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131-407: Higher readability in a text eases reading effort and speed for the general population of readers. For those who do not have high reading comprehension , readability is necessary for understanding and applying a given text. Techniques to simplify readability are essential to communicate a set of information to the intended audience. Whether it is code, news information, or storytelling, every writer has

262-419: A book to students. Note also that teaching includes topic-related word groups, synonyms of words, and their meaning with the context. He further says teachers should familiarize students with sentence structures in which these words commonly occur. According to Biemiller, this intensive approach gives students opportunities to explore the topic beyond its discourse – freedom of conceptual expansion. However, there

393-412: A button), while he measured the amount of time it took them to escape. Once the animal had performed the desired response they were allowed to escape and were also given a reward, usually food. Thorndike primarily used cats in his puzzle boxes. When the cats were put into the cages they would wander restlessly and meow, but they did not know how to escape. Eventually, the cats would step on the switch on

524-403: A catalyst in further research, such as that of B.F. Skinner . Thorndike's Law of Effect states that "responses that produce a desired effect are more likely to occur again whereas responses that produce an unpleasant effect are less likely to occur again". The terms 'desired effect' and 'unpleasant effect' eventually became known as 'reinforcers' and 'punishers'. Thorndike's contributions to

655-651: A clear and readable style, Bryson found that it was rare. He wrote that such language is the result of a "... discipline and artistry that few people who have ideas will take the trouble to achieve... If simple language were easy, many of our problems would have been solved long ago." Bryson helped set up the Readability Laboratory at the college. Two of his students were Irving Lorge and Rudolf Flesch . In 1934, Ralph Ojemann investigated adult reading skills, factors that most directly affect reading ease, and causes of each level of difficulty. He did not invent

786-490: A formula based on physical states and mental states. However, she found this was no better than word familiarity and sentence length in showing reading ease. Reading comprehension Reading comprehension is the ability to process written text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows. Reading comprehension relies on two abilities that are connected to each other: word reading and language comprehension. Comprehension specifically

917-427: A formula, but a method for assessing the difficulty of materials for parent education . He was the first to assess the validity of this method by using 16 magazine passages tested on actual readers. He evaluated 14 measurable and three reported factors that affect reading ease. Ojemann emphasized the reported features, such as whether the text was coherent or unduly abstract. He used his 16 passages to compare and judge

1048-546: A great deal to psychology. His influence on animal psychologists, especially those who focused on behavior plasticity, greatly contributed to the future of that field. In addition to helping pave the way towards behaviorism, his contribution to measurement influenced philosophy, the administration and practice of education, military administration, industrial personnel administration, civil service and many public and private social services. Thorndike influenced many schools of psychology as Gestalt psychologists, psychologists studying

1179-535: A major influence to B.F. Skinner and Clark Hull . Skinner , like Thorndike, put animals in boxes and observed them to see what they were able to learn. The learning theories of Thorndike and Pavlov were later synthesized by Clark Hull . His work on motivation and attitude formation directly affected studies on human nature as well as social order. Thorndike's research drove comparative psychology for fifty years, and influenced countless psychologists over that period of time, and even still today. In 1912, Thorndike

1310-523: A number of different strategies to comprehend various types of texts, strategies that can also be used by less proficient readers in order to improve their comprehension. These include: There are informal and formal assessments to monitor an individual's comprehension ability and use of comprehension strategies. Informal assessments are generally conducted through observation and the use of tools, like story boards , word sorts , and interactive writing . Many teachers use Formative assessments to determine if

1441-417: A period of time. In order for teachers to conduct a running record properly, they must sit beside a student and make sure that the environment is as relaxed as possible so the student does not feel pressured or intimidated. It is best if the running record assessment is conducted during reading, to avoid distractions. Another alternative is asking an education assistant to conduct the running record for you in

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1572-615: A project sponsored by the U.S. Navy, the Reading Ease formula was recalculated to give a grade-level score. The new formula is now called the Flesch–Kincaid grade-level formula. The Linsear Write Raygor readability estimate was developed in 1977. In 1978, John Bormuth of the University of Chicago looked at reading ease using the new Cloze deletion test developed by Wilson Taylor. His work supported earlier research including

1703-422: A readability formula to predict the difficulty of adult reading material. Investigators in many fields began using it to improve communications. One of the variables it used was personal references, such as names and personal pronouns. Another variable was affixes . In 1947, Donald Murphy of Wallace's Farmer used a split-run edition to study the effects of making text easier to read. He found that reducing from

1834-402: A separate room whilst you teach/supervise the class. Quietly observe the students' reading and record during this time. There is a specific code for recording which most teachers understand. Once the student has finished reading, ask them to retell the story as best as they can. After the completion of this, ask them comprehensive questions listed to test them on their understanding of the book. At

1965-454: A smaller vocabulary than other students comprehend less of what they read. It has also been suggested that to improve comprehension, improving word groups, complex vocabularies such as homonyms or words that have multiple meanings, and those with figurative meanings like idioms , similes , collocations and metaphors are a good practice. Andrew Biemiller argues that teachers should give out topic-related words and phrases before reading

2096-409: A string that ran over a pulley and was attached to the door. The string attached to the door led to a lever or button inside the box. When the animal pressed the bar or pulled the lever, the string attached to the door would cause the weight to lift and the door to open. Thorndike's puzzle boxes were arranged so that the animal would be required to perform a certain response (pulling a lever or pushing

2227-413: A student has mastered content of the lesson. Formative assessments can be verbal as in a "Think-Pair-Share" or "Partner Share". Formative Assessments can also be "Ticket out the door" or "digital summarizers". Formal assessments are district or state assessments that evaluates all students on important skills and concepts. Summative assessments typically, are assessments given at the end of a unit to measure

