Adolescent Reading Skill and Engagement With Digital and Traditional Literacies As Predictors of Reading Comprehension

1
British Journal of Psychology (2015)

© 2015 The British Psychological Society
www.wileyonlinelibrary.com
Adolescent reading skill and engagement with

digital and traditional literacies as predictors of
reading comprehension
Lynne G. Duncan1*, Sarah P. McGeown2, Yvonne M. Griffiths3,
Susan E. Stothard4 and Anna Dobai1
1
School of Psychology, University of Dundee, UK
2
School of Education, University of Edinburgh, UK
3
Department of Psychology and Human Development, UCL Institute of Education,
London, UK
4
Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring, Durham University, UK
This study investigates the concurrent predictors of adolescent reading comprehension

(literal, inferential) for fiction and non-fiction texts. Predictors were examined from the
cognitive (word identification, reading fluency), psychological (gender), and ecological
(print exposure) domains. Print exposure to traditional and digital texts was surveyed
using a diary method of reading habits. A cross-sectional sample of 312 students in early
(11–13 years) or middle adolescence (14–15 years) participated from a range of SES
backgrounds. Word identification emerged as a strong predictor of reading compre-
hension across adolescence and text genres. Gender effects favouring female students
were evident for reading frequency but not for reading skill itself. Reading habits also
differed, and comprehension advantages were observed among females for fiction and
males for non-fiction. Age effects emerged for reading frequency, which was lower in
middle adolescence. Although more time was spent on digital than on traditional texts,
traditional extended text reading was the only reading habit to predict inference-making
in comprehension and to distinguish skilled from less skilled comprehenders. The
theoretical and educational implications of these results are discussed.
A shortage of information limits our understanding of whether or not children will

continue to choose reading as a leisure activity in adolescence and into adulthood (Mol &
Bus, 2011). This study explores which of a range of measures of literacy ability and
engagement best predict reading comprehension in early and middle adolescence.
Cognitive components of reading comprehension

According to the Simple View of Reading (SVR), understanding the meaning of print relies
on a set of component cognitive processes broadly categorized as word identification and
oral language comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). Within the intensively studied 6-
to 11-year-old age range, word identification represents an important early predictor of
*Correspondence should be addressed to Lynne G. Duncan, School of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, UK
(email: l.g.duncan@dundee.ac.uk).
DOI:10.1111/bjop.12134
2 Lynne G. Duncan et al.
reading comprehension, whereas higher-level language comprehension processes

emerge as later predictors (Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004; Curtis, 1980; Juel, Griffith, &
Gough, 1986; Saarnio, Oka, & Paris, 1990).
Much less is understood about later development in adolescence due to studies being
scarce and somewhat contradictory. Most adult studies report similar outcomes to
developmental work, where measures of word identification and oral language
comprehension each make significant and independent contributions to reading
comprehension (Cunningham, Stanovich, & Wilson, 1990; Perfetti & Hart, 2001; Landi,
2010; but see Palmer, MacLeod, Hunt, & Davidson, 1985).
The contribution of word identification appears to decrease markedly at the beginning
of adolescence but does not disappear (Garcıa & Cain, 2014). Among the few studies to
examine this issue among typical adolescent readers, word identification explained
unique variance in reading comprehension for 14- and 15-year-olds (Catts, Hogan, & Adlof,
2005; Samuelstuen & Br aten, 2005), although the variance explained is smaller than that
due to listening comprehension among 12- to 15-year-olds (Catts et al., 2005; Tilstra,
McMaster, Van den Broek, Kendeou, & Rapp, 2009). Vellutino, Tunmer, Jaccard, and
Chen (2007), however, detected no such link between word identification and reading
comprehension among 11- to 13-year-olds despite a significant association between
language comprehension and reading comprehension. Nevertheless, varying profiles of
poor adolescent reading comprehension have been reported encompassing both
difficulties arising from weak oral language skills in the absence of word decoding
problems (Cutting, Materek, Cole, Levine, & Mahone, 2009; Sesma, Mahone, Levine,
Eason, & Cutting, 2009), as well as difficulties due to weak basic word identification
(Brasseur-Hock, Hock, Kieffer, Biancarosa, & Deshler, 2011). In sum, as set out in the SVR,
word identification may still be necessary to predict reading comprehension accurately in
adolescence.
Reading fluency has also been considered as a predictor of reading comprehension
(Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001). As with mastery of basic word identification
skills such as phonological awareness, orthographic processing and phonological
decoding, increases in reading fluency may free up processing capacity to allow more
efficient comprehension of extended texts (Curtis, 1980; Perfetti, 1985). Word reading
fluency has been considered a strong early predictor of reading comprehension, with
text reading fluency becoming more important as reading skill increases (Jenkins, Fuchs,
van den Broek, Espin, & Deno, 2003; Kim, Wagner, & Lopez, 2012; Klauda & Guthrie,
2008). Nevertheless, empirical evidence is mixed. Adlof, Catts, and Little (2006)
concluded that combined (word plus text) reading fluency made no unique contribution
over the SVR components to either the concurrent or longitudinal prediction of reading
comprehension between 2nd and 8th grades, whereas Tilstra et al. (2009) did find a
significant relationship between 4th and 9th grades using text reading fluency. Among
adults with low literacy, reading fluency was strongly related to word identification and
vocabulary to listening comprehension, but neither fluency nor vocabulary made a
unique contribution to reading comprehension (Sabatini, Sawaki, Shore, & Scarborough,
2010). One possibility is that if the test of reading comprehension is timed, then a direct
relationship with fluency is more likely, accounting for the discrepant results (Tilstra
et al., 2009).
More recently, Tunmer and Chapman (2012) reassessed the SVR, concluding that
evidence did not support the addition of fluency or vocabulary as a third component.
However, listening comprehension was observed to contribute indirectly to compre-
hension via word identification, possibly reflecting the influence of vocabulary, which
Adolescent reading comprehension 3
appears to undermine any strict independence between the SVR components (see also
Ouellette and Beers, 2010; Protopapas, Simos, Sideridis, & Mouzaki, 2012).
Therefore, as the cognitive components of adolescent reading are still under debate,
this study will examine the concurrent contribution of word identification, vocabulary
and text reading fluency to adolescent reading comprehension. Text rather than word
reading fluency is included as text reading fluency may draw upon similar processes to
listening comprehension and therefore be more relevant in later reading comprehension
(Jenkins et al., 2003).
Exploring the comprehension processes involved in reading text

