The purpose of this study was to investigate the shared and unique contributions of three metalinguistic skills to the word reading and reading comprehension abilities of Adult Basic Education (ABE) students. Across studies, the metalinguistic skills of phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge have emerged individually as important predictors of ABE students' word reading and reading comprehension skills. In contrast to the children's literature, no studies have simultaneously included and considered the shared and unique predictive utility of all three metalinguistic skills to reading skills in ABE students. In addition, the study examined whether the relations of the three metalinguistic skills to reading comprehension were mediated by decoding and vocabulary knowledge. Jointly, the best fitting models indicated that the predictors accounted for 64% of the word reading variance and 91% of the reading comprehension variance. The metalinguistic skills did not emerge as uniquely predictive of word reading or reading comprehension skills; however, all three metalinguistic skills were significantly, indirectly related to reading comprehension via decoding and vocabulary knowledge as mediators. These results help to develop a more comprehensive model of the underlying component processes involved in ABE students' word reading and reading comprehension skills. The findings also may inform instructional practices and future intervention research in ABE programs. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2015. / June 8, 2015. / Adult Basic Education, Decoding, Metalinguistic Skills, Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary Knowledge / Includes bibliographical references. / Christopher Schatschneider, Professor Directing Dissertation; Young-Suk Grace Kim, University Representative; Sara A. Hart, Committee Member; Michael P. Kaschak, Committee Member; Richard K. Wagner, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_253162 |
| Contributors | Tighe, Elizabeth L. (authoraut), Schatschneider, Christopher (professor directing dissertation), Kim, Young-Suk, 1970- (university representative), Hart, Sara (committee member), Kaschak, Michael P. (committee member), Wagner, Richard K. (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of Psychology (degree granting department) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource (98 pages), computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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