2358-422: A student's learning. A popular assessment undertaken in numerous primary schools around the world are running records . Running records are a helpful tool in regard to reading comprehension. The tool assists teachers in analyzing specific patterns in student behaviors and planning appropriate instruction. By conducting running records, teachers are given an overview of students' reading abilities and learning over

2489-650: A subset, particularly summarizing, asking questions, answering questions, comprehension monitoring, graphic organizers, and cooperative learning. The Panel also emphasized that a combination of strategies, as used in Reciprocal Teaching, can be effective. The use of effective comprehension strategies that provide specific instructions for developing and retaining comprehension skills, with intermittent feedback, has been found to improve reading comprehension across all ages, specifically those affected by mental disabilities. Reading different types of texts requires

2620-444: A target audience that they have to adjust their readability levels to. The term "readability" is inherently broad and can become confusing when examining all of the possible definitions. Readability is a concept that involves audience, content, quality, legibility, and can even involve the formatting and design structure of any given text. Different definitions of readability exist from various sources. The definition fluctuates based on

2751-580: A text. When reading a passage, it is good to vocalize what one is reading and also their mental processes that are occurring while reading. This can take many different forms, with a few being asking oneself questions about reading or the text, making connections with prior knowledge or prior read texts, noticing when one struggles, and rereading what needs to be. These tasks will help readers think about their reading and if they are understood fully, which helps them notice what changes or tactics might need to be considered. Know, Want to know, and Learned (KWL)

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2882-478: A text. The use of strategies like summarizing after each paragraph has come to be seen as effective for building students' comprehension. The idea is that students will develop stronger reading comprehension skills on their own if the teacher gives them explicit mental tools for unpacking text. "Instructional conversations", or comprehension through discussion, create higher-level thinking opportunities for students by promoting critical and aesthetic thinking about

3013-524: A text. When a student can relate a passage to an experience, another book, or other facts about the world, they are "making a connection". Making connections help students understand the author's purpose and fiction or non-fiction story. There are factors that, once discerned, make it easier for the reader to understand the written text. One of such is the genre , like folktales , historical fiction , biographies or poetry . Each genre has its own characteristics for text structure that once understood helps

3144-402: A variety of settings and regions. The test used a number of passages from newspapers , magazines, and books—as well as a standard reading test. They found a mean grade score of 7.81 (eighth month of the seventh grade ). About one-third read at the 2nd to 6th- grade level , one-third at the 7th to 12th-grade level, and one-third at the 13th–17th grade level. The authors emphasized that one-half of

3275-488: Is a " mental image " created in a person's mind while reading text. This "brings words to life" and helps improve reading comprehension. Asking sensory questions will help students become better visualizers. Students can practice visualizing before seeing the picture of what they are reading by imagining what they "see, hear, smell, taste, or feel" when they are reading a page of a picture book aloud. They can share their visualizations, then check their level of detail against

3406-626: Is a "creative, multifaceted process" that is dependent upon four language skills : phonology , syntax , semantics , and pragmatics . Some of the fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are the ability to: Comprehension skills that can be applied as well as taught to all reading situations include: There are many reading strategies to use in improving reading comprehension and inferences, these include improving one's vocabulary, critical text analysis ( intertextuality , actual events vs. narration of events, etc.), and practising deep reading . The ability to comprehend text

3537-474: Is arranging the text per perceptual span and a text display favorable to the age level of the reader. Non-verbal imagery refers to media that utilize schemata to make planned or unplanned connections more commonly used within context such as a passage, an experience, or one's imagination. Some notable examples are emojis, emoticons, cropped and uncropped images, and recently, emojis which are images that are used to elicit humor and comprehension. Visualization

3668-656: Is commonly used to rank the reading ease of texts in areas where reading difficulties are easy to identify, such as books for young children. At higher levels, ranking reading ease becomes more difficult, as individual difficulties become harder to identify. This has led to better ways to assess reading ease. In the 1920s, the scientific movement in education looked for tests to measure students' achievement to aid in curriculum development. Teachers and educators had long known that, to improve reading skill, readers—especially beginning readers—need reading material that closely matches their ability. University-based psychologists did much of

3799-410: Is influenced by the readers' skills and their ability to process information. If word recognition is difficult, students tend to use too much of their processing capacity to read individual words which interferes with their ability to comprehend what is read. Some people learn comprehension skills through education or instruction and others learn through direct experiences. Proficient reading depends on

3930-639: Is no evidence to suggest the primacy of this approach. Incidental morphemic analysis of words – prefixes, suffixes and roots – is also considered to improve understanding of the vocabulary, though they are proved to be an unreliable strategy for improving comprehension and is no longer used to teach students. Vocabulary is important as it is what connects a reader to the text, while helping develop background knowledge, their own ideas, communicating, and learning new concepts. Vocabulary has been described as "the glue that holds stories, ideas, and content together...making comprehension accessible". This greatly reflects

4061-438: Is no part of my office to moralize on these facts. But surely it would be a pitiable thing if man should forever make inferior men as a by-product of passion, and deny good men life in mistaken devotion to palliative and remedial philanthropy. Ethics and religion must teach man to want the welfare of the future as well as the relief of the cripple before his eyes; and science must teach man to control his own future nature as well as

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4192-546: Is often recommended for use in healthcare. The Golub Syntactic Density Score was developed by Lester Golub in 1974. In 1973, a study commissioned by the US military of the reading skills required for different military jobs produced the FORCAST formula. Unlike most other formulas, it uses only a vocabulary element, making it useful for texts without complete sentences. The formula satisfied requirements that it would be: In 1975, in

4323-598: Is often used by teachers and their students, but it is a great tactic for all readers when considering their own knowledge. So, the reader goes through the knowledge that they already have, they think about what they want to know or the knowledge they want to gain, and finally they think about what they have learnt after reading. This allows readers to reflect on the prior knowledge they have, and also to recognize what knowledge they have gained and comprehended from their reading. Research studies on reading and comprehension have shown that highly proficient, effective readers utilize