An account of the subskills involved in comprehending text is given in the construction–
integration model (e.g., Kintsch, 1998). The name conveys the interaction between the
construction of meaning from the text and its integration with an existing knowledge
base. Initially, a bottom-up construction phase generates competing interpretations and
associations from the content of the text that are then integrated to extract key ideas; these
form the textbase. Skilled reading comprehension involves the elaboration of what is
known as a situational model from this textbase using relevant background knowledge,
inferential skills together with reader goals, interests, and prior experiences (Kintsch,
2004).
Studies of young readers show that skilled comprehenders are better at inferential
compared to literal text comprehension and are more likely to be misled by foils when
these contain valid as opposed to invalid inferences from the text (Oakhill, Yuill, & Parkin,
1986). Several types of inference may be critical for skilled comprehension (e.g., Graesser,
Singer, & Trabasso, 1994). Coherence inferences form representations of text meaning
that are consistent across sentences (local coherence) or across the whole text (global
coherence). Such inferences often depend on grammatical skill and can be contrasted
with elaborative inferences that are knowledge based and serve not simply for
intelligibility but also to enrich the situational model of the text (Barnes, Dennis, &
Haefele-Kalvaitis, 1996). Evidence from the errors of 8- to 11-year-olds indicates less
understanding of the information relevant for making elaborative than coherence
inferences (Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001). Across the 6- to 15-year-old age range,
knowledge accessibility was related to coherence inferencing among younger children
and elaborative inferencing among older children (Barnes et al., 1996). By college level,
the more able students are better than less able students at making elaborative inferences
between elements in longer stories and make more topic-related inferences about content
(Long, Oppy, & Seely, 1997).
Therefore, skilled reading comprehension is associated with more constructive text
processing. When higher-level comprehension problems arise, these may derive from
difficulty in implementing coherence or elaborative inferential strategies, but equally
elaborative processing especially is also susceptible to specific knowledge failures
(Perfetti, Marron, & Foltz, 1996). Before going on to consider the influence of prior
knowledge, it is helpful to present the outcome of a recent attempt to integrate some of
the factors reviewed so far.
Expanding the theoretical view of reading comprehension

The direct and inferential mediation (DIME) model (Cromley & Azevedo, 2007) was
developed to describe the influence of background knowledge, inference, reading
strategies, reading vocabulary, and word reading on secondary school reading compre-
hension. Using data from 14- to 15-year-old adolescents (Cromley & Azevedo, 2007), the
direct predictors that were identified were reading vocabulary and background
knowledge followed by weaker influences of inference and word reading (identification
plus fluency). Reading vocabulary and background knowledge exerted additional indirect
effects mediated by inference.
Some modifications were necessary in order to generalize from this original
investigation of adolescent domain-general text comprehension, to undergraduate
students’ comprehension of scientific texts (Cromley, Snyder-Hogan, & Luciw-Dubas,
2010). Background knowledge, inference, and reading strategy assumed stronger roles
with expository than with domain-general texts, for which reading vocabulary had been
most predictive. However, word reading, measured by Cromley et al. (2010) using text
reading fluency alone, no longer featured as a direct predictor of comprehension. This
may be due to the greater proficiency and uniformity of undergraduate cognitive skills or
else it may indicate that the measure of word reading (word identification plus text
reading fluency) used in the earlier study by Cromley and Azevedo (2007) is more
predictive of reading comprehension. Alterations to the predictive value of the other
components may have been due to the contrasting demands of different text genres. This
is consistent with previous observations that narrative texts draw heavily on word
identification skills while expository texts require higher levels of world knowledge (Best,
Floyd, & Mcnamara, 2008; Garcıa & Cain, 2014). In Eason, Goldberg, Young, Geist, and
Cutting’s (2012) study of 10- to 14-year-olds, the contribution of word identification was
relatively constant across text genres, although inference contributed more to expository
than to narrative text comprehension.
Thus, the SVR provides a valuable starting point, but the remaining unexplained
variance in reading comprehension warrants a wider examination of variables (Ouellette &
Beers, 2010; Tilstra et al., 2009). Indeed, with the aim of designing effective interventions
for poor readers, Aaron, Joshi, Gooden, and Bentum (2008) formulated the component
model of reading to acknowledge that the influences on reading comprehension stretch
beyond the cognitive domain (e.g., word identification, listening comprehension) to
encompass the psychological domain (e.g., motivation, gender differences) and the
ecological domain (e.g., home environment, parental involvement). The literature on the
influence of the psychological factor, gender, and the ecological factor, prior knowledge in
the form of print exposure, will be considered in the next sections.
Psychological factor: Gender

Females outperform males in reading assessments such as the OECD-PISA international
study of 15-year-olds’ reading comprehension, although the UK gender discrepancies are
well below the OECD average (OECD, 2010; see also National Literacy Trust, 2012).
Among younger readers, girls read more frequently, with larger gender differences
observed in recreational than in academic reading (Kush & Watkins, 1996; Logan &
Johnston, 2009; McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth, 1995). No gender differences were
observed recently in the difficulty level of books read by British school children, but,
consistent with previous work (e.g., Moss & McDonald, 2004), boys exhibited a
preference for non-fiction from the age of 9 years (Topping, 2012). Digital literacy among
12- to 15-year-olds is also subject to gender differences with girls more likely to use the
internet for homework, visiting social networking and other websites, instant messaging,
and Twitter, whereas boys play games or watch video clips (Ofcom, 2012).
Ecological factor: Print exposure

