A paradoxical relation between reading and learning

1. The role of discourse context in developing word form representations: A paradoxical relation between reading and learning Nicole Landi, Charles A. Perfetti, Donald J. Bolger, Susan Dunlap, Barbara R. Foorman Advisor: Dr. Hu, Chieh-Fang Presenter: Cindy

15. Experiment 1 In the first experiment, children read unknown target words aloud, either in context or in isolation, without instructor feedback and were later tested on how well they learned the new words. The “untutored learning” design maximizes the similarity to a natural reading situation and, as such, provides a fair comparison between isolated word reading and contextualized word reading .

22. Luckily, midnight struck and Prince Cinders changed back into himself, so he ran away and lost his trousers .

23. The Princess will marry whoever fits the pants lost by the prince who saved her from being eaten by the Big Hairy Monkey.

40. Experiment 2 Experiment 2 examined word retention in more skilled and less skilled readers as a function of how they learned the words: in a single context, in three different contexts, or in isolation. Furthermore, all children had three encounters (increased from one encounter in Experiment 1) with each word regardless of condition during the self-teaching session.

50. Results on Session 3: Self-teaching day Based on the average score out of 3 points, all children were better at reading previously unknown words if they were in a sentence context or read in three different contexts than if they were read in isolation, F (2,70) = 9.10, p < .01. A main effect of skill confirmed that more skilled readers outperformed less skilled readers, F (1,45) = 14.00, p < .01.

51. Results on Session 4: Posttest word reading. As in Experiment 1, no difference was found in word reading performance between words that were read in contexts compared with words that were read in isolation during self-teaching. The main effect of skill confirm that more skilled reader outperformed less skilled reader, F (1,45) = 4.16, p < .05.

52. Results on Session 4: Posttest word retention . More skilled ( n = 17) Less skilled ( n = 20) The results confirmed the effect of context found in Exp. 1. Words learned in isolation were more likely to be retained than were words in either context condition, F (2,70) = 21.00, p < .001. There is a significant interaction between skill and word retention as a function of context, F (2,70) = 6.70, p < .01. Isolated condition had significantly higher retention than the context conditions for less skilled readers , but not for more skilled readers.

62. Thank You!