4454-476: Is read. This was called reading persistence, depth, or perseverance He also found that people will read less of long articles than of short ones, for example, a story nine paragraphs long will lose 3 out of 10 readers by the fifth paragraph. In contrast, a shorter story will lose only 2 out of 10 readers. A study in 1947 by Melvin Lostutter showed that newspapers were generally written at a level five years above

4585-524: Is seen by his ideas on mass marketing of tests and textbooks at that time. Thorndike opposed the idea that learning should reflect nature, which was the main thought of developmental scientists at that time. He instead thought that schooling should improve upon nature. Unlike many other psychologist of his time, Thorndike took a statistical approach to education in his later years by collecting qualitative information intended to help teachers and educators deal with practical educational problems. Thorndike's theory

4716-410: Is social intelligence. This is the ability to handle human interaction Thorndike's research focused on instrumental learning, which means that learning is developed from the organism doing something. For example, he placed a cat inside a wooden box. The cat would use various methods while trying to get out, but nothing would work until it hit the lever. Afterwards, Thorndike tried placing the cat inside

4847-668: Is the importance of readers, and specifically students, to be interested in what they are reading. It has been reported by students that they are more likely to finish books if they are the ones that choose them. They are also more likely to remember what they read if they were interested as it causes them to pay attention to the minute details. There are various reading strategies that help readers recognize what they are learning, which allows them to further understand themselves as readers. Also to understand what information they have comprehended. These strategies also activate reading strategies that good readers use when reading and understanding

4978-416: Is this important?" and "Do I need to read the entire text?" are examples of passage questioning. Instruction for comprehension strategy often involves initially aiding the students by social and imitation learning , wherein teachers explain genre styles and model both top-down and bottom-up strategies, and familiarize students with a required complexity of text comprehension. After the contiguity interface,

5109-446: Is to teach novice readers a bank of "practical reading strategies" or tools to interpret and analyze various categories and styles of text. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been implemented in hopes that students test scores would improve. Some of the goals of CCSS are directly related to students and their reading comprehension skills, with them being concerned with students learning and noticing key ideas and details, considering

5240-885: Is used to determine the specific neural pathways of activation across two conditions: narrative-level comprehension, and sentence-level comprehension. Images showed that there was less brain region activation during sentence-level comprehension, suggesting a shared reliance with comprehension pathways. The scans also showed an enhanced temporal activation during narrative levels tests, indicating this approach activates situation and spatial processing. In general, neuroimaging studies have found that reading involves three overlapping neural systems: networks active in visual, orthography - phonology ( angular gyrus ), and semantic functions (anterior temporal lobe with Broca's and Wernicke's areas). However, these neural networks are not discrete, meaning these areas have several other functions as well. The Broca's area involved in executive functions helps

5371-515: The University of Chicago and Bernice Leary of Xavier College in Chicago published What Makes a Book Readable, one of the most important books in readability research. Like Dale and Tyler, they focused on what makes books readable for adults of limited reading ability. Their book included the first scientific study of the reading skills of American adults. The sample included 1,690 adults from

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5502-400: The law of effect , which says behaviors that are followed by good consequences are likely to be repeated in the future. Thorndike identified the three main areas of intellectual development. The first being abstract intelligence. This is the ability to process and understand different concepts. The second is mechanical intelligence, which is the ability to handle physical objects. Lastly there

5633-463: The 16th to the 11th-grade level, where it remains today. Publishers discovered that the Flesch formulas could increase readership up to 60%. Flesch's work made an enormous impact on journalism. The Flesch Reading Ease formula became one of the most widely used, tested, and reliable readability metrics. In 1951, Farr, Jenkins, and Patterson simplified the formula further by changing the syllable count. In

5764-464: The 1930s testing various methods never seemed to win support in empirical research. One such strategy for improving reading comprehension is the technique called SQ3R introduced by Francis Pleasant Robinson in his 1946 book Effective Study . Between 1969 and 2000, a number of "strategies" were devised for teaching students to employ self-guided methods for improving reading comprehension. In 1969 Anthony V. Manzo designed and found empirical support for

5895-431: The 1940s, Robert Gunning helped bring readability research into the workplace. In 1944, he founded the first readability consulting firm dedicated to reducing the "fog" in newspapers and business writing. In 1952, he published The Technique of Clear Writing with his own Fog Index, a formula that correlates 0.91 with comprehension as measured by reading tests. Edgar Dale , a professor of education at Ohio State University,

6026-575: The 9th to the 6th-grade reading level increased readership by 43% for an article about 'nylon'. He also found a 60% increase in readership for an article on corn, with better responses from people under 35. The result was a gain of 42,000 readers in a circulation of 275,000. Wilber Schramm, who directed the Communications Research program at the University of Illinois interviewed 1,050 newspaper readers in 1947. He found that an easier reading style helps to determine how much of an article

6157-543: The Associative Processes in Animals", was the first in psychology where the subjects were nonhumans. Thorndike was interested in whether animals could learn tasks through imitation or observation. To test this, Thorndike created puzzle boxes. The puzzle boxes were approximately 20 inches long, 15 inches wide, and 12 inches tall. Each box had a door that was pulled open by a weight attached to

6288-488: The Behavioral Psychology Society are seen through his influences in the classroom, with a particular focus on praising and ignoring behaviors. Praise is used in the classroom to encourage and support the occurrence of a desired behavior. When used in the classroom, praise has been shown to increase correct responses and appropriate behavior. Planned ignoring is used to decrease, weaken, or eliminate

6419-765: The College Entrance Examination Board. In 1988, Jack Stenner and his associates at MetaMetrics, Inc. published the Lexile Framework for assessing readability and matching students with appropriate texts. The Lexile framework uses average sentence length, and average word frequency in the American Heritage Intermediate Corpus to predict a score on a 0–2000 scale. The AHI Corpus includes five million words from 1,045 published works often read by students in grades three to nine. In 2000, researchers of

