The aim of the present study was to examine students' text comprehension in grades 4 and 6. Participants were 61 students without documented or suspected reading and writing difficulties, in grades 4 and 6. The focus was on texts designed by Bishop and Adams (1992), containing two types of questions: literal and inference questions, and three different ways of presenting the text; listening, silent reading and silent reading with the text available when responding to the questions. The texts have been previously used in research and as a tool for clinical, qualitative estimate of reading comprehension in speech and language pathologists’ assessments. Investigation was also conducted for working memory, vocabulary, and phonological and orthographical decoding. The results show that students have a significantly higher score in terms of literal questions when the text is available in responding to the questions, versus listening and silent reading. The results also show that literal and inference questions do not differ. No differences between gender and grades were encountered. Conclusions are drawn that students with typical reading development in grades 4 and 6 do not have any difficulty in answering neither literal nor inference questions, concerning the three texts in this study.

The PhonicStick is a joystick which has been developed as a communicative device to be used by people with severe physical disabilities. During the developmental phase the possibility of using this device in order to train the phonological awareness of 6 – 8 year old children was examined. The studies conducted did not show any statistical difference in phonological awareness when this was tested with current tests after the children had trained with the PhonicStick. One explanation for this could be that the children had already begun to read and write in school. Therefore, a part of the present study was aimed at investigating if a difference in results on the norm referenced tests could be obtained if the children were 4-5 years old instead of 6-8. Parts of a norm referenced test for phonological awareness and an adapted test material for the PhonicStick were used for this evaluation. The 10 examined children were equally divided into a test and a control group.In addition, a meta study was performed, where all the studies relevant to phonological awareness and the PhonicStick were evaluated. Data from these studies were summarized, and processed statistically. Only two statistically significant (p<0.05) differences could be shown after the training with the PhonicStick: both the test group and the control group obtained better results in the posttest in the test of “phoneme identification” and the test group performed better at the test “word production” then the control group. A possible interpretation of the results could be that there might be an intuitive phonological awareness that can not be tested with the current tests for phonological awareness. / The PhonicStick är en joystick som utvecklas med avsikt att bli ett kommunikationshjälpmedel att användas för människor med grava fysiska funktionsnedsättningar. Under utvecklingsarbetet undersöktes om det även kunde användas för att träna fonologisk medvetenhet hos 6-8-åringar. Undersökningarna visade inte någon statistisk skillnad i fonologisk medvetenhet när detta undersöktes med gängse normerade tester efter träning med the PhonicStick. En förklaring kunde vara att dessa barn redan tränats i att läsa och skriva i skolan. Därför undersöktes i en delstudie i detta arbete om en skillnad i resultat på de normerade testen kunde hittas om barnen var 4-5-år istället för 6-8. Delar av ett normerat test för fonologisk medvetenhet och ett bearbetat testmaterial för the PhonicStick användes vid utvärderingen. De 10 undersökta barnen var jämt fördelade på testgrupp och kontrollgrupp. Dessutom utfördes en metastudie, i vilken alla inom området fonologisk medvetenhet relevanta studier med the PhonicStick utvärderades. Data från dessa studier sammanfattades och bearbetades statistiskt. Endast två skillnader kunde med statistiskt säkerhet (p<0,05) visas efter träning med the PhonicStick: både testgruppen och kontrollgruppen var bättre på posttestet i deltestet ”fonemidentifiering” och testgruppen presterade bättre på deltestet ”ordproduktion” än vad kontrollgruppen gjorde. En möjlig tolkning av resultaten kan vara att det kan finnas en intuitiv fonologisk medvetenhet som inte kan testas med gängse test för fonologisk medvetenhet.

I deatta arbete har olika nötningstyper identifierats vilka entreprenadmaskiners skopor utsätts för. Utifrån de dominerande nötningstyperna ska en nötningsprovrigg konstrueras som behandlar dessa. Detta då företaget Borox som förser entreprenad och vägindustrin med slitstarka stålmaterial ska kunna testa sina material och få en relativ uppskattning om nötningsbeständighet och lämplighet på sina produkter.  En produktutvecklingsprocess följdes under arbetet och en lämplig provrigg valdes för att sedan konstrueras och ritas..