Statement of the Problem - 泰國四年級學生認知成分與閱讀能力之交叉延宕長期追蹤研究

The relationship between cognitive component and reading ability in English and non-transparent orthography has been studied for several decades (Coltheart, 1985; Frith, 1985).

According to a thorough review of the existing literature, the relationship between cognitive component and reading ability in Thai of primary school students in their native country had never been investigated. Because of this major gap in the existing research, in this study, the researcher wanted to investigate the relationship between these components in Thai of fourth-grade students in their native country, along with the relationship across time.

5 1.3 Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between cognitive component and reading ability of reading development in Thai of students in fourth grade.

First, the researcher wanted to determine whether there is a relationship between the

cognitive component and reading ability of reading overtime. Second, the researcher wanted to investigate the direction of this relationship over time.

1.4 Significance of the Study

The findings from this study will define the relationship between the cognitive

component and reading ability of reading development context in Thailand. It will also lead to the development of an assessment battery for Thai-speaking students and contribute to the proper design of an effective special instrument to measure Thai students’ reading

achievement. This study provides insights for the generation of theoretical models of reading in typically developing children in context of Thai language. Evidence of specific

directionality in the relationships between the two domains found in this study resulted in implications that could guide the development of integrated curricula that incorporates cognitive component and reading ability instruction which are appropriate for students in fourth grade.

CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Overview

This chapter presents the literature which are relevant to the research goal that was presented in chapter one. This chapter is made up of five major sections: reading models, the reading abilities, the cognitive components of reading, the development of cognitive

component and reading ability of reading development over time for children, and Thai: the transparent orthography language. After the literature review, the research question and the hypothesis of this study will be presented in the final section of the chapter.

2.1 Reading Models

Previous research involving the development of reading models has shown various relationships among cognitive variables in different ways.. However, it is difficult to understand how theories that have evolved in the context of one language or script can be applied to other writing systems. So far, four main theories have been developed to help explain the nature of learning to read. First, the SVR (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) explains the relationship between decoding skills and language comprehension that affects individuals’

reading comprehension. Second, the traditional theory (Carrell, 1988; Gray & Rogers, 1956;

Samuel, 1994; Samuel, 2004), or bottom-up processing, is focused on the printed form of a text. Third, the cognitive view (Ausubel, 1956), or top-down processing, enhances the role of background knowledge in addition to what appears on the printed page. Finally, the

interactive view (Rumelhart, 1990), in which the reader used both bottom-up processing and top-down processing strategies simultaneously or alternately to comprehend the text.

2.1.1 Simple View of Reading (SVR). General reading models have attempted to provide a core description of the overall relationship between reading and broader language knowledge. As noted previously, one important model came from Gough and Tunmer (1986):

the SVR model. It postulates that reading comprehension (R) is the product of decoding skill (D) and language comprehension (C) in the following equation: R = D x C. This equation shows that the relationship of decoding skill and language comprehension on reading comprehension. If either skill (decoding or language comprehension) is a zero in the

equation, the product will produce with a value of zero in reading comprehension. As we look at the equation, two components are clearly important for reading comprehension. This model shows the central nature of reading comprehension. The first component refers to decoding skills (D), which relate to word recognition. Moreover, some researchers use the term decoding as a synonym for phonics (Chall, 1967, in Hoover & Tunmer, 1993), others describe the correspondence between letters and sounds (Hoover & Tunmer, 1993), and for Gough and Tunmer (1986) word recognition is accomplished through phonological coding.

The second component of the SVR is language comprehension (C), which is the ability to take lexical information (Hoover & Tunmer, 1993) to understand the meaning of concepts and words heard or read. In the SVR equation, the reader must develop effective listening comprehension in order to make meaning of the words that they decode. Comprehension involves knowledge of concepts and vocabulary. This can be viewed as a broad language skill that develops through interaction with the environment from birth through childhood.

