Jean Saint-Aubin, Raymond M Klein (2008). The Influence of Reading Skills on the Missing-Letter Effect Among Elementary School Students. Reading Research Quarterly. 43(2), p. 132 (14 pages)
Abstract:
When skilled readers search for a target letter while reading for comprehension, they miss the target letter more often whenit is embedded in high-frequency function words than in less frequent content words. The magnitude of this “missing-lettereffect” (MLE) was investigated among 180 first- to fifth-grade students as a function of their reading skills as assessedwith the reading subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT-3). Results revealed that good readers from grades1 to 4 showed a larger missing-letter effect than poor readers with all tested materials. In addition, the size of the missinglettereffect was correlated with reading skills even after controlling for grade level. For fifth graders, the relation betweenthe size of the missing-letter effect and reading skills was restricted to the contrast involving the function word the. Overall,results support the attentional-disengagement model of the missing-letter effect as well as other models of this effect andgeneral models of reading.
Try to answer:
1. What is the problem for the study?
To find out the relationship between the missing-letter effect and the reading ability
2. What procedures did the experimenter use for the study?
"A total of 180 children from grade 1 to grade 5 in two schools took part in the experiment."
Children were asked to read a set of designed text.
"Children were asked toread silently for comprehension at their normal readingspeed while searching for the target letter noted at thetop of the text. Participants were asked to circle all detectedinstances of the target letter. They were informedthat if they noticed they had missed a target letter, theywere not allowed to go back to circle it. They were alsotold that each text was followed by a comprehensionquestion with three answer choices."
Then the children take Wide Range Achievement Test, which include a subtest for reading.
Children were divided into good and poor readers according to their score in reading test. "Variations in the size of themissing-letter effect as a function of grade level and readingability are then analyzed."
3. What were the major conclusions for the study?
"the size of themissing-letter effect was found to be related to readingability among first to fourth graders and, to some extent,among fifth graders"
4. How would you classify the study, according to the six types of research studies we looked at in this lesson?
Corelational research (or Causal-comparative?)
(according to ISI Web of Science Journal Citation Report, Reading Research Quarterly has the impact factor as 1.218 in 2006, listed 14th in between the "education and education research" journals. This category have the median impact factor of 0.490, and aggregate impact factor of 0.591 in 2006.)