The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive ability of specific items in the Catch-'Em Early preschool screening instrument with subsequent reading achievement as determined by SRA Achievement Series test scores at the second-, fifth-, and eighth-grade levels.The twenty selected items from the preschool screen were: walking board, jumping, body image, visual sequencing, body localization, gross space, angels-in-the-snow, eye motor coordination, visual figure ground, visual form constancy, spatial relations, reproduction in space, counting, colors, auditory sequencing, chalkboard, visual forms, visual memory, ocular pursuits, visual acuity.A Pearson Point Biserial Correlation technique was used at each grade level to determine the best predictors. The .05 level of significance was established for the non-acceptance of the null hypotheses. A regression analysis was used to determine the best combination of predictors for each grade level.Findings1. The visual form constancy screening item had a significant positive relationship with second-grade reading scores.2. The walking board and auditory sequencing screeningitems had a significant inverse relationship with second-grade reading scores3. The best predictive combination for second-grade reading was: walking board, auditory sequencing, and visual form constancy4. The body image, visual sequencing, body localization, angels-in-the-snow, visual form constancy, reproduction in space, counting, colors, auditory sequencing, chalkboard, and visual forms screening items had a significant positive relationship with fifth-grade reading scores5. The visual memory screening item had a significant inverse relationship with fifth-grade reading scores6. The best predictive combination for fifth-grade reading was: visual sequencing, color discrimination, body image, chalkboard, and visual forms7. The body image, body localization, angels-in-the-snow, eye motor coordination, reproduction in space, counting, colors, auditory sequencing, chalkboard, and visual forms screening items had a significant relationship with eighth-grade reading scores.8. The visual memory relationship with screening item had a significant inverse eight-grade reading scores9. The best predictive combination for eighth-grade reading was: visual sequencing, chalkboard, visual forms, reproduction in space, and eye motor coordination

The validity of the theory of skimming as a process of looking only at the key words in continuous discourse was investigated in the present study. The primary research questions raised were whether skimming by looking only at key words is an effective reading strategy and to what extent skimming is essentially a process of disembedding key words. Attention was also given to the relationship of familiarity with the content of stimulus passages to skimming performance. The research design involved manipulating three independent variables: (1) Form of presentation of each of two stimulus passages (key words underlined; key words presented by masking the non-key words; original text with no key words identified; and no stimulus passage at all, the control group); (2) Levels of key words (three levels of redundancy reduction: syntactic, lexical and morphological, and anaphoric or discourse redundancy); and (3) Familiarity with content of the stimulus passage (pretest familiarity: Pretest and No« Pretest; and amount of background information: High, Middle, or Low Pretest scores). The criterion measure for each stimulus passage was a set of multiple-choice questions which were administered as a pretest (Pretest group only) and as a posttest following the skimming task(s). The dependent variables were the posttest raw scores and the information gain scores (posttest score minus pretest score). Scores on the VanWagenen Rate of Comprehension Scale were used as a covariate. Grade 11 subjects were randomly assigned to Pretest and No-Pretest groups in the first experimental session. Within these respective groups the Ss were randomly assigned to one of seven treatments for the second session at which the Ss were directed to skim two passages (science and history) under a time-limit condition. The results of this study indicate that: 1. Familiarity with the content of the reading materials is one of the important factors involved in the skimming process. It was observed that familiarity with the content could be induced by exposure to a related pretest. In fact, skimming was effective only when there was cueing via exposure to the pretest and then only on the science passage- Overall, skimming did not appear to be an effective reading strategy on the history passage. As predicted, having a greater amount of background information did facilitate skimming on the science passage. 2. Elimination of non-key words did not affect skimming performance on the science passage at any level of redundancy reduction. Therefore, since no significant effects were observed either due to having non-key words eliminated or to the amount of redundancy reduction (levels of key words), it was concluded that grade 11 Ss are able to gain information through skimming by looking only at key words in continuous discourse. Contrary to expectations, however, having key words identified did not facilitate skimming at any level of redundancy reduction. Consequently, skimming cannot be said to be essentially a process of disembedding key words. 3. There was no significant interaction between and among the three independent variables: forms of the passages, levels of key words, and amount of background information. Implications of the conclusions for methods and materials to be used for instruction are that (1) some materials may not be appropriately skimmed; (2) while readers may be capable of skimming-by capitalizing on the redundancy and predictability of the language, they apparently need instruction and practice in order to take advantage of these characteristics of the language in efficient information processing. The relationship between skimming and other factors such as immediate or short-term memory and practice effect should be investigated. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

