The prevalence rate of learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has risen concurrently with their inclusion into public schools in Saudi Arabia. Being in schools, they face academic challenges, particularly in reading. This increased rate evokes the importance of implementing valuable strategies to keep up the academic skills of those…

The purpose of this semester-long project was to redesign the ninth grade English language arts curriculum to include a literacy-based multicomponent intervention to meet the needs of developing readers, while simultaneously maintaining a rigorous curriculum challenging proficient readers in a general education classroom. I examined peer-reviewed…

Reading is one of the most important skills that students learn in elementary school. The problem addressed in this study is the decrease in proficiency of reading comprehension when primary grade students are assessed using a digital device to read and respond to instead of reading a text from a paper-based test. The purpose of this study is to…

This paper examines the genetic ("nature") and environmental ("nurture") influences on why students vary in their reading skills. We review core findings from the field of modern behavioral genetics, a discipline that studies the interplay of genetic and environmental influences, on reading science. Additionally, we provide an…

The unprecedented growth of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in new destination states (e.g., Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Tennessee) calls for better understanding of the relation between their bilingual vocabulary skills and English reading achievement. The current study focused on school-age Spanish-English DLLs (N = 60) in…

This study addressed the effects of Strategies for Teaching Reading, Information, and Vocabulary Effectively (STRIVE), a distributed professional development (PD) model designed to help teachers implement reading comprehension and vocabulary practices in fourth grade social studies classes. Schools (n = 81 schools, n = 235 teachers, n = 4,757…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of supplemental word recognition strategies on students receiving intensive (Tier III) remedial reading instruction. Two-hundred and thirteen middle school students with reading difficulties received an intensive reading intervention (i.e., Corrective Reading Decoding strand) delivered by trained…

The problem addressed through this study was the low levels of reading comprehension of literary and informational texts among fourth-grade students statewide. The reading workshop model and the guided reading approach are two different instructional methods used to teach reading to fourth-grade students at two school districts in Texas. The…

Prior research indicates that students enter school with high levels of reading motivation, but levels begin to decline as soon as second grade. However, most studies rely on predominately White samples. This exploratory study uses a large dataset to examine self-report reading motivation levels for students of varying racial/ethnic and immigrant…

The current set of experiments was designed to explore the processing of spatial information during reading, specifically the "spatial-shift" effect and the "spatial-gradient" effect. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when participants were presented with text alone (i.e., without prior map memorization, virtual…

This study examines the hypothesis that having an older sister causes one to perform relatively better at reading. For the analysis, a cross-subject analysis is conducted to examine a student's relative reading test score (reading test score minus math test score) based on older sibling gender. We found that a student's relative reading test score…

Give a child a book and watch them blossom in more ways than you could possibly imagine! Nothing can replace the feel of a book and the turning of pages in anticipation of a story unfolding picture by picture, chapter by chapter. Books open doors to learning and to the world around us. Where do we go to find these awesome books? The library, of…

This research project aims to answer the following questions: 1) How do the reading strategies students learn in their classes transfer from college to their professional lives, 2) What reading strategies are being taught in college courses that alumni consider to be most beneficial for their careers post-graduation, and what reading practices do…

In recent years, a scientific approach to reading education has gained traction due to the joint efforts of educators, parents, and state leaders. This movement for better reading instruction has helped to fuel a wave of legislation to address widespread and persistent reading deficits of American students. While reading difficulties cut across…

Focalization is such an intrinsic component of narrative that readers are often unaware of its effect. With internal focalization, an actor within the story narrates the events from their vantage point, flavoring the story with their perspective. While extant research demonstrates that many features of narrative structure influence how readers…