Construction-Integration Model of Text Comprehension

What is proposition?

Propositions are idea units that combine more than one word in a schematic form.  Propositions allow the theorist to represent the meaning of sentences, independent of their syntactic structure. Just like letters combine to form words, words combine to form sentences.

How many types of text representation are there?

Surface level memory is the memory for the actual words and phrases of the text.  Surface memory is often short-lived. The propositional level of representation deals with the ideas in the text.  The microstructure of a text is the network of propositions that represents the meaning of the text.  One can think of it as a translation from the actual words used into an idea-level format. Microstructure and macrostructure together form the textbase. This is where sentences combine to create a larger picture – a paragraph or more complex idea or story. The situation model represents the information provided by the text, independent of the particular manner in which it was expressed in the text, and integrated with background information from the reader’s prior knowledge.

What do the terms construction and integration refer to?

The Construction-Integration model generates several meanings in parallel and later, sorts out which construction is the right one.  Construction refers to the process of sorting out meanings that do not fit within the context and strengthens other meanings that do fit.  In the integration process, the correct proposition will win out because it is connected to prior knowledge.  The CI model uses a bottom-up construction phase where contradictory assumptions are explored and then ruled out during the integration phase.

The Mnemonic Power of Print: The contribution of Word Spellings for Vocabulary Learning and Instruction

Research Question: Could new vocabulary items be read by sight?

Methods:Low frequency nouns were taught to second graders and fifth graders. Students rehearsed the pronounciations and meanings of the words over several trials. During the initial study trial words were introduced. All of the following trials tested their knowledge of the words. After each recall, correct responses were provided. Meanings were taught through pictures, definitions and multiple sentences. This clarified their meanings and use. Trials continued until students had met a set number of trials. In the treatment setting, student were taught with the word visable, in the control, there were no words visable.

Findings: In second graders, it was easier for students to recall meanings of words than pronounciations of words. Recall was superior when spellings were seen. This worked for the recall of meanings as well as the recall of pronounciations. 

Instructional Implications: When teaching new vocabulary, it is both crucial and beneficial to the student's learning to provide the spelling and visual of each vocabulary word in the lesson.

Daneman, M. & Carpenter, P. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 450-466.

Research Question: What is the relationship between reading comprehension and working memory?

Methods: Twenty undergraduate students were given three tests including a reading span test to measure their working memory span, a traditional word span test, and a reading comprehension test that asked questions about facts and pronominal references.  After reading the passage the subjects were asked two questions – one was about a fact in the passage and another was about the pronoun in the last sentence and its antecedent mentioned earlier in the passage.  The distance between the pronoun and the antecedent varied among passages. 

Findings: The traditional short term memory tests of digit and word span tasks do not tax the processing component of the working memory test. Studies using such measures do not find strong correlations with reading. If a short memory test was used with heavier demands on processing, poor readers would have less attention left to retain information. The reading span test was correlated significantly .90 with the pronominal reference test and .72 with the fact retrieval task. Its correlation with the global assessment reading comprehension (Verbal SAT) was also significant: r = .59. The word span task correlated non-significantly only .33, .37, and .35 with the reading tests respectively.

The results indicate that the reading span task is related to working memory capacity.

Instructional Implications: The good reader has more functional working memory capacity available for the demands of chunking. He is more likely to have more concepts and relations from preceding parts of the text still active in working memory. The good reader's chunks should be richer, and more coherent, and contain different information.

 

Working Memory

There are three main parts to Bladdely’s model of working memory..  The three main parts are the central executive, phonological loop, and the visuo-spatial sketchpad.
The central executive is a system responsible for the control and regulation of cognitive processes. The phonological loop deals with sound or phonological information. The visuo-spatial sketchpad holds information about what we see. It is used in the temporary storage and retrieval of spatial and visual information. The episodic buffer is the third part, it links information across domains to form integrated units of visual, spatial, and verbal information with time sequencing. The episodic buffer also forms links to long-term memory.
It amazes me how memory works not only for intellectual memorizations and learning techniques, but for everyday recall and emotional memories as well....

Vocabulary

Why is vocabulary instruction important to reading comprehension? According to the Joshi article, vocabulary is a means for beinning the understanding of comprehension.  One study of 3rd graders showed that most students had mastered decoding skills and could comprehend grade level materials.  But it has been noted that once they reach middle grades, while their decoding skills remained good, poor vocabulary interfered with comprehension on these grade levels.  Some students do not have a large source of vocabulary or are not taught vocabulary that enriches their understanding while reading. According to the Adams article, direct vocabulary instruction has resulted in an increase in word knowledge and reading comprehension in all students that were studied.

What is the Matthew Effect?
The Matthew Effect states that  poor readers tend to read easier materials and fewer books than good readers do.  A poor reader’s vocabulary grows at a slower rate than students with a larger vocabulary because the books that they are being assigned have poorer quality vocabulary in them.  Students with a larger vocabulary read more and better comprehend the material they read.  A student’s vocabulary knowledge is affected by the amount of words they are exposed to.  Children with a lower vocabulary tend to define words in terms of the context that they were read in, while children with a larger vocabulary were able to define words in more general terms and show examples of the word meanings.

Ehri and Goodman

1- How does Ehri’s view of grapho-phoneme awareness differ from the traditional notion of phoneme awareness. Briefly discuss the research evidence that she draws on in postulating grapho-phonemic awareness.

Grapho-phonemic awareness is the relationship between graphemes the symbols written to represent the sound phonemes make. Readers connect the spellings of words to their pronunciations. This view is different from traditional phoneme awareness because phonemic awareness refers to the smallest speech sounds. Phonemic awareness works for beginning readers when there is a one-to -one grapheme/phoneme relationship, however, there are countless words in which sounds are ambiguous phonetically.
Ehri’s research studied 1st and 2nd grader responses to spoken pseudowords. Students were shown letter prompts and the pseudoword was pronounced, students then saw the spellings of the pseudoword. Students were then shown misspellings of pseudowords.
This research discovered that when students saw correct spelling they remembered the pseudoword better than when they were shown no spellings. The visual representation produced a connection between spelling and pronunciations in their memory.

2- Describe briefly the reading process that Goodman suggests.
Goodman suggests during oral reading the reader is performing two tasks at the same time.; produce oral language determined by graphic input and make sense of what he is reading. He states proficient readers decode from the graphic stimulus and then encode from the deep structure. He feels readers are making their best attempts at reading text by utilizing graphic input as well as syntactic and sematic information. Readers then predict and anticipate using this information. Readers are sampling just enough text to confirm their guess of what is coming.
How would Adams respond to Goodman’s model of reading?
Adam’s model represents reading as a simultaneous process, all processors are working together. Adams says skilled readers rarely think about indivdual letters or words. While Goodman’s model, like Adams, involves the reader doing several things at one time, Goodman differs from Adams as he states eye movement does not work in reading.

Cunningham, A. &Stanovich, K. (1993). Children's literacy environments and early word recognition subskills. Reading and Writing: An Interdiciplinary Journal , 5, 193-204

Cunningham and Stanovich’s research enhances Cassar’s by trying to separate phonological and orthographic processing skills in word recognition during the very earliest stages of reading acquisition.  They also asked if print exposure predicted variance in orthographic knowledge.
Using several different measures, including the Stanford Achievement Test, phoneme deletion, phoneme transpostion, experimental spelling tasks, letter-string choice tasks, and Title Recongition Test, Cunningham and Stanovich proved there was a 40% correlation between exposure to print and orthographic knowledge for early readers.
Stanovich and Cunningham confirm that exposure to print will build orthographic conventions.  Students should read high interest, easy material to help build their processing skills.