Prior knowledge for comprehension is thought to be organized in memory according to
different types of schemas, which help readers to make sense of new information
encountered in text (Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Myers, 1997). Among adolescents, prior
knowledge can improve text summarization and predicts expository text comprehen-
sion, supporting the view that domain-specific schemas produce a ‘scaffolding effect’ that
facilitates the extraction and structuring of key points (Recht & Leslie, 1988; Samuelstuen
& Br aten, 2005).
Formal schemas, on the other hand, are independent of specific content information,
referring instead to knowledge about genre-specific text structure (Meyer & Rice, 1984).
Narrative texts require indexing of time, space, characters, goals, and the causal
sequences of events to construct the situational model (Bohn-Gettler, Rapp, van den
Broek, Kendeou, & White, 2011). Even among 7-year-olds, the fact that stories contain a
sequence of causally related events linked by elements such as desires, motives, goals,
actions, and consequences is more familiar to good than to poor comprehenders (Cain,
1996). Expository texts such as scientific texts take a variety of forms: A main idea
supported by clarification or evidence; a series of facts or connected events; a system for
classification; or an exploration of the similarities and differences between ideas (for a full
account see Meyer and Rice, 1984; Cook and Mayer, 1988). Here, the reader may require a
technical vocabulary and specialized topic knowledge rather than world knowledge to
form appropriate relations between elements in the construction of a textbase or
situational model (Graesser, Le on, & Otero, 2002).
Reading itself contributes to growth in vocabulary and declarative knowledge
(Cunningham & Stanovich, 1991, 1997; Stanovich & Cunningham, 1992, 1993). Indeed,
work by Hayes and Ahrens (1988) illustrates the superior vocabulary-learning opportu-
nities provided by reading, as rare words were found to be more frequent in children’s
books than in adult prime time television and college graduates’ speech. Strong links
exist between reading comprehension and print exposure as measured via author/title
recognition tests (Mol & Bus, 2011), and although these are indirect assessments of
reading habits, more precise measures such as leisure reading frequency confirm this link
and reveal variation in the impact of different reading activities.
The majority of existing research focuses on primary school children, but adolescents
have different reading habits as they typically have more choice of activities and greater
independent access to digital technologies (Clark, 2011; Clark, Torsi, & Strong, 2005;
Ofcom, 2012). A diary technique revealed that 11-year-olds read on average for 18 min/
day and that reading comprehension was more strongly associated with reading books
than with comics, newspapers, or magazines (Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding, 1988).
Asking young adolescents to supply author names and titles revealed that more fiction was
read by good than by poor comprehenders, but the reverse was true for non-fiction (Spear-
Swerling, Brucker, & Alfano, 2010). The authors argued that fiction may be less accessible
to poor comprehenders due to plot complexity, whereas a knowledge base may provide a
schema to facilitate information organization in non-fiction texts. However, this contrasts
with other studies which concluded that higher-level comprehension skills assume a
greater importance for expository text (Cromley et al., 2010; Eason et al., 2012).
With increases in digital communication such as text messaging, e-mailing, and social
networking websites, adolescents’ daily literacy experiences cannot be measured solely
by exposure to books. A recent Ofcom report (2012) found that all of the British 12- to 15-
year-olds who were surveyed used the internet and the majority possessed a smartphone
(62%). Time spent online was similar to time watching television (17.1 hr/week), and 80%
of these adolescents had social networking profiles with on average 286 ‘friends’.
Therefore, digital texts are now among adolescents’ more typical reading habits although
interestingly, many students do not recognize these as ‘literacy’ activities (Pitcher et al.,
2007).
Preliminary investigations of the interaction between digital texts and literacy are
encouraging such as the positive association between knowledge of text message
abbreviations and spelling performance (Wood et al., 2011). Prior knowledge in terms of
formal schemas about the structure of internet search engines enabled 12-year-olds to
gather useful knowledge for reading comprehension, and the incidence of complex
forward inferences (i.e., predictions) was higher online than with traditional forms of
expository text (Coiro & Dobler, 2007). Struggling readers implemented comprehension
strategies better online than with traditional texts, possibly because digital texts were
shorter (Castek, Zawilinski, McVerry, O’Byrne, & Leu, 2011). Nevertheless, notes of
caution have been sounded with some authors arguing that adolescents are much more
adept at social networking and texting than at online information comprehension
(Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008).
The present study

Our study contains an extensive assessment of reading skill as part of the standardization
of the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC) Secondary test (Stothard,
Hulme, Clarke, Barmby, & Snowling, 2010), together with a parallel survey of reading
habits. This provides a rich set of British data across adolescence which is representative
of a range of social backgrounds. The value of word identification and text reading fluency
will be compared with the influence of gender, and traditional and digital reading habits as
predictors of reading comprehension. To our knowledge, this combination of variables
has never before been examined in adolescence at a level of detail that takes into account
both comprehension question type (literal understanding, inference-making) and text
type (non-fiction, fiction).
The aims are outlined below:
1. To extend the knowledge base concerning cognitive reading skills in adolescent
reading comprehension. Word identification is expected to weaken as a predictor as
students grow older (Catts et al., 2005; Vellutino et al., 2007), although text reading
fluency may increase in importance (Jenkins et al., 2003).
2. To explore print exposure in the form of reading habits since existing findings may
not hold in adolescence or with diary measures. Extended text reading is expected
to be the strongest correlate of comprehension (Anderson et al., 1988; Spear-
Swerling et al., 2010), although previous comparisons have been with shorter
traditional texts rather than shorter digital texts (Castek et al., 2011; Coiro &
Dobler, 2007).
3. To circumvent the differing composition of reading comprehension tests (Cutting
& Scarborough, 2006) by separately exploring the correlates of literal and
inferential comprehension for fiction and non-fiction. Reading habits and
vocabulary are likely to be more predictive of inferential than of literal
comprehension as background knowledge is required for elaborative inference
(e.g., Barnes et al., 1996). However, this effect may interact with text genre as the
demands on inferential skills may be higher for non-fiction than for fiction (Eason
et al., 2012).
4. To examine gender differences responsible for British male underachievement in

