A Componential Theory of Reading Skills and Their Interactions

摘要

This research is concerned with understanding and identifying the limits on reading ability imposed by deficiencies in basic information-processing components. During the first two years of this project, the work has identified perceptual and cognitive skill components of reading, and has formulated techniques for measuring those skills. A series of experiments has pinpointed poor readers' deficiencies in perceiving orthographic units, in phonological decoding, in using context in lexical identification, and in extrapolating discourse context to activate likely concepts in semantic memory. Other measures have focused on aspects of discourse processing, particularly as they are utilized in understanding anaphoric reference in a text. Studies of the effects of staging of ideas, topicalization, syntactic form, number of available referents, and other text variables on subjects' performance in comprehending anaphoric reference have led to a provisional set of rules used by readers in assigning text referents, and to the beginnings of a theory for discourse processing.