2.1.2 The traditional bottom-up view. The bottom-up view is the first approach used by researchers to explain the reading process, which can be said to be a traditional view of the reading process. In this processing, the reader starts from the smaller units of text to the larger units to comprehend the text (Carrell, 1988). According to the bottom-up approach, reading is a linear process by which the reader decodes a text word by word, and links the words into

phrases and then sentences (Gray & Rogers, 1956). Samuel (1994; 2004) suggested that at the first stage of learning to read, the printed word must be decoded and then the decoded words must be comprehended. This implies that the more automatic the decoding process becomes, the more cognitive resources are available for comprehension. According to Samuels and Kamil (1988, p. 25), the emphasis of the bottom-up view is a behaviourism perspective, which treated reading as a word-recognition response to the stimuli of printed words, and where “little attempt was made to explain what went on within the recesses of the mind that allowed the human to make sense of the printed page”. In other words, textual comprehension involves adding the meanings of words to get the meanings of clauses. These lower-level skills are connected to the visual stimulus, or print, and are consequently

concerned with recognizing and recalling. Like the audio-lingual teaching method, the phonics approach emphasises repetition and drills using the sounds that comprise words.

Information is received and processed starting with the smallest sound units, and proceeding to letter blends, words, phrases and sentences. Thus, novice readers acquire a set of

hierarchically ordered sub-skills that sequentially build toward comprehension ability. Having mastered these skills, readers are viewed as experts who comprehend what they read. The bottom-up model describes an information flow as a series of stages that transforms the input and passes it to the next stage without any feedback or possibility of later stages of the process influencing earlier stages (Stanovich, 1980). In other words, language is viewed as a code, and the reader’s main task is to identify graphemes and convert them into phonemes.

Consequently, readers are regarded as passive recipients of textual information in the bottom-up model of reading. Meaning resides in the text, and the reader has to reproduce it.

According to Rayner and Pollatsek (1989) also support the bottom-up approach to reading, they pointed out that a word shouldtake longer to recognize than a single letter, therefore learning to read should start from the small unit. Nevertheless, Kolers (1969) have

argued that the higher level information is being used in wordrecognition, which may

conflict with the direction of the bottom-up model. Thus, thebottom-up model was criticized because its view of reading comprehension is in achallenging. Several researchers also argued that reading involves more than word perceptions (Coady, 1979; Goodman, 1970).

Lynch andHudson (1991) pointed out that this model slows the readers down in away that they cannot comprehend larger language units. Therefore, a model thatemphasized a process from higher-level comprehension came in.

2.1.3 The top-down processing. The report by Ausubel (1956) has showed that an important distinction between meaningful learning and rote learning should be made. Rote learning is the memorization of information based on repetition, where the information becomes temporary and subject to loss, whereas meaningful learning occurs when new information is presented in a relevant context and is related to what the learner already knows, so that it can be easily integrated into the learner’s existing cognitive structure.

Learning that is not meaningful will not become permanent. This emphasis on meaning eventually informed the top-down approach to learning new words which the reader has never met before, and in the 1960s and 1970s there was an explosion of teaching methods and activities that strongly considered the experience and knowledge of the learner (Goodman, 1967; Smith, 1971, 1979). These new cognitive and top-down processing approaches revolutionized the conception of the way students learn to read (Smith, 1971, 1994). In this view, reading is not just extracting the meaning from a text, but it is also a process of connecting information in the text with the knowledge the reader brings to the act of reading. In this sense, reading is a dialogue between the reader and the text that involves an active cognitive process in which the reader’s background knowledge plays a key role in the creation of meaning (Tierney & Pearson, 1994). Reading is not a passive mechanical activity, but purposeful and rational, and dependent on the prior knowledge and expectations

of the reader. It is not merely a matter of decoding print to sound, but is also a matter of making sense of the written language (Smith, 1994). In short, reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game, a process in which readers sample the text, make hypotheses, confirm or reject them, make new hypotheses and so forth.

According to Hosenfeld (1984), he claimed that the good reader is a good guesser.