reading (National Literacy Trust, 2012; OECD, 2010). Females are expected to exhibit
more leisure reading (Kush & Watkins, 1996; Logan & Johnston, 2009; McKenna
et al., 1995) together with a preference for fiction and social communication, and
males are predicted to prefer non-fiction and gaming (Moss & McDonald, 2004;
Ofcom, 2012; Topping, 2012). Reading habits may translate into comprehension
advantages for males with non-fiction and females with fiction texts consistent with
possession of genre-specific (formal) schemas (e.g., Bohn-Gettler et al., 2011).
5. To contrast skilled and less skilled comprehenders as a test of our correlational results
regarding the predictors of reading comprehension.
Method
Participants
A sample of 1,230 British secondary school students from years 7 to 111 who were taking
part in the standardization of the YARC Secondary test (Stothard et al., 2010) were asked
to complete a reading habits questionnaire. The questionnaire was completed by 312
students (25.4% of the standardization sample), and all further information relates solely to
this group. The students who responded to the reading habits questionnaire were a
representative sample on the basis of age, gender, ethnic background, and school status
(see Stothard et al. (2010) for details of the full standardization sample).
Students were from 29 state-supported and two fee-paying schools located in
suburban, rural, and inner-city areas across the UK: Northern England (31.3%), southern
England (34.3%), Northern Ireland (3.2%), Scotland (24%), and Wales (7.1%). Note that in
the full standardization sample, slightly fewer children came from Scotland (11%) and
southern England (18%). Female students made up 55.4% of the present sample, which
was predominantly White British (86.9%) with the remaining students from a range of
ethnic backgrounds. Students were distributed across the school years: Year 7 (23.7%),
Year 8 (24.4%), Year 9 (19.6%), Year 10 (17.3%), and Year 11 (15.1%).
Socio-economic status (SES) was derived for 220 pupils (70.5% of the sample) from the
Index of Multiple Deprivation for England (2010),2 Northern Ireland (2010),3 Scotland
(2009),4 and Wales (2011).5 Student postcodes were ranked in equal 10% bands such that
Rank 1 represented the most deprived 10% of postcodes and Rank 10, the least deprived:
Low SES (ranks 1–3 = 17.7%), average SES (ranks 4–7 = 48.2%), and high SES (ranks
8–10 = 34.1%).
Materials
Reading ability
The assessments are from the standardization of the YARC Secondary test (Stothard et al.,
2010). Reliabilities (Cronbach’s alpha) for the two forms and two levels of difficulty of this
1
The school years 7–11 are given in relation to the educational system in England and Wales. In Scotland, the equivalent
designations would be S1–5 and in Northern Ireland, years 8–12.
2
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/corporate/statistics/indices2010
3
http://www.nisra.gov.uk/deprivation/update_of_nimdm_2005.htm
4
http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/SIMD/DataAnalysis
5
http:/gov.wales/statistics-and-research/welsh-index-multiple-deprivation/?lang=en#/statistics-and-research/welsh-index-multiple-
deprivation/?tab=previous&lang=en
assessment range between .85 and .90 (see Stothard et al., 2010 for full details). In all three
reading assessments (single word reading, reading fluency, reading comprehension), raw
scores were converted into standardized scores (Mean = 100; SD = 15) based on the
entire standardization sample.
Word identification. The Single Word Reading Test (SWRT 6-16; Foster, 2007) was
extended by adding 10 low frequency words to increase the difficulty level. Students read
aloud a list of 70 words of increasing complexity, and accuracy was recorded.
Reading comprehension. Students completed 3, 4, or 5 comprehension (non-fiction or

fiction) passages at level 1 or 2 of difficulty from the two parallel forms (A and B) of the
YARC Secondary test. When students indicated that they had finished reading a passage
silently, their accuracy at answering 12 comprehension questions was noted. They could
look at the passage while answering to reduce the impact of memory.
Performance was also examined by comprehension question type: Vocabulary, literal,
or inferential. Inferential questions comprised several forms (evaluative inference,
knowledge-based inference, predictive inference, elaborative inference, cohesive
devices, and figurative language). A full classification of the YARC comprehension
questions together with examples is provided by Stothard et al. (2010). Percentage
accuracy for each of the three main question types was calculated for all fiction and all
non-fiction passages separately.
Reading fluency. The number of words correctly read aloud per second was averaged
across reading fluency passages at difficulty levels 1 (137 words) and 2 (129 words).
Reading habits questionnaire