The results from a bibliometric analysis of reading research journal literature are reported in this investigation. The major purposes of the study were to: establish a sample of reading research literature; determine the core journal structure of the sample; describe developmental characteristics of the reading research journal literature; and illustrate disciplinary connections among journals reporting reading research. Summaries from the Annual Summary of Research on Reading (ASHR) for the years 1959, 1964, 1968 and 1972 — representing the years 1959 to 1972 — provided the literature for analysis, 768 (84 percent of the total) of the journal articles appearing in the four summaries were collected and provided the referencing and cited sets of journal titles. Three major analyses were performed. In the first, the referencing collection of journal articles was described and sets of core journals listed. Developmental characteristics of reading research were described in the second using a number of bibliometric measures including average number of references per article, age of cited materials, type of publication cited, frequency of author self-cites, and patterns of multiple authorship both in the referencing and cited set of journals. In the third analysis, two clustering programs (UBC C-Group and Osiris Hiclust) were used to statistically group the core cited journal titles. Core Journal Structure. Core journals were identified using three criteria: number of articles appearing in the ASRR, quantity of references produced by the articles, and volume of citation in the referencing set of journals. For all three lists, the most productive journals accounting for 50 and 80 percent of the total articles, references and citations in the two sets of journal titles are identified. The journals isolated as the cores for the three lists fellow the general Pareto distribution, confirming earlier work by Price (1965), Garfield (1972) and others, thus demonstrating the predominance of small cores of highly productive journals in the reading research information network. Comparison revealed the three core lists represent subject areas such as reading, growth and development, curriculum, educational research, general education, educational psychology and several areas of psychology. The discipline diversity of the journal titles increased markedly with the selection criterion based on volume of citation in the referencing set of journals. Developmental Characteristics. Based on the results of the study, and comparison with research using other literatures, the following developmental characteristics for reading emerged. Reading research is becoming a more scholarly field using quantity of citations per article as a criterion. There is a slight movement toward a more immediate research front, indicated by age of cited materials, but this is not strong and the field still relies heavily on archival and near archival resources in its research. A movement toward generation of science-like paradigms may DS developing, based on proportion of serial and monographic usage, but this is tentative at best and not yet a pronounced trend, Beading research may be becoming more cumulative as indicated by increasing author self-citation. Finally, based on multiple authorship data, reading research is definitely becoming more collaborative. Clustering of Journal Titles Two statistical algorithms, one using correlational techniques and the other Euclidian distances in n-dimensional space, were applied to the 36 core cited journal titles. Intuitively acceptable journal groupings were produced in the cluster analysis with the two programs generally confirming each other. Ten journal groupings emerged. Three were somewhat ambiguous with the remaining seven illustrating strong interrelationships suggesting the existence of clusters of ideationally related content among subjects in journals reporting reading research. Recommendations for further research include; statistical analysis of the dispersion of the identified core journal listings; comparison of the core cited' journals with recent issues of the ASBR and ERIC's CIJE ; further study of author productivity in reading research; development of a Journal of Really Important Papers , analysis of conceptual research fronts in reading research; broader analysis of the extent to which archival sources are used in reading research; analysis of cited journal titles which emerged as clusters to delineate conceptual maps related to reading research; and development of a Reading Research Literature Citation Index based on the annual summary of research. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

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The purpose of the present study was to ascertain from the research literature on alphabet legibility and geometric form discrimination what minimum number and nature of changes could be made to the letters b, d , p and q to increase the ability of preschool children to discriminate vertical, horizontal and rotational changes in orientation of the letters. In accordance with the research evidence the stem of each letter was replaced by a solid black, right-angle triangle. For each letter the smallest angle of the triangle was uppermost, the right-angle was in the bottom left-hand corner, and a small white circle was imbedded in the right-angle. The base of the triangle was equal in width to the diameter of the eye of the letters. To test the hypothesis that for preschool children horizontal, vertical and rotational changes in orientation of the modified letters would be more discriminable than identical orientation changes of the standard letters a four-to-one match to sample format was used. In this format one stimulus letter was to be matched with an identical letter contained within a matrix of three letters each depicting a different orientation of the stimulus letter. Kindergarten children between the ages of 4.6 and 5.6 were selected in terms of their performance on two screening tests. Thirty-six children were included in the sample with 18 subjects in each treatment group. One screening test used simple geometric shapes to assess the child's fundamental understanding of the concept of similarity, and his ability to respond adequately to the four-to-one match to sample format. The second screening and training test reinforced the child, verbally and with candy to attend to orientation cues; the subject was required to manually reorient a response figure to match in sequence a number of sample figures each of which represented one of the three alternative orientations. The subjects were then given an error base-rate test of twenty-four, four-to-one match to sample formats comprising all permutations of the standard letters b, d , p and q . In accordance with their scores on this test (total number of correct discriminations) subjects were assigned by the randomized blocks design to the control and experimental groups. For the treatment, the control group was given the pretest again while the experimental group was given a test in identical format using the modified characters. Statistical analysis of the gain scores (number of correct discriminations on the treatment test minus number of correct discriminations on the error base-rate test) indicated that the modified letters significantly improved discrimination of orientational changes at the .025 level of significance, and that no significant difference existed between the performance of males and females. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