6550-552: The McCall-Crabbs reading tests. In 1948, Bernard Feld did a study of every item and ad in the Birmingham News of 20 November 1947. He divided the items into those above the 8th-grade level and those at the 8th grade or below. He chose the 8th-grade breakpoint, as that was determined to be the average reading level of adult readers. An 8th-grade text "...will reach about 50% of all American grown-ups," he wrote. Among

6681-553: The Re Quest, or Reciprocal Questioning Procedure , in traditional teacher-centered approach due to its sharing of "cognitive secrets". It was the first method to convert a fundamental theory such as social learning into teaching methods through the use of cognitive modeling between teachers and students. Since the turn of the 20th century, comprehension lessons usually consist of students answering teacher's questions or writing responses to questions of their own, or from prompts of

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6812-544: The School Renaissance Institute and Touchstone Applied Science Associates published their Advantage-TASA Open Standard (ATOS) Reading ease Formula for Books. They worked on a formula that was easy to use and that could be used with any texts. The project was one of the widest reading ease projects ever. The developers of the formula used 650 normed reading texts, 474 million words from all the text in 28,000 books read by students. The project also used

6943-535: The United States Army during World War I , participating in the development of the Army Beta test used to evaluate illiterate, unschooled, and non-English speaking recruits. Thorndike believed that "Instruction should pursue specified, socially useful goals." Thorndike believed that the ability to learn did not decline until age 35, and only then at a rate of 1 percent per year. Thorndike also stated

7074-433: The ability of average American adult readers. The reading ease of newspaper articles was not found to have much connection with the education, experience, or personal interest of the journalists writing the stories. It instead had more to do with the convention and culture of the industry. Lostutter argued for more readability testing in newspaper writing. Improved readability must be a "conscious process somewhat independent of

7205-453: The ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. It is also determined by an individual's cognitive development, which is "the construction of thought processes". There are specific characteristics that determine how successfully an individual will comprehend text, including prior knowledge about the subject, well-developed language, and the ability to make inferences from methodical questioning & monitoring comprehension like: "Why

7336-517: The adult population at that time lacked suitable reading materials. They wrote, "For them, the enriching values of reading are denied unless materials reflecting adult interests are adapted to their needs." The poorest readers, one-sixth of the adult population, need "simpler materials for use in promoting functioning literacy and in establishing fundamental reading habits." In 1939, Irving Lorge published an article that reported other combinations of variables that indicate difficulty more accurately than

7467-406: The animals, plants, and physical forces amongst which he will have to live. It is a noble thing that human reason, bred of a myriad unreasoned happenings, and driven forth into life by whips made aeons ago with no thought of man's higher wants, can yet turn back to understand man's birth, survey his journey, chart and steer his future course, and free him from barriers without and defects within. Until

7598-414: The background knowledge of the reader can partially determine the effect hyperlinks have on comprehension. In a study of reading comprehension with subjects who were familiar or unfamiliar with art history, texts which were hyperlinked to one another hierarchically were easier for novices to understand than texts which were hyperlinked semantically. In contrast, those already familiar with the topic understood

7729-782: The behavioral psychology field came his major impacts on education, where the law of effect has great influence in the classroom. Thorndike, born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts , was the son of Edward R and Abbie B Thorndike, a Methodist minister in Lowell, Massachusetts . Thorndike graduated from The Roxbury Latin School (1891), in West Roxbury, Massachusetts and from Wesleyan University (B.S. 1895). He earned an M.A. at Harvard University in 1897. His two brothers (Lynn and Ashley) also became important scholars. The younger, Lynn ,

7860-528: The best indicators of reading ease. He showed that the measures of reading ease worked as well for adults as for children. The same things that children find hard are the same for adults of the same reading levels. He also developed several new measures of cutoff scores. One of the most well known was the Mean Cloze Formula , which was used in 1981 to produce the Degree of Reading Power system used by

7991-615: The book they have read. There are different levels of this strategy: 1) The lower ones who need extra help recording the strategies. 2) The average ones who still need some help. 3) The good level. At this level, the children require no help. Students at a very good level are a few years ahead of the other students. This strategy: There are a wide range of reading strategies suggested by reading programs and educators. Effective reading strategies may differ for second language learners, as opposed to native speakers. The National Reading Panel identified positive effects only for

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8122-541: The closer writing is to speech, the more clear and effective the content becomes. In 1889 in Russia, the writer Nikolai A. Rubakin published a study of over 10,000 texts written by everyday people. From these texts, he took 1,500 words he thought most people understood. He found that the main blocks to comprehension are unfamiliar words and long sentences . Starting with his own journal at the age of 13, Rubakin published many articles and books on science and many subjects for

8253-430: The conditioned reflex, and behavioral psychologists all studied Thorndike's research as a starting point. Thorndike was a contemporary of John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov . However, unlike Watson , Thorndike introduced the concept of reinforcement. Thorndike was the first to apply psychological principles to the area of learning. His research led to many theories and laws of learning. His theory of learning, especially

8384-437: The content equally well with both types of organization. In interpreting these results, it may be useful to note that the studies mentioned were all performed in closed content environments, not on the internet. That is, the texts used only linked to a predetermined set of other texts which was offline. Furthermore, the participants were explicitly instructed to read on a certain topic in a limited amount of time. Reading text on

8515-488: The criterion books. It was also the first to introduce the variable of interest to the concept of readability. Between 1929 and 1939, Alfred Lewerenz of the Los Angeles School District published several new formulas. In 1934, educational psychologist Edward Thorndike of Columbia University noted that, in Russia and Germany, teachers used word frequency counts to match books to students. Word skill