Nevertheless, there was criticism concerning the claim that good readers guess more, and use the context more than poorer readers. The study by Nicholson (1993) showed that the poor and average readers who may benefit from contexts not the older and better ones. In other word, not only the previous experience or background knowledge were involved in reading process, but at least at the level of word recognition and lexical access, some form of bottom-up process is followed also. Carrell and Eisterhold (1983), and Eskey (1986) also challenged the views that reading comprehension involves either bottom-up or top-down processing.

They pointed out that the model of the reading comprehension process should involves both bottom-up and top-down models, and then proposed that in comprehending a text, the two models are employed interactively and simultaneously.

2.1.4 Interactive view. Unlike bottom-up and top-down views of reading, interactive models portray reading as a nonlinear process and as bidirectional. Rumelhart (1990) explains that skilled readers use sensory, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information to read, and these information sources (also known as knowledge sources) interact and depend on each other during the process of reading comprehension. Rumelhart’s interactive model (1990) consists of a visual information store (VIS); graphemic input goes into the VIS. This information then goes into a feature extraction device where critical features from the VIS are extracted. The features then go into a pattern synthesizer. The pattern synthesizer uses all knowledge sources, sensory and non-sensory, to produce a “most probable interpretation”

(Rumelhart, 1990; p. 1163) of the graphemic input; all the knowledge sources come together

in one place, and “the reading process is the simultaneous joint application of all the knowledge sources” (p. 1164). Top-down and bottom-up processes are being applied at the same time. It is also important to note that hypotheses (or propositions) can be made at any level (feature, letter, letter cluster, lexical and syntactic levels). If a hypothesis has to be rejected, then another level of processing takes over (higher or lower) until the right

hypothesis is made. One can surmise that if hypotheses are constantly being rejected at any level, reading fluency and ultimately reading comprehension can be affected.

In addition, Allington (2006) stated that fluency breaks down for a variety of reasons.

For example, the degree of familiarity with the topic being presented may impact word pronunciations as well as the ability to understand the word meanings. Fluency difficulties may also stem from poorly organized information. On the other hand, he explained that some children exhibit non-fluent reading behaviours even when reading about a familiar topic, and when word familiarity and pronunciation are adequate. From the interactive perspective, a good decoder who has knowledge of the text subject but is still reading non-fluently may have issues with syntactic and/or semantic processes as well as language deficits. As mentioned earlier, it is important to note that syntactic processes allow for the prediction of upcoming words as well as meaning making. Presented in Figure 1 (taken from Edwards, 2007, p. 40), is the interaction process between the top-down and bottom up theories. Under the listening conditions (without the speech and hearing problem), hearing, listening,

comprehending and reacting proceed predominantly with a bottom-up or “signal based processing” (Edwards, 2007, p. 40). In contrast, a listener may have to rely to a greater extent on top-down or “knowledge based processing” as a compensation strategy to understand the meaning of an unclear message (Wingfield & Tun, 2007). Based on interactive theories of reading, syntactic and semantic processes occur together and rely on each other when the reader is trying to make sense of a text. Furthermore, syntactic awareness may enable readers

to monitor their comprehension process more effectively, and this awareness can also help children acquire word recognition skills (Tunmer, Herriman, & Nesdale, 1988).

Figure 1. Interactive view of top-down and bottom-up processes for reading.

(Source: Edwards, 2007, p. 40)

Research regarding reading is extensive, and this summary of reading theories is by no means exhaustive. However, with a basic understanding of the theoretical basis of the SVR model, top-down or bottom-up processing, and interactive view of reading, what is important to bear in mind is that relying too much on these models may cause problems for beginning readers. Consequently, in developing reading abilities, these approaches should be

considered, and both the cognitive and reading ability approach were suggested.

13 2.2 Reading ability

The process of reading can be conceptualised as comprising two sub-processes:

decoding skills and language comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990). Decoding refers to the word recognition process and is the technical aspect of reading that transforms written words into their corresponding sounds. However, the general purpose of reading is to gain meaning of what is written, and this is the role of the second component known as reading comprehension. The process of understanding is an activity on a higher cognitive level where the reader uses personal experience, makes interpretations and draws conclusions. This study was used the word recognition variable and reading comprehension variable to measure reading abilities in context of Thai language.

