published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

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<p> Adults with mild to moderate acquired brain injury (ABI) often pursue post-secondary or professional education after their injuries in order to enter or re-enter the job market. An increasing number of these adults report problems with reading-to-learn. The problem is particularly concerning given the growing population of adult survivors of ABI. Combat-related brain trauma and sports concussions are two factors contributing to increases in traumatic brain injuries, while higher incidences of stroke in young adults and better rates of survival after brain tumors are contributing to increases in non-traumatic brain injuries. Despite the rising need, empirical evaluation of reading comprehension interventions for adults with ABI is scarce. This study used a within-subject design to evaluate whether adult college students with ABI with no more than moderate cognitive impairments benefited from using a multi-component reading comprehension strategy package to improve comprehension of expository text. The strategy package was based on empirical support from the cognitive rehabilitation literature that shows individuals with ABI benefit from metacognitive strategy training to improve function in other academic activities. Further empirical support was drawn from the special education literature that demonstrates other populations of struggling readers benefit from reading comprehension strategy use. In this study, participants read chapters from an introductory-level college Anthropology textbook in two different conditions: strategy and no-strategy. The results indicated that providing these readers with reading comprehension strategies was associated with better recall of correct information units in two free recall tasks: one elicited immediately after reading the chapter, and one elicited the following day. The strategy condition was also associated with better efficiency of recall in the delayed task and a more accurate ability to recognize statements from a sentence verification task designed to reflect the local and global coherence of the text. The findings support further research into using reading comprehension strategies as an intervention approach for the adult ABI population. Future research needs include identifying how to match particular reading comprehension strategies to individuals, examining whether reading comprehension performance improves further through the incorporation of systematic training, and evaluating texts from a range of disciplines and genres.</p>

The research problem was to determine whether tutoring with the Ball-Stick-Bird reading method with moderately to severely mentally retarded adults would: 1) teach mentally retarded adults to read, 2) show an effect on cognitive functioning, 3) show improved scores on a behavioral scale. Six moderately to severely retarded adults were tutored with the reading method, and six moderately to severely retarded adults served as controls. All twelve subjects were administered pre and post tests of reading ability, intelligence, and behavior. A descriptive analysis of the data resulted in the finding that none of the subjects in either group successfully completed this research design's requirements for the reading program. However, the Ball-Stick-Bird word list data resulted in a strong interraction factor (.017) of the means appearing between the pre and post test scores for the two groups. Because the effects on cognitive functioning and on social interactions were dependent on successful completion of the reading program, the results of the study must be considered inconclusive.One outcome of the study are strong indicators that these inconclusive findings are due to the limited time span as well as the limited sample size of this research, rather than lack of promise of the tutoring instrument (Ball-Stick-Bird). A larger tutoring period with an extended sample should result in more positive findings.

A name identity task was used to assess the language processing abilities of the right hemisphere of the brain. Ten undergraduates participated in each of three experimental conditions; nouns presented below threshold, nouns presented above threshold and verbs presented above threshold. Significant priming effects occurred when a picture of a noun or verb was presented above threshold and followed by a word which named the picture. The priming effect for nouns presented below threshold was not significant. No hemispheric asymmetries were found for the recognition of nouns or verbs.

In this study I examine twenty-five reading textbooks published in America between 1785 and 1819 for their rhetorical theory, pedagogy, and approach to language in order to discover more about the origins of modern writing instruction. The reading textbooks were selected for popularity, needing to go through at least three editions. I also examine four early writing textbooks, all published 1816 and earlier, and compare them to the reading textbooks on the same points.My results show that the dominant rhetorical theorist before 1800 is James Burgh, and not Hugh Blair. After 1800, rhetorical theory in these textbooks is dominated by Blair and John Walker. An emphasis on grammatical correctness is inherent in both writing and speech instruction, meaning the public associated grammatical correctness with writing instruction even in the eighteenth century. Correctness went beyond grammar into vocabulary and pronunciation because language instruction was primarily a matter of imitating the upper class. The reading textbooks, designed for teaching speech, show no evidence of the transition to writing instruction that occurred in the nineteenth century. My examination of the writing textbooks shows that writing instruction developed separately from speech instruction because the elocutionary pedagogy dominant in these years could not be applied to writing instruction. The early writing textbooks have the same emphasis on grammatical correctness, and add inventional schemata that are wholly absent from the reading textbooks. / Department of English

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-301).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1996. / Also available on the Internet.