Students completed a questionnaire to assess reading frequency and habits. Reading
frequency was measured by the total score from four questions (scale 1–4 for each): (1)
How often do you borrow books from a library? (2) How often do you start a new book? (3)
How often do you read at home as part of your school work? and (4) How often do you read
at home for fun? Two further questions assessed which type of text children preferred and
which they read more (only fiction, more fiction than non-fiction, more non-fiction than
fiction, only non-fiction).
Students then graded different reading habits according to how much time they had
spent reading the material the previous weekend using a 5-point Likert scale (1: Didn’t
read this, 2: 30 min or less, 3: 1 hr, 4: 2 hr, 5: 3 hr or more). Fourteen habits were listed
in the following order: Magazine, comic/graphic novel/manga, newspaper, song lyrics,
set of instructions/manual, non-fiction book, school textbook/reference book, text
messages/e-mails, networking website (e.g., Facebook), fiction book, computer/console
game, online searching, factual website or blog (e.g., Wikipedia), poetry, and Twitter.
Procedure
Students completed the YARC Secondary test individually with an assessor as part of the
standardization process. This session lasted approximately 1 hr and took place between
September and November. Afterwards, all students were asked to spend 15 min
completing either an online or a paper-and-pencil version of the reading habits
questionnaire and a prize draw was offered as an incentive. Children were told that
responses would remain confidential and were given the following instructions: ‘We
would like to know how you honestly feel about your reading. This is not a test and there
are no right or wrong answers’.
Results
The sample was divided according to age: Early adolescence (school years 7, 8, and 9;
mean age = 12.66 years [SD = 0.89]); middle adolescence (school years 10 and 11; mean
age = 15.09 years [SD = 0.53]). This made sense from an educational perspective as the
National Curriculums of England, Wales and Northern Ireland distinguish between these
groups as Key Stages 3 and 4. Scotland has a different educational system, although school
leaving exams are also taken in the equivalent of years 10 and 11.
Group data can be inspected in Table 1. A two-way ANOVA confirmed the age
difference between early and middle adolescence, F(1, 307) = 625.71, p < .001,
g2p = .67, and indicated that gender groups did not differ in age at either level (Fs < 1).
In a similar analysis of SES, sample size was reduced (early adolescence: N = 156; middle
adolescence: N = 64), but no significant differences emerged for adolescent group or
gender (all Fs < 1).
Reading skills
All mean standardized scores for the YARC Secondary test in Table 1 were average for age
(standardized mean = 100 [SD = 15]). Two-way between-participants ANOVAs showed
no gender or age differences in any YARC test except for reading comprehension, where
performance was better in early than in middle adolescence, F(1, 308) = 10.07, p = .002,
g2p = .03. Introducing SES as a covariate did not alter the outcomes reported above. SES
exerted only a marginal effect on reading comprehension and reading fluency (p = .05).
Reading habits
Within our sample, 79% completed the questionnaire online and 21% completed the
paper-and-pencil version, the medium reflecting their school’s preference for adminis-
tration rather than self-selection.
Table 2 contains means for time spent on reading habits and two-way between-
participants ANOVA outcomes for the effects of gender and adolescent group. No
interactions were significant. Male students spent more time than female students with
comics/graphic novels and computer games, whereas females engaged more than males
with song lyrics, text/e-mail messages, social networking websites, and poetry.
More time was spent in middle than in early adolescence on reading magazines,
newspapers, school text books, texts or e-mails, social networking websites, online
searching, and factual websites. Students reported spending longer on digital than on
traditional literacies, and engagement with digital literacies was more common in middle
than in early adolescence. Controlling for SES using the reduced sample made little
difference except that fiction book reading became more frequent among females than
among males and age differences in factual website reading disappeared.
10
Table 1. Means and standard deviations for chronological age, reading comprehension, word identification (SWRT), reading fluency, and SES for male and female
students in early and middle adolescence
Lynne G. Duncan et al.
YARC secondary
Reading
comprehension SWRT Reading fluency SESa
Chronological
age (years) Standardized scores IMD postcode rank
N Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD N
Early adolescence
Female 122 12.63 0.92 103.54 11.32 103.21 12.33 102.00 13.63 6.23 2.63 93
Male 89 12.70 0.85 102.53 12.77 103.36 15.80 100.35 16.07 6.25 2.56 63
Total 211 12.66 0.89 103.11 11.94 103.27 13.86 101.31 14.69 6.24 2.60 156
Middle adolescence
Female 51 15.08 0.56 99.08 11.86 99.55 12.64 102.59 12.75 5.76 2.37 37
Male 50 15.09 0.51 97.86 11.35 102.53 13.76 101.46 13.65 6.41 2.65 27
Total 101 15.09 0.53 98.47 11.57 101.02 13.23 102.03 13.15 6.03 2.49 64
Note. IMD = Index of Multiple Deprivation; SWRT = Single Word Reading Test; YARC = York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension.
a
SES data were only available for a reduced sample of 156 younger and 64 older adolescents.
Table 2. Medians, means, and standard deviations for timea spent reading each type of material and
reported reading frequencyb for males and females in early and middle adolescence
Middle
Early adolescence adolescence
Reading material Female Male Female Male F (Gender)c F (Age group)c
Traditional literacies
Magazine
Mean 1.88 1.87 2.34 2.02 2.15 n.s. 7.72**
SD 0.77 0.88 1.00 1.08
Median 2 2 2 2
Instructions or manual
Mean 1.39 1.48 1.50 1.58 1.28 n.s. 1.83 n.s.
SD 0.62 0.61 0.71 0.65
Median 1 1 1 1.5
Comic or graphic novel
Mean 1.28 1.79 1.31 1.48 12.65*** 2.30 n.s.
SD 0.55 0.85 1.00 0.85
Median 1 2 1 1
Poetry
Mean 1.48 1.29 1.62 1.31 7.47** <1 n.s.
SD 0.76 0.53 1.03 0.59
Median 1 1 1 1
Non-fiction book
Mean 1.69 1.73 1.58 1.68 <1 n.s. <1 n.s.
SD 0.85 0.91 0.95 0.84
Median 1 1 1 1
School text book
Mean 2.19 2.08 2.67 2.42 2.21 n.s. 11.08**
SD 0.85 0.99 1.13 1.16
Median 2 2 3 2
Fiction book
Mean 2.63 2.32 2.56 2.28 2.90† <1 n.s.
SD 1.38 1.28 1.54 1.36
Median 2 2 2 2
Newspaper
Mean 1.59 1.78 1.96 1.92 <1 n.s. 7.88**
SD 0.59 0.79 0.86 0.90
Median 2 2 2 2
Song lyrics
Mean 2.07 1.33 2.02 1.48 33.86*** <1 n.s.
SD 1.07 0.54 1.08 0.65
Median 2 1 2 1
Digital literacies
Factual website or blog
Mean 1.92 1.76 2.04 2.21 <1 n.s. 5.91*
SD 0.82 0.87 1.15 1.15
Median 2 2 2 2
Continued
Table 2. (Continued)
Middle
Early adolescence adolescence
Reading material Female Male Female Male F (Gender)c F (Age group)c
Online searching
Mean 2.54 2.51 2.85 3.23 1.71 n.s. 16.01***
SD 1.00 1.02 1.07 1.13
Median 2 2 3 3
Text or e-mail messages
Mean 2.58 2.28 3.46 2.81 10.99** 24.80***
SD 1.18 1.02 1.28 1.21
Median 2 2 3 2.5
Social networking website
Mean 2.90 2.44 3.80 3.33 6.98** 26.18***
SD 1.46 1.42 1.46 1.34
Median 3 2 4 3
Twitter
Mean 1.32 1.33 1.20 1.21 <1 n.s. 2.28 n.s.
SD 0.75 0.66 0.63 0.50
Median 1 1 1 1
Computer game
Mean 2.22 3.13 1.88 3.29 55.25*** <1 n.s.
SD 1.08 1.42 1.18 1.43
Median 2 3 1.5 3
Reading frequency
Mean 11.34 10.16 10.12 8.66 15.82*** 16.79***
SD 2.86 3.00 2.33 2.22
Median 12 11 11 9
Note. aReading habits ratings: 1 = didn’t read this; 2 = 30 min or less; 3 = 1 hr; 4 = 2 hr; 5 = 3 hr or
more.
b
Reading frequency ratings: 1 (low)–16 (high).
c
F for main effect.
***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05; †p < .09.
The total score from the reading frequency items in our reading habits questionnaire
indicated that female students read more frequently than male students (M = 10.98
[SD = 2.76] vs. M = 9.62 [SD = 2.83], respectively), F(1, 308) = 15.82, p < .001,
g2p = .05. Reading frequency was lower in middle (M = 9.40, SD = 2.38) than in early
adolescence (M = 10.84, SD = 2.97), F(1, 308) = 16.79, p < .001, g2p = .05. No gender
differences in text genre preference emerged from the questionnaire, but mean scores
tended to be higher than a neutral score of 2.50 indicating a general preference for fiction.
Pearson product moment correlations (used throughout) confirmed the expressed
preference by showing negative correlations between preference scores and reading non-
fiction books, r(301) = .14, p = .01, and (marginally) school textbooks, r(298) = .11,
p = .07, and positive correlations with reading fiction books, r(299) = .24, p < .001.
Correlations also examined the relations between reading habits and YARC reading
measures. The strongest correlates were the extended traditional texts (early adolescence
– fiction book reading correlated with comprehension, r(203) = .48, p < .001, SWRT, r
(203) = .36, p < .001, and fluency, r(202) = .40, p < .001; middle adolescence – school
textbooks correlated with SWRT, r(95) = .25, p < .05, and fiction books with compre-
hension, r(94) = .47, p < .001).
Reading skills and reading frequency as predictors of reading comprehension

