Linguistic features of easy-to- read texts for students with intellectual disability Background

15/09/2010
Linguistic features of easy-toread texts for students with
intellectual disability
Fajardo, I., Ávila, V., Tavares, G. and Ferrer, A.
University of Valencia
Background
•
Low reading competence in students with mild and borderline Intellectual
disability (ID)
– Decoding:
• Weak decoding skills (e.g. Conners, Rosenquist, Atwell & Sligh, 2001)
– Comprehension (literal and inferential):
• Small mental lexicon (equivalent age of receptive vocabulary of 4-5 years in people with
ID aged 14, Ferrer et al., 1999).
• Morphosyntactic deficits (Perovic, 2006): dificulties with pronouns, reflexives,
connectives, etc.
• Low recall of text statements (Wolman, 1991)
• Low quality inferences in expository texts (Bos and Tierney, 1984)
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
1
15/09/2010
Background
•
Two types of interventions:
– Training
– Adaptation
•
Matching texts and ID students´ reading levels optimally:
– selection
– adaptation from originals
Use of easy-to read texts
– Ad-hoc design
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
How to optimally match texts and students?
•
Guidelines for the Design of Easy-to-Read text
– Principles for adapting texts: linguistics, illustrations and graphics.
– Ej. International Federation of Library Associations- IFLA (Tronbacke, 1998)
– Not empirically supported
– Too general
– Difficult to measure or quantify: readbility measures
•
•
E.g. “use a simple, straightforward language” or “use a clear and logical structure”
Readbility measures
– Shallow: Flesch Index (Flesh, 1948), word frequency…
– Deep: Coh-metrix (McNamara at al., 2002): connectives, co-references…
– Contradictory evidence for word frequency, co-references, etc.
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
2
15/09/2010
General Goals
1.
Validate empirically a corpus of easy-to-read texts for students with Intellectual
Disability (ID).
2.
Examine the relationship between texts’ linguistic variables and reading
comprehension: literal vs. inferential
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
Method
• Selection of a corpus of ad-hoc easy-to-read texts
• Measurement of:
– Texts linguistic features
– Students’ comprehension performance.
• Analyses:
– Correlation
– Regression
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
3
15/09/2010
Participants
•
•
•
28 ID students (17 males and 11 females): 16 valid cases
Center of Vocational Training ‘Camí Obert’
The average age was 19 (ranged from 16 to 22).
Processes
Test
Result
K-Bit (Kaufman, 1997)
64.9
IQ
(mild intelletual disability)
Vocabulary Knowledge
PPVT-III
(Peabody, Dunn, 2006)
9.3
(average equivalent age)
Reading comprehension
ECL test (De la Cruz,
2005)
second year of primary
school
(PROLEC-SE, Ramos y
Cuetos, 1999)
5th
(average percentil)
Syntactic knowledge
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
Material: The corpus
•
48 pieces of news selected from
www.noticiasfacil.es
Lexical variables
Nº of Words
Average syllables per word
Average word frequency
M
93.8
1.9
21361 (high freq. according to normative data)
Sentence variables
Nº of sentences
11.6
Average words per sentence
8.3
INFLESZ index
74.7 (high legibility according to normative data)
Textual cohesion variables
Nº of connectives
4
N° co-references (noun, argument and stem overlap)
Nº of ellipsis
2
4
15/09/2010
Material: The comprehension test
•
Reading comprehension test
(adapted from Ozuru, Rowe,
O’Reilly & McNamara, 2008):
– Shallow questions included
literal and rewording questions:
the answer to this type of
questions was either explicitly
stated or restructured within a
single sentence.
– Deep questions required
between-sentence integration
of information.
Task and Procedure
• During a period of 16 weeks, participants were asked weekly to read
3 pieces of news and to answer a reading comprehension test.
• There was no time limit to complete the task.
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
5
15/09/2010
Results
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
Reading comprehension
Analyses of Variance per item (text):
Effect of type of comprehension question, F(1,43)=11.26; MSE=.248; p<.01.
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
6
15/09/2010
Correlation analyses
M
r (n)
SD
Lexical variables
Shallow
questions
(47 texts)
Deep
questions
(45 texts)
Nº of Words
93.8
40.9
-.30 (47 ) *
- .32 (45) *
Sentence variabl
Nº of sentences
11.6
5.6
-.30 (47) *
-.37 (45) *
Nº of connectives
4.0
3.3
-.35 (47) *
-.13 (45)
N° co-references (noun,
argument and stem overlap)
12.5
6.2
-.39 (47 ) **
-.24 (45)
Textual cohesion variables
*p>.05, **p<.01
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
Multiple regression analyses
• Number of co-references predicted shallow comprehension: 14%
(Adjusted R2 = .14, F(1, 45) = 8.42, p < .001; Beta=-.40,p<.01).
• Number of sentences predicted inferential comprehension: 12 %
(Adjusted R2 = .12, F(1, 43) = 6.74, p < .01; Beta=-.37, p<.01).
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
7
15/09/2010
Discussion I: co-references
• The corpus of easy-to-read texts is valid for ensuring
comprehension especially at the superficial level.
• Number of co-references, predicted shallow comprehension: inverse
relationship, contrarily to what previous literature seemed to indicate
(Crossley et al., 2008).
– Several types of co-references mixed
– The redundancy introduced in simplified texts by means of noun
overlaps, apart from an extension of utterances, would make the
sentences´ grammar to be more complex and unnatural (Meisel, 1980).
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
Discussion II: number of sentences
• The number of sentences predicted inferential
comprehension
– Co-variation with conceptual complexity
– Low capacity of ID students to storage and retrieve information
from memory (Wolman, 1991)
– Many info units -> no possibility of retain them and make
inferences-> more info units to process -> overload-> less
inferences and more superficial processing
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
8
15/09/2010
Discussion III: null effects
•
Superficial measures: effects of word frequency and Flesch Index on our
measures of comprehension were null
– Bring into question the validity of some popular design guidelines to
optimally match texts and ID students´ reading levels.
•
No facilitatitive effect of connective (contrary to Sanders et al., 2007)
– It depends on the type of semantic relationship between clauses they
signal (Crosson et al, 2008)
– Acquisition order: additive, temporal, causal, and adversative .
– Is the acquisition delayed or impared in intellectual disability?
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
Methodological shortcomings
• Small variability of linguistic features
• Small participant sample size
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
9
15/09/2010
Questions…
September 6 - 7, 2010
Frankfurt am Main
10