8646-419: The decision-making process (deciding whether to click on it) required by each hyperlink, which may reduce comprehension of surrounding text. On the other hand, other studies have shown that if a short summary of the link's content is provided when the mouse pointer hovers over it, then comprehension of the text is improved. "Navigation hints" about which links are most relevant improved comprehension. Finally,

8777-509: The degree of reading ease for each kind of reading. The best level for classroom "assisted reading" is a slightly difficult text that causes a "set to learn", and for which readers can correctly answer 50% of the questions of a multiple-choice test. The best level for unassisted reading is one for which readers can correctly answer 80% of the questions. These cutoff scores were later confirmed by Vygotsky and Chall and Conard. Among other things, Bormuth confirmed that vocabulary and sentence length are

8908-534: The early research, which was later taken up by textbook publishers. In 1921, Harry D. Kitson published The Mind of the Buyer , one of the first books to apply psychology to marketing. Kitson's work showed that each type of reader bought and read their own type of text. On reading two newspapers and two magazines, he found that short sentence length and short word length were the best contributors to reading ease. In 1923, Bertha A. Lively and Sidney L. Pressey published

9039-540: The early stages of his career, he purchased a wide tract of land on the Hudson and encouraged other researchers to settle around him. Soon a colony had formed there with him as its 'tribal' chief. Thorndike was a pioneer not only in behaviorism and in studying learning, but also in using animals in clinical experiments. Thorndike was able to create a theory of learning based on his research with animals. His doctoral dissertation, "Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of

9170-451: The education and experience of the staffs writers. " In 1948, Flesch published his Reading Ease formula in two parts. Rather than using grade levels, it used a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 equivalent to the 12th grade and 100 equivalent to the 4th grade. It dropped the use of affixes. The second part of the formula predicts human interest by using personal references and the number of personal sentences. The new formula correlated 0.70 with

9301-431: The end of the assessment add up their running record score and file the assessment sheet away. After the completion of the running record assessment, plan strategies that will improve the students' ability to read and understand the text. Overview of the steps taken when conducting a Running Record assessment: Some texts, like in philosophy, literature or scientific research, may appear more difficult to read because of

9432-630: The essential document of modern comparative psychology. Upon graduation, Thorndike returned to his initial interest, educational psychology. In 1898 he completed his PhD at Columbia University under the supervision of James McKeen Cattell , one of the founding fathers of psychometrics . In 1899, after a year of unhappy initial employment at the College for Women of Case Western Reserve in Cleveland , Ohio, he became an instructor in psychology at Teachers College at Columbia University, where he remained for

9563-615: The first book in the series, The Teacher's Word Book (1921), two other books were written and published, each approximately a decade apart from its predecessor. The second book in the series, its full title being A Teacher's Word Book of the Twenty Thousand Words Found Most Frequently and Widely in General Reading for Children and Young People , was published in 1932, and the third and final book, The Teacher's Word Book of 30,000 Words ,

9694-415: The first reading ease formula. They were concerned that junior high school science textbooks had so many technical words and that teachers would spend all class time explaining these words. They argued that their formula would help to measure and reduce the "vocabulary burden" of textbooks. Their formula used five variable inputs and six constants. For each thousand words, it counted the number of unique words,

9825-404: The floor by chance, and the door would open. To see if the cats could learn through observation, he had them observe other animals escaping from the box. He would then compare the times of those who got to observe others escaping with those who did not, and he found that there was no difference in their rate of learning. Thorndike saw the same results with other animals, and he observed that there

9956-399: The great numbers of new readers throughout Russia. In Rubakin's view, the people were not fools. They were simply poor and in need of cheap books, written at a level they could grasp. The earliest reading ease assessment is the subjective judgment termed text leveling . Formulas do not fully address the various content, purpose, design, visual input, and organization of a text. Text leveling

10087-489: The identification of the effective conditions that cause learning, and the comprehensive usefulness of the law. Thorndike's Educational psychology began a trend toward behavioral psychology that sought to use empirical evidence and a scientific approach to problem solving. Thorndike was among some of the first psychologists to combine learning theory, psychometrics, and applied research for school-related subjects to form psychology of education. One of his influences on education

10218-432: The illustrations. Partner reading is a strategy created for reading pairs. The teacher chooses two appropriate books for the students to read. First, the pupils and their partners must read their own book. Once they have completed this, they are given the opportunity to write down their own comprehension questions for their partner. The students swap books, read them out loud to one another and ask one another questions about

10349-460: The impact of environmental influences on behavior, Thorndike believed that differences in the parental behavior of men and women were due to biological, rather than cultural, reasons. While conceding that society could "complicate or deform" what he believed were inborn differences, he believed that "if we [researchers] should keep the environment of boys and girls absolutely similar these instincts would produce sure and important differences between

10480-583: The importance of organization, coherence, and emphasis in good writing. In the 1880s, English professor L. A. Sherman found that the English sentence was getting shorter. In Elizabethan times, the average sentence was 50 words long while in Sherman's modern time, it was 23 words long. Sherman's work established that: Sherman wrote: "No man should talk worse than he writes, no man should write better than he should talk..." He wrote this wanting to emphasize that

10611-521: The important role that vocabulary plays. Especially when studying various pieces of literature, it is important to have this background vocabulary, otherwise readers will become lost rather quickly. Because of this, teachers focus a great deal of attention to vocabulary programs and implementing them into their weekly lesson plans. Initially most comprehension teaching was that when taken together it would allow students to be imparted through selected techniques for each genre by strategic readers. However, from

10742-490: The internet may have a negative impact on attention and reading comprehension. Some studies report increased demands of reading hyperlinked text in terms of cognitive load, or the amount of information actively maintained in one's mind (also see working memory ). One study showed that going from about 5 hyperlinks per page to about 11 per page reduced college students' understanding (assessed by multiple choice tests) of articles about alternative energy. This can be attributed to

