge and phonemic awareness assessments on word reading fluency. The participants were approximately 900 kindergarten students from a suburban school district in Oregon. The study used extant curriculum-based measure (CBM) reading assessment data collected during the 2013-2014 school year to examine the predictive validity of measures of letter naming fluency (LN), letter sound fluency (LS), and phoneme segmentation fluency (PS) on word reading fluency (WRF). Linear regression was employed to examine the amount of variance that early reading skills (LN, LS, and PS), measured during the fall and winter, explained in WRF measured in the spring of kindergarten. The relation of non-performance demographic data to student spring WRF was also examined. Results of this research are intended to inform practitioners implementing early reading instruction and interventions through an equity lens.