Correlations
The YARC reading measures showed highly significant intercorrelations for each
adolescent group (Table 3). Correlation strength for SWRT and reading comprehen-
sion did not differ between early and middle adolescence (Z = 1.16, p = .25), but
the correlation between reading fluency and reading comprehension was weaker in
middle than in early adolescence (Z = 2.06, p = .04). Reading frequency, as
measured by the reading habits questionnaire, showed weaker but significant
correlations with all reading measures in early adolescence but did not correlate
with any measure in middle adolescence. Using the smaller sample containing SES
data, the influence of SES was restricted to a correlation with SWRT in middle
adolescence.
Multiple regressions
Table 4 summarizes the analyses to investigate the predictors of reading compre-
hension. In early adolescence, SWRT (b = .47, p < .001) and reading fluency
(b = .28, p < .001) were significant predictors and reading frequency was marginal
(b = .09, p = .07). The model explained 53% of the variance in reading compre-
hension, F(4, 205) = 58.20, p < .001. In middle adolescence, only SWRT (b = .55,
p < .001) was significant, but the model explained 41% of the variance, F(4,
94) = 16.53, p < .001.
Reading comprehension subskills

Means for the reading comprehension subskills for fiction and non-fiction texts can be
inspected in Table 5.
Table 3. Pearson product moment correlations between standardized scores in the reading
comprehension, word identification (SWRT), and reading fluency components of the YARC Secondary
test and SES (upper quadrant = early adolescence [n = 211]; lower quadrant = middle adolescence
[n = 101])
Reading comp. SWRT Reading fluency Reading frequency SESa
Reading comp. – .70*** .65*** .24*** .11

SWRT .62*** – .73*** .19** .02
Reading fluency .48*** .61*** – .21** .14
Reading frequency .11 .09 .12 – .01
SESa .20 .26* .13 .19 –
Note. SWRT = Single Word Reading Test; YARC = York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension.
a
SES data were only available for a reduced sample of 156 younger adolescents and 64 older adolescents.
***p < .001 level, **p < .01 level, *p < .05 level (all two-tailed).
Table 4. Multiple regression analyses to investigate the contribution of gender, word identification
(SWRT), reading fluency and reading frequency to reading comprehension in early and middle
adolescence
b SE b b R2
Early adolescence
Gender 0.14 1.17 .01
SWRT 0.41 0.06 .47***
Reading fluency 0.23 0.06 .28***
Reading frequency 0.36 0.20 .09†
.53***
Middle adolescence
Gender 3.15 1.93 .14
SWRT 0.48 0.09 .55***
Reading fluency 0.13 0.09 .14
Reading frequency 0.06 0.41 .01
.41***
Note. SWRT = Single Word Reading Test.

***p < .001; †p = .07.
Table 5. Male and female student mean percentage accuracy in response to comprehension questions
assessing vocabulary, literal comprehension, and inference-making skill for fiction and non-fiction
passages of text according to adolescent group (standard deviations in parentheses)
Fiction Non-fiction
N Vocabulary Literal Inferential Vocabulary Literal Inferential
Early adolescence
Female 117 40.95 (27.29) 72.56 (23.97) 42.76 (23.61) 45.15 (28.29) 63.87 (26.05) 36.49 (26.88)
Male 84 39.29 (30.82) 66.15 (26.10) 39.68 (25.47) 49.12 (34.07) 63.73 (29.01) 36.41 (25.81)
Total 201 40.26 (28.75) 69.88 (25.02) 41.47 (24.39) 46.81 (30.82) 63.82 (27.25) 36.46 (26.37)
Middle adolescence
Female 51 50.33 (28.39) 77.98 (21.01) 45.68 (23.87) 55.42 (35.90) 72.49 (26.40) 46.32 (33.27)
Male 48 50.95 (27.24) 72.40 (23.64) 46.71 (24.77) 48.39 (31.56) 71.62 (23.85) 41.24 (35.11)
Total 99 50.63 (27.70) 75.28 (22.39) 46.18 (24.19) 52.01 (33.88) 72.07 (25.07) 43.85 (34.09)
Whole group 300 43.68 (28.78) 71.66 (24.28) 43.03 (24.39) 48.53 (31.90) 66.54 (26.79) 38.90 (29.30)
A four-way mixed ANOVA examined within-participants factors, text type (non-

fiction, fiction) and question type (vocabulary, literal, inferential), and between-
participants factors, adolescent group (early, middle) and gender. Significant effects
emerged for question type, F(2, 592) = 361.72, p < .001, g2p = .55, and adolescent
group, F(1, 296) = 6.57, p = .01, g2p = .02. Question type interacted with text type,
F(1, 592) = 8.98, p < .001, g2p = .03: Reading vocabulary questions were answered
more accurately for non-fiction than for fiction, F(1, 299) = 7.69, p = .006, whereas
literal comprehension and inference-making were better for fiction than for non-
fiction (literal: F(1, 299) = 17.35, p < .001; inferential: F(1, 301) = 8.03, p < .005).
Performance was best on literal questions across genres. For non-fiction, accuracy
was better for vocabulary than for inferential questions, but this was not true for
fiction. For the three-way interaction, adolescent group by text type by gender, F(1,
296) = 4.20, p = .04, g2p = .01, simple effects showed that text type interacted with
gender in early adolescence, F(1, 199) = 4.94, p = .03, with females scoring
significantly better for fiction than for non-fiction, F(1, 116) = 7.30, p = .008, but
males showing no difference between text types, F < 1. Text type did not interact
with gender in middle adolescence, F < 1.
Reading skills and reading habits as predictors of reading comprehension subskills