10873-512: The internet may not have these constraints. Edward Thorndike Edward Lee Thorndike (August 31, 1874 – August 9, 1949) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University . His work on comparative psychology and the learning process led to his "theory of connectionism" and helped lay the scientific foundation for educational psychology . He also worked on solving industrial problems, such as employee exams and testing. Thorndike

11004-405: The last removable impediment in man's own nature dies childless, human reason will not rest. Thorndike's law of effect and puzzle box methodology were subjected to detailed criticism by behaviorists and many other psychologists. The criticisms over the law of effect mostly cover four aspects of the theory: the implied or retroactive working of the effect, the philosophical implication of the law,

11135-439: The law of effect, after finding that a satisfying state of affairs strengthens an association, but punishment is not effective in modifying behavior. He placed a great emphasis on consequences of behavior as setting the foundation for what is and is not learned. His work represents the transition from the school of functionalism to behaviorism, and enabled psychology to focus on learning theory. Thorndike's work would eventually be

11266-405: The law of effect, is most often considered to be his greatest achievement. In 1929, Thorndike addressed his early theory of learning, and claimed that he had been wrong. After further research, he was forced to denounce his law of exercise completely, because he found that practice alone did not strengthen an association, and that time alone did not weaken an association. He also got rid of half of

11397-431: The learned skills will become reflexive or "second nature". The teacher as reading instructor is a role model of a reader for students, demonstrating what it means to be an effective reader and the rewards of being one. Reading comprehension involves two levels of processing , shallow (low-level) processing and deep (high-level) processing. Deep processing involves semantic processing , which happens when we encode

11528-425: The limits of the reading ease formulas, some research looked at ways to measure the content, organization, and coherence of text. Although this did not improve the reliability of the formulas, their efforts showed the importance of these variables in reading ease. Studies by Walter Kintch and others showed the central role of coherence in reading ease, mainly for people learning to read. In 1983, Susan Kemper devised

11659-432: The meaning of a word and relate it to similar words. Shallow processing involves structural and phonemic recognition, the processing of sentence and word structure, i.e. first-order logic , and their associated sounds. This theory was first identified by Fergus I. M. Craik and Robert S. Lockhart. Comprehension levels are observed through neuroimaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). fMRI

11790-574: The mental and moral activities of boys and girls". Indeed, Watson himself overtly critiqued the idea of maternal instincts in humans in a report of his observations of first-time mothers struggling to breastfeed. Watson argued that the very behaviors Thorndike referred to as resulting from a "nursing instinct" stemming from "unreasoning tendencies to pet, coddle, and 'do for' others," were performed with difficulty by new mothers and thus must have been learned, while "instinctive factors are practically nil". Thorndike's beliefs about inborn differences between

11921-481: The military, medicine, and business. The two publications with the largest circulations, TV Guide (13 million) and Reader's Digest (12 million), are written at the 9th-grade level. The most popular novels are written at the 7th-grade level. This supports the fact that the average adult reads at the 9th-grade level. It also shows that, for recreation, people read texts that are two grades below their actual reading level. For centuries, teachers and educators have seen

12052-568: The most frequently occurring words that should be reinforced by instruction and thus become "a permanent part of [students'] stock of word knowledge" (p. xi). If a word is not on the list but appears in an educational text, its meaning only needs to be understood temporarily in the context in which it was found, and then summarily discarded from memory. In Appendix A to the second book, Thorndike gives credit to his word counts and how frequencies were assigned to particular words. Selected sources extrapolated from Appendix A include: Thorndike contributed

12183-595: The number of words not on the Thorndike list, and the median index number of the words found on the list. Manually, it took three hours to apply the formula to a book. After the Lively–Pressey study, people looked for formulas that were more accurate and easier to apply. In 1928, Carleton Washburne and Mabel Vogel created the first modern readability formula. They validated it by using an outside criterion, and correlated .845 with test scores of students who read and liked

12314-413: The occurrence of a target behavior. Planned ignoring is accomplished by removing the reinforcer that is maintaining the behavior. For example, when the teacher does not pay attention to a "whining" behavior of a student, it allows the student to realize that whining will not succeed in gaining the attention of the teacher. Unlike later behaviorists such as John Watson, who placed a very strong emphasis on

12445-426: The ones Gray and Leary used. His research also showed that, "The vocabulary load is the most important concomitant of difficulty." In 1944, Lorge published his Lorge Index , a readability formula that used three variables and set the stage for simpler and more reliable formulas that followed. By 1940, investigators had: In 1943, Rudolf Flesch published his PhD dissertation, Marks of a Readable Style , which included

12576-424: The original intellect and character of man in the future with a higher, purer source than the muddy streams of the past. If it is our duty to improve the face of the world and human customs and traditions, so that men unborn may live in better conditions, it is doubly our duty to improve the original natures of these men themselves. For there is no surer means of improving the conditions of life. And furthermore: It

12707-420: The prior knowledge they assume, the tradition from which they come, or the tone, such as criticizing or parodying. A Philosopher Jacques Derrida , explained his opinion about complicated text: "In order to unfold what is implicit in so many discourses, one would have each time to make a pedagogical outlay that is just not reasonable to expect from every book. Here the responsibility has to be shared out, mediated;

12838-640: The reader comprehend it. A story is composed of a plot, characters, setting, point of view, and theme. Informational books provide real-world knowledge for students and have unique features such as: headings, maps, vocabulary, and an index. Poems are written in different forms and the most commonly used are: rhymed verse, haikus, free verse, and narratives. Poetry uses devices such as: alliteration, repetition, rhyme, metaphors, and similes. "When children are familiar with genres, organizational patterns, and text features in books they're reading, they're better able to create those text factors in their own writing." Another one