2.2.1 Reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is “the process of

simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language” (RAND Reading Study Group, 2002, p. 11). This process of

interaction and involvement with a text is a function of both the reader and the text variables that takes place within a larger social context (Goldman, Saul, & Coté, 1995; McNamara &

Magliano, 2009; RAND Reading Study Group, 2002). When successful, the product of reading comprehension is a coherent mental representation of the meaning of a piece of text that is integrated with the reader’s prior knowledge. This product is often referred to as a mental model (Johnson-Laird, 1983) or a situation model (Kintsch, 1998; Kintsch, & van Dijk, 1978), and is considered the basis for learning from a text. The nature of the model, that is, the ideas and the links connecting those ideas, defines what has been learned. Reading comprehension is a complex skill, it requires the successful development and orchestration of a variety of lower- and higher-level processes and skills (Balota, Flores d’Arcais, & Rayner, 1990). As a consequence, there are a number of sources for potential comprehension failure, and these sources can vary depending on the skill level and age of the reader (Keenan,

Betjeman, & Olson, 2008). At early grade levels (below fourth grade) mastering word recognition and fluency do contribute mightily to grade level reading comprehension (Duke

& Pearson, 2002). Children at these ages cannot yet read the text, and therefore it is not possible to assess their reading comprehension skills by using text comprehension test.

Theories and models of reading comprehension are necessary to make sense of this complexity. In current study, the reading comprehension skill was measure by reading comprehension test which is appropriate for grade four students.

2.2.2 Word recognition. Word recognition can be defined as the identification of a written word, i.e. the pronunciation of a word encountered in print or writing. Word recognition is assumed to be one of the basic skills to be developed by beginning readers (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Although the majority of researchers would agree with this definition of word recognition, they differ in their view on the learning processes behind this skill. Two types of models are defended: first, there are the stage models of beginning reading; second, there are the non-stage models (Chall, 1999). Many models of beginning reading development have argued strongly in favour of a sequence of rather uniform stages in reading development (Chall, 1983; Ehri, 1987; Gough & Hillinger, 1980). Although these models differ in the details of their description, in their use of labels and in their precise identification of sub-stages, they all propose more or less a first stage of direct word recognition on the basis of either visual or context-bound cues, a second stage of indirect-mediated word recognition through the use of graphic instead of visual cues (grapheme-phoneme correspondences), and a third stage of direct word recognition again, now based on automatisation of the indirect form of word recognition. Typical for this paradigm is the notion that, although both the first and third stages demonstrate direct word recognition, there is a qualitative difference between both types of word reading, the third being alphabetical in root, while the first is not (Ehri, 1991). Thus far, most of these stage models of beginning

reading are based on research with young children during the first year of formal reading instruction. Since the first studies on stages in reading appeared, subsequent studies revealed that the occurrence of the different stages and the speed of moving into the next stage is dependent on the shallowness of the specific orthography at hand and the consistency of the orthography (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). The levels of orthographies transparency are distinguished by the grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules (GPCRs) across languages. Transparent orthographies (e.g., German, Korean, Spanish, Greek, and Portuguese) are characterised by a close, grapheme-phoneme relationship, whereas in opaque or nontransparent orthographies, it is inconsistent and unpredictable. In transparent orthography such as German for example, Pillunat and Adone (2009) suggest that word recognition was strong predictor for oral reading fluency among German grade four students. Thai language in this study is a transparent orthography similar to German. To measure word recognition skill in current study, the word recognition test was used.

2.3 Cognitive component of reading

Research literatures on three cognitive components of reading related to this study are presented in this section. They are: Decoding-related skills; Rapid automatized naming (RAM), and Morphological awareness. Cognitive abilities for reading defined as the information processing theorywhich is conceptualizes children’s mental processes through

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