Correlations
Significant correlations were found between SWRT, reading fluency, and comprehension
question type across text genres for each adolescent group (Table 6). Associations
between reading habits and question type were more limited and specific. A number of
correlations were observed for early adolescence, which were significant but small in
magnitude (r < .3): Non-fiction book reading and text/e-mail with non-fiction literal
comprehension; online searching with both literal and inferential comprehension for
fiction; and social networking websites negatively with non-fiction reading vocabulary.
Fiction book reading, however, was a much stronger correlate of each comprehension
question type. In middle adolescence, fiction book reading also correlated with each
question type except fiction literal comprehension. School textbook reading correlated
with reading vocabulary (fiction and non-fiction), and computer gaming correlated
negatively with fiction literal comprehension.
Hierarchical multiple regression

Table 7 summarizes the analyses of the predictors of literal and inferential comprehension
for each text genre. After controlling for SWRT, reading fluency and reading vocabulary at
Step 1, gender was entered at Step 2. The Step 3 predictors were the reading habits that
had shown significant associations with comprehension during early (non-fiction book,
fiction book, online searching, text/e-mail) or middle (fiction book, school textbook,
computer game) adolescence.
Early adolescence. At Step 1, two reading skills emerged as significant (or marginal)
predictors in each analysis: SWRT (all bs ≥ .18); and reading vocabulary (all bs ≥ .26).
Reading fluency only contributed significantly to non-fiction literal comprehension,
b = .21, p = .004. Gender entered at Step 2 was not significant in any analysis. At Step 3,
reading habits explained additional variance for fiction inferential skills, ΔR2 = 4%,
F change (4, 181) = 3.33, p = .01, and non-fiction literal comprehension, ΔR2 = 4%,
F change (4, 181) = 4.23, p = .003. Fiction books predicted both (b = .21, p = .001,
and b = .15, p = .01, respectively), and text/e-mail predicted only non-fiction literal
comprehension (b = .15, p = .003).
Middle adolescence. At Step 1, SWRT was significant for fiction and (marginally) non-
fiction inferential skills (b = .25, p = .03, and b = .23, p = .08, respectively). Reading
vocabulary was a significant (or marginal) predictor in each analysis (all bs ≥ .23). At Step
2, gender was a significant predictor of non-fiction literal comprehension, favouring male
students (b = .19, p = .04). The entry of reading habits at Step 3 explained significant
16
Table 6. Pearson product moment correlations between reading habits, reading skills and the vocabulary, literal and inferential components of reading
comprehension in early (n = 201) and middle adolescence (n = 99)
Early adolescence Middle adolescence

Fiction Non-fiction Fiction Non-fiction
Voc. Lit. Inf. Voc. Lit. Inf. Voc. Lit. Inf. Voc. Lit. Inf.
Reading habits
Traditional literacies
Magazine .07 .04 .04 .04 .01 .05 .11 .06 .04 .03 .18 .10
Newspaper .09 .08 .06 .07 .02 .13 .14 .11 .14 .02 .06 .08
Song lyrics .05 .08 .01 .06 .10 .01 .12 .08 .08 .15 .14 .11
Non-fiction book .12 .13‡ .07 .03 .14* .07 .10 .13 .11 .08 .09 .03
School text book .11 .04 .11 .08 .06 .11 .21* .04 .13 .29** .18 .13
Fiction book .31*** .32*** .42*** .36*** .44*** .26*** .41*** .17 .45*** .37*** .36*** .23*
Digital literacies
Factual website .04 .11 .01 .10 .03 .00 .03 .10 .07 .07 .04 .06
Online searching .10 .15* .16* .07 .16* .12 .05 .18 .11 .07 .06 .01
Text or e-mail .02 .09 .07 .07 .15* .05 .09 .12 .00 .06 .13 .09
Social networking .06 .04 .06 .13‡ .06 .01 .13 .04 .08 .11 .08 .05
Computer game .01 .03 .09 .07 .06 .09 .12 .28** .08 .02 .12 .08
Reading skills
SWRT .50*** .54*** .56*** .50*** .62*** .45*** .59*** .42*** .55*** .55*** .59*** .48***
Reading fluency .47*** .46*** .54*** .41*** .59*** .37*** .42*** .32** .42*** .44*** .46*** .41***
SESa .08 .13 .08 .05 .08 .01 .18 .02 .06 .05 .16 .18

a
SES data were only available for a reduced sample of 156 younger adolescents and 64 older adolescents.
***p < .001 level, **p < .01 level, *p < .05 level (all two-tailed), ‡p < .07.
Table 7. Hierarchical multiple regression to examine reading habits as predictors of literal and inferential comprehension in fiction and non-fiction reading in early
(n = 201) and middle adolescence (n = 99) using gender, word identification (SWRT), reading fluency, and fiction or non-fiction reading vocabulary as control
variables
B SE b b DR2 B SE b b DR2
Fiction
DV = Literal
Step 1 Step 1
SWRT 0.55 0.17 .30** SWRT 0.31 0.22 .19
Reading fluency 0.15 0.16 .09 Reading fluency 0.03 0.20 .02
Fiction reading vocab 0.22 0.06 .26*** Fiction Reading vocab 0.18 0.10 .23‡
.34*** .18**
Step 2 Step 2
Gender 4.35 3.06 .09 Gender 0.62 4.96 .02
.01 .02
Step 3 Step 3
Non-fiction book 1.03 1.84 .04 School textbook 0.66 1.91 .04
Fiction book 1.44 1.32 .08 Fiction book 0.73 1.49 .05
Online searching 0.36 1.62 .02 Computer game 4.59 1.68 .33**
Text/E-mail 1.34 1.46 .06
.01 0.07*
DV = Inferential
Step 1 Step 1
SWRT 0.31 0.14 .18* SWRT 0.45 0.21 .25*
Fiction reading vocab 0.36 0.05 .44*** Fiction reading vocab 0.30 0.09 .35**
.49*** .42***
Step 2 Step 2
Gender 0.46 2.51 .01 Gender 2.50 4.67 .06
.00 .00
Adolescent reading comprehension
Continued
17
18