Harris suggests the following as important to readiness for reading: 'general intelligence, visual and auditory perception, physical health, background of experience, comprehension and use of oral English, emotional and social adjustment, and interest in reading'...As a first grade teacher, the writer became especially interested in two of these factors. As a result of such teaching experience, two of these interrelated readiness factors have seemed of special significance: the influence of emotional attitudes on reading readiness and the relation of kindergarten experience to the child's readiness for reading. It seemed wise to learn more about meeting the emotional needs of children whose school adjustment might be affected by lack of kindergarten experience. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to investigate these two phases of reading readiness: the emotional factors and the influence of kindergarten as a part of the child's background of experience. The relation of these factors to procedures in the first grade classroom will be emphasized. / Typescript. / "August, 1955." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Sarah Lou Hammond, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-75).

"The writer chose reading readiness for special study and research primarily because she is a trained, experienced, secondary-school teacher now teaching the first grade. She feels that special attention should be given to reading readiness for beginning first graders to try to offset part of the 25 per cent who 'fail' each year due to inability 'to read.' Since a good start on the road to reading is so vitally important, the author feels that she, as a first-grade teacher, should study the causes of reading failures and search for the best methods of prevention that reliable research has found up to this time. The desire to explore the field of reading readiness was further strengthened from the writer's study of child growth and development, especially the study of applying the principles of child growth and development to the classroom and to educational activities"--Introduction. / "August, 1954." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Marian W. Black, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 38-40).

The purpose of this study was to determine whether good and poor second grade readers differed in their abilities to respond orally with words which were syntactically correct and were semantically equivalent while reading aloud a fifty item oral cloze test. An extreme range in variance on the dependent measure of semantic equivalence prohibited the planned multivariate analysis of the two dependent measures of syntactic correctness and semantic equivalence. A nonorthogonal univariate analysis of variance was conducted on the dependent measure of syntactic correctness, with intelligence and sex controlled.The subjects for the study were second grade students randomly selected from six middle class elementary schools in a middle size midwestern city. Only students who fit the criteria of a second grade reader and a user of language, employed in this study, formed the population from which the sample was selected. In order to control for the effects of sex, four groups of subjects were used -- twenty male good readers; twenty female good readers; twenty male poor readers; and eighteen female poor readers. Level of reading achievement was based on the subject's score on the reading subtest of the Metropolitan Achievement Tests: Reading Tests, Primary II, Form F. Intelligence was controlled in the statistical analysis through use of the stanine scores of the subjects on the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test, Elementary I Level, Form J.The subjects were administered a fifty item cloze test, constructed and piloted by the researcher. Subjects read the cloze test aloud and supplied responses for the deleted items, which were recorded on answer sheets. A trained judge scored the responses. The criterion for syntactic correctness was as follows: A response was considered to be syntactically correct if it belonged to the same grammatical class as the deleted word. The criterion for semantic equivalence was as follows: A response was considered to be semantically equivalent if, when substituted for the deleted word, it did not alter the meaning of the passage up to the point of the deletion and the meaning of the sentence in which it occurred.The three independent variables in the study were intelligence with two levels (high and average), sex with two levels (male and female), and reading achievement with two levels (good and poor.) Intelligence and sex were used as controlling factors. The two dependent measures were syntactic correctness and semantic equivalence. However, the extreme variability within the dependent measure of semantic equivalence prohibited statistical analysis.A nonorthogonal univariate analysis of variance was conducted on the dependent measure of syntactic correctness, with intelligence and sex controlled. The null hypothesis was rejected (F=13.195, with 1 and 70 degrees of freedom p < .0001). Good second grade readers did have significantly higher syntactic correctness scores on the oral cloze test than poor second grade readers. While the difference between the marginal means for good and poor second grade readers was small, it was statistically significant. Although the dependent measure of semantic equivalence was not analyzed, the within-cell correlation between syntactic correctness and semantic equivalence was high (.794).The finding of the study was interpreted to mean that good second grade readers appeared to be more aware of and more able to use the syntactical constraints of the printed text to supply missing words. It was concluded that poor readers may need to be specifically taught to use the syntactical constraints of the printed text, rather than expecting this ability to develop naturally.

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