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ED 6

Theories of Reading

By: Myla B. Coretz

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Brief History

Psychological research on reading was donein the early 1900s by E. B. Huey and others

According to Huey (1908): . . .to completelyanalyze what we do when we read wouldalmost be the acme of a psychologistsachievements, for it would be to describe very

many of the most intricate workings of thehuman mind . . . .

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With the rise of Behaviorism in the early partof the last century, especially within Americanpsychology, the focus shifted to studying

behaviors that were more observable thanreading (more simple learning and moresimple learners)

As cognitive psychology became increasingly

dominant during the latter half of the century,reading (and human thinking in general)again became a phenomenon to study

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How might we think about reading?

Perhaps because oflasting effects ofBehaviorism, many earlymodels of reading still had

a very stimulus-driven,or text-driven feel

In these early models, theassumption was thatinformation in the text is

taken in by the reader Information was seen to

flow from the bottom up

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An Early Bottom-Up Model of

Reading, LaBerge & Samuels (1972)

Letters are perceived asvisual patterns, and withlearning, come to be

recognized as letters Letters are mentally

combined and recognizedas words

Words are successivelyrecognized as phrases,sentences, etc.

A

P + A + T PAT

PAT THE DOG ONTHE HEAD.

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Not the whole story

To test such a text-driven model, you cannow be a subject in an experiment thatEdmund Burke Huey performed 100 yearsago (with slightly different technology)

When you click the mouse or spacebar, youwill see an asterisk ( * ) appear on the screento orient you. A vertical list of items (letters orwords) will then appear under the asterisk

See how many of the items you can read inthe time you are given (if possible, read outloud, in a rapid but comfortable pace)

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*

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*

ywusqomkig

ec

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Did you finish the whole list?

Did you have time left over?

Click whenyou are readyto start thenext list.

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*

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*

poolrugsmarksendlistmorepickstabneckyour

dicefont

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Did you finish the whole list?

Did you have time left over?

Click when

you are readyto start thenext list.

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*

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*

analysishabitualoccupiedinherentprobable

summoneddevotionremarkedovercomeresolute

elementsconclude

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Did you finish the whole list?

If you are like most adult readers, you hadtime to read all the items on all the lists

Click to advance each screen again

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What does this demonstrate?

We do not read letter by letter, building upwords from individual letters

The lists contained successively more letters

List 1: 1 letter per line List 2: 4 letters per line

List 3: 8 letters per line

However, the lists were not displayed forproportionately longer times

All lists were displayed for 8 seconds

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You just replicated classic findings

You read the short words (4 letter words inList 2) just as quickly as you read singleletters (List 1); both were displayed for only 8seconds

Even though List 3 contained eight timesmore letters than List 1, you did not needeight times longer to read it

In studies with more precise timing, peopleeven read short words more quickly thansingle letters, a phenomenon that has cometo be called the word superiority effect

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Alternative models of reading

Theoretical modelsemphasizing theexpectations andprediction abilities ofreaders have come to beknown as top-downmodels