12969-443: The reader to vary depth of reading comprehension and textual engagement in accordance with reading goals. Reading comprehension and vocabulary are inextricably linked together. The ability to decode or identify and pronounce words is self-evidently important, but knowing what the words mean has a major and direct effect on knowing what any specific passage means while skimming a reading material. It has been shown that students with

13100-497: The reading ease of other texts, a method now called scaling . He showed that even though these factors cannot be measured, they cannot be ignored. Also in 1934, Ralph Tyler and Edgar Dale published the first adult reading ease formula based on passages on health topics from a variety of textbooks and magazines. Of 29 factors that are significant for young readers, they found ten that are significant for adults. They used three of these in their formula. In 1935, William S. Gray of

13231-433: The reading has to do its work and the work has to make its reader." Other Philosophers however, believe that if you have something to say, you should be able to make the message readable to a wide audience. Embedded hyperlinks in documents or Internet pages have been found to make different demands on the reader than traditional text. Authors such as Nicholas Carr , and Psychologists, such as Maryanne Wolf , contend that

13362-404: The reading records of more than 30,000 who read and were tested on 950,000 books. They found that three variables give the most reliable measure of text reading ease: They also found that: Beginning in the 1970s, cognitive theorists began teaching that reading is really an act of thinking and organization. The reader constructs meaning by mixing new knowledge into existing knowledge. Because of

13493-495: The rest of his career, studying human learning, education, and mental testing. In 1937 Thorndike became the second President of the Psychometric Society , following in the footsteps of Louis Leon Thurstone who had established the society and its journal Psychometrika the previous year. On August 29, 1900, he wed Elizabeth Moulton. They had four children, among them Frances , who became a mathematician. During

13624-418: The same time may be unrealistic. Then again strategies should fit to the ability, aptitude and age level of the learner. Some of the strategies teachers use are: reading aloud, group work, and more reading exercises. In the 1980s, Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar and Ann L. Brown developed a technique called reciprocal teaching that taught students to predict, summarize, clarify, and ask questions for sections of

13755-694: The same way but at different speeds. From his research with puzzle boxes, Thorndike was able to create his own theory of learning. The puzzle box experiments were motivated in part by Thorndike's dislike for statements that animals made use of extraordinary faculties such as insight in their problem solving: "In the first place, most of the books do not give us a psychology, but rather a eulogy of animals. They have all been about animal intelligence, never about animal stupidity." Thorndike meant to distinguish clearly whether or not cats escaping from puzzle boxes were using insight. Thorndike's instruments in answering this question were learning curves revealed by plotting

13886-549: The satisfaction must come immediately after the success, or the lesson would not sink in. With significant post-war activity Thorndike was a proponent of eugenics . He argued that "selective breeding can alter man's capacity to learn, to keep sane, to cherish justice or to be happy. There is no more certain and economical a way to improve man's environment as to improve his nature." He stated: I hope to have made it clear that we have much to learn about eugenics, and also that we already know enough to justify us in providing for

14017-412: The second stage involves the gradual release of responsibility wherein over time teachers give students individual responsibility for using the learned strategies independently with remedial instruction as required and this helps in error management. The final stage involves leading the students to a self-regulated learning state with more and more practice and assessment, it leads to overlearning and

14148-523: The short-term rather than drilling words and meanings teachers hope will stick. The incidental learning tactic is meant to help learners build comprehension and learning skills rather than memorizing words. Through this strategy, students would hopefully be able to navigate various levels of readability using context clues and comprehension. During the recession of the 1930s, the U.S. government invested in adult education . In 1931, Douglas Waples and Ralph Tyler published What Adults Want to Read About. It

14279-403: The structure of the text, looking at how the ideas are integrated, and reading texts with varying difficulties and complexity. There are a variety of strategies used to teach reading. Strategies are key to help with reading comprehension. They vary according to the challenges like new concepts, unfamiliar vocabulary, long and complex sentences, etc. Trying to deal with all of these challenges at

14410-507: The teacher. This detached whole group version only helped students individually to respond to portions of the text (content area reading), and improve their writing skills. In the last quarter of the 20th century, evidence accumulated that academic reading test methods were more successful in assessing rather than imparting comprehension or giving a realistic insight. Instead of using the prior response registering method, research studies have concluded that an effective way to teach comprehension

14541-591: The text, anticipation guides, double entry journals, interactive reading and note taking guides, chunking, and summarizing. The use of effective comprehension strategies is highly important when learning to improve reading comprehension. These strategies provide specific instructions for developing and retaining comprehension skills across all ages. Applying methods to attain an overt phonemic awareness with intermittent practice has been found to improve reading in early ages, specifically those affected by mental disabilities. A common statistic that researchers have found

14672-619: The text. According to Vivian Thayer , class discussions help students to generate ideas and new questions. (Goldenberg, p. 317). Dr. Neil Postman has said, "All our knowledge results from questions, which is another way of saying that question-asking is our most important intellectual tool" (Response to Intervention). There are several types of questions that a teacher should focus on: remembering, testing, understanding, application or solving, invite synthesis or creating, evaluation and judging. Teachers should model these types of questions through "think-alouds" before, during, and after reading

14803-529: The thoughts and behavior of men and women included arguments about the role of women in society. For example, along with the "nursing instinct," Thorndike talked about the instinct of "submission to mastery," arguing that because men are typically physically larger than women, "Women in general are thus by original nature submissive to men in general." Such beliefs were commonplace during this era. Thorndike composed three different word books to assist teachers with word and reading instruction. After publication of

14934-471: The time it took for an animal to escape the box each time it was in the box. He reasoned that if the animals were showing insight, then their time to escape would suddenly drop to a negligible period, which would also be shown in the learning curve as an abrupt drop; while animals using a more ordinary method of trial and error would show gradual curves. His finding was that cats consistently showed gradual learning. Thorndike put his testing expertise to work for