2
B SE b b DR B SE b b DR2
Step 3 Step 3
Fiction book 3.65 1.08 .21** Fiction book 4.17 1.40 .27**
Online searching 0.27 1.33 .01 Computer game 1.89 1.58 .12
Text/E-mail 1.70 1.20 .08
.04* .06*
Non-fiction
DV = Literal
Step 1 Step 1
SWRT 0.40 0.15 .20** SWRT 0.22 0.19 .12
Reading fluency 0.39 0.13 .21** Reading fluency 0.15 0.17 .08
Non-fictionReading vocab 0.35 0.05 .40*** Non-fictionReading vocab 0.41 0.06 .59***
.56*** .55***
Step 2 Step 2
Gender 1.52 2.65 .03 Gender 8.95 4.20 .19*
.00 .00
Step 3 Step 3
Fiction book 3.03 1.16 .15* Fiction book 1.55 1.23 .10
Online searching 0.61 1.40 .02 Computer game 3.74 1.37 .24**
Text/E-mail 3.79 1.27 .15**
.04** .05*
DV = Inferential
Step 1 Step 1
SWRT 0.37 0.20 .19‡ SWRT 0.58 0.33 .23‡
Non-fictionReading vocab 0.31 0.07 .36*** Non-fictionReading vocab 0.38 0.11 .39**
Continued

2
B SE b b DR B SE b b DR2
.27*** .34***
Step 2 Step 2
Gender 0.90 3.48 .02 Gender 2.13 7.37 .03
.00 .01
Step 3 Step 3
Fiction book 0.75 1.53 .04 Fiction book 1.20 2.16 .05
Online searching 1.15 1.84 .04 Computer game 2.76 2.40 .13
Text/E-mail 0.00 1.66 .00
.00 .02

***p < .001 level, **p < .01 level, *p < .05 level, †p = .05, ‡p ≤ .08 (all two-tailed).
Adolescent reading comprehension
19
additional variance for each comprehension skill except non-fiction inference (fiction
literal: ΔR2 = 7%, F change (3, 81) = 2.69, p = .05; fiction inference: ΔR2 = 6%, F change
(3, 81) = 3.21, p = .03; non-fiction literal: ΔR2 = 5%, F change (3, 81) = 3.02, p = .03).
Fiction books emerged as a significant predictor of fiction inference (b = .27, p = .004).
Computer gaming was a significant but negative predictor of literal comprehension
(fiction: b = .33, p = .008; non-fiction: b = .24, p = .008).
Comparison of skilled versus less skilled comprehenders

The YARC standardized distribution (M = 100, SD = 15) was used to classify students
whose reading comprehension score was one or more standard deviations above the
mean for age as skilled comprehenders (N = 41; female = 61%), and those who scored
one or more standard deviations below the mean as less skilled comprehenders (N = 33;
female = 45%). The groups were matched for age. SES information was available for 16
less skilled and 31 skilled comprehenders (less skilled: M = 5.13, SD = 2.83; skilled:
M = 6.61, SD = 2.25), and there was a marginal tendency for the groups to differ, F(1,
45) = 3.88, p = .06.
Table 8 contains group means for YARC reading skills and reading frequency from the
reading habits questionnaire. A two-way between-participants ANOVA investigated
effects of comprehender group and gender. Less skilled comprehenders produced lower
scores than the skilled comprehenders on all measures. Comprehender group and gender
interacted for SWRT, F(1, 70) = 10.69, p = .002, g2p = .13, and reading fluency, F(1,
68) = 5.12, p = .03, g2p = .07. Males had lower SWRT than females among less skilled
Table 8. Means and standard deviations for chronological age, reading comprehension, word
identification (SWRT), reading fluency, and reading frequency for skilled and less skilled comprehenders
Skilled comprehenders Less skilled comprehenders
Male Female Total Male Female Total

(N = 16) (N = 25) (N = 41) (N = 18) (N = 15) (N = 33) Fa
Chronological age (years)

Mean 12.82 12.99 12.92 13.48 13.28 13.39 1.98 n.s.
SD 1.35 1.43 1.38 1.30 1.61 1.43
Reading comprehension (standardized score)
Mean 117.96 117.80 117.86 77.33 77.91 77.60 2117.49***
SD 2.82 2.61 2.66 4.58 4.74 4.59
SWRT (standardized score)
Mean 120.25 113.44 116.10 80.25 89.43 84.43 171.35***
SD 8.13 9.75 9.65 12.53 10.37 12.33
Reading fluency (standardized score)
Mean 115.92 110.71 112.75 81.09 87.90 84.16 117.81***
SD 11.96 9.46 10.05 11.96 12.95 12.68
Reading frequency
Mean 11.19 12.48 11.98 9.33 10.40 9.82 10.17**
SD 2.88 2.14 2.51 1.97 3.52 2.79

a
F for Comprehender group contrast.
***p < .001; **p < .01.
comprehenders, but the reverse was true for skilled comprehenders. For reading fluency,
the discrepancy between skilled and less skilled comprehenders was larger for male than
for female students. Subsequent ANCOVAs showed that SES was not significant as a
covariate.
Reading comprehension was associated with both reading frequency and fluency for
skilled but not for less skilled comprehenders (see Table 9). SWRT correlated significantly
with reading fluency and marginally with reading comprehension in both comprehender
groups. Performance for the reading comprehension subskills revealed tendencies to
ceiling effects among skilled comprehenders and floor effects among less skilled
comprehenders, so no further analysis of these data was attempted.
Two-way between-participants ANOVAs examined comprehender group and gender
in relation to reading habits. Gender was not significant, but the effect of comprehender
group is noteworthy as the groups differed only in time spent reading extended traditional
texts: Non-fiction books (skilled: M = 1.90, SD = 0.80; less skilled: M = 1.53, SD = 0.68;
F(1, 67) = 3.95, p = .05, g2p = .06) and fiction books (skilled: M = 3.63, SD = 1.37; less
skilled: M = 1.55, SD = 0.68; F(1, 65) = 52.70, p < .001, g2p = .45).
GENERAL DISCUSSION
This study makes an important contribution to the relatively sparse literature on
adolescent reading comprehension. The students who participated were a representative
sample of British secondary school students in terms of age, gender, ability, SES, ethnicity,
and geographic location. The outcome therefore provides an insight into what would be
regarded as current and typical among British adolescents.
Reading comprehension, word recognition, and reading fluency in adolescence

In early adolescence, word identification made a strong contribution to reading
comprehension as did text reading fluency (e.g., Tilstra et al., 2009; cf. Adlof et al.,
2006), in spite of the untimed nature of the YARC