15065-831: The type of audience to whom one is presenting a certain type of content to. For example, a technical writer might focus on clear and concise language and formatting that allows easy-reading. In contrast, a scholarly journal would use sophisticated writing that would appeal and make sense to the type of audience to whom they are directing information. Readability is essential to the clarity and accessibility of texts used in classrooms, work environments, and everyday life. The government prioritizes readability as well through Plain Language Laws which enforces important documents to be written at an 8th grade level. Much research has focused on matching prose to reading skill, resulting in formulas for use in research, government, teaching, publishing,

15196-568: The use of different reading strategies and approaches. Making reading an active, observable process can be very beneficial to struggling readers. A good reader interacts with the text in order to develop an understanding of the information before them. Some good reader strategies are predicting, connecting, inferring, summarizing, analyzing and critiquing. There are many resources and activities educators and instructors of reading can use to help with reading strategies in specific content areas and disciplines. Some examples are graphic organizers, talking to

15327-526: The vocabulary burden of textbooks. This was the last of the early formulas that used the Thorndike vocabulary-frequency list. Until computers came along, word frequency lists were the best aids for grading reading ease of texts. In 1981 the World Book Encyclopedia listed the grade levels of 44,000 words. A popular strategy amongst educators in modern times is "incidental vocabulary learning," which enforces efficiency in learning vocabulary in

15458-401: The wire-service stories, the lower group got two-thirds more readers, and among local stories, 75% more readers. Feld also believed in drilling writers in Flesch's clear-writing principles. Both Rudolf Flesch and Robert Gunning worked extensively with newspapers and the wire services in improving readability. Mainly through their efforts in a few years, the readability of US newspapers went from

15589-414: The wooden box again. This time, the cat was able to hit the lever quickly and succeeded in getting out from the box. At first, Thorndike emphasized the importance of dissatisfaction stemming from failure as equal to the reward of satisfaction with success, though in his experiments and trials on humans he came to conclude that reward is a much more effective motivator than punishment. He also emphasized that

15720-558: The word lists by regular plurals of nouns, regular forms of the past tense of verbs, progressive forms of verbs etc. In 1948, he incorporated this list into a formula he developed with Jeanne S. Chall , who later founded the Harvard Reading Laboratory. In 1995, Dale and Chall published a new version of their formula with an upgraded word list, the New Dale–Chall readability formula. The Spache readability formula

15851-411: Was a medievalist specializing in the history of science and magic, while the older, Ashley , was an English professor and noted authority on Shakespeare . While at Harvard, he was interested in how animals learn ( ethology ), and worked with William James . Afterwards, he became interested in the animal 'man', to the study of which he then devoted his life. Edward's thesis is sometimes thought of as

15982-658: Was a member of the board of the Psychological Corporation and served as president of the American Psychological Association in 1912. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Thorndike as the ninth-most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Edward Thorndike had a powerful impact on reinforcement theory and behavior analysis, providing the basic framework for empirical laws in behavior psychology with his law of effect . Through his contributions to

16113-466: Was a two-year study of adult reading interests. Their book showed not only what people read but what they would like to read. They found that many readers lacked suitable reading materials: they would have liked to learn but the reading materials were too hard for them. Lyman Bryson of Teachers College, Columbia University found that many adults had poor reading ability due to poor education. Even though colleges had long tried to teach how to write in

16244-430: Was able to graph the times it took for the animals in each trial to escape, resulting in a learning curve. The animals had difficulty escaping at first, but eventually "caught on" and escaped faster and faster with each successive puzzle box trial, until they eventually leveled off. The quickened rate of escape results in the s-shape of the learning curve. The learning curve also suggested that different species learned in

16375-448: Was an association theory, as many were in that time. He believed that the association between stimulus and response was solidified by a reward or confirmation. He also thought that motivation was an important factor in learning. The Law of Effect introduced the relation between reinforcers and punishers. Although Thorndike's description of the relation between reinforcers and punishers was incomplete, his work in this area would later become

16506-504: Was developed in 1952. In 1963, while teaching English teachers in Uganda, Edward Fry developed his Readability Graph . It became one of the most popular formulas and easiest to apply. The automated readability index was developed in 1967. Harry McLaughlin determined that word length and sentence length should be multiplied rather than added as in other formulas. In 1969, he published his SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) formula. It

16637-676: Was elected president for the American Psychological Association . In 1917 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association . He was admitted to the National Academy of Sciences in 1917. He was one of the first psychologists to be admitted to the association. Thorndike is well known for his experiments on animals supporting the law of effect . He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1932 and

16768-402: Was no improvement even when he placed the animals' paws on the correct levers, buttons, or bar. These failures led him to fall back on a trial and error explanation of learning. He found that after accidentally stepping on the switch once, they would press the switch faster in each succeeding trial inside the puzzle box. By observing and recording the animals' escapes and escape times, Thorndike

16899-417: Was one of the first critics of Thorndike's vocabulary-frequency lists. He claimed that they did not distinguish between the different meanings that many words have. He created two new lists of his own. One, his "short list" of 769 easy words, was used by Irving Lorge in his formula. The other was his "long list" of 3,000 easy words, which were understood by 80% of fourth-grade students. However, one has to extend

17030-549: Was published in 1944. In the preface to the third book, Thorndike writes that the list contained therein "tells anyone who wishes to know whether to use a word in writing, speaking, or teaching how common the word is in standard English reading matter" (p. x), and he further advises that the list can best be employed by teachers if they allow it to guide the decisions they make choosing which words to emphasize during reading instruction. Some words require more emphasis than others, and, according to Thorndike, his list informs teachers of

17161-410: Was the best sign of intellectual development, and the strongest predictor of reading ease. In 1921, Thorndike published Teachers Word Book , which contained the frequencies of 10,000 words. He also published his readability formula. He wrote that word skills can be increased if the teacher introduces new words and repeats them often. In 1939, W.W. Patty and W. I Painter published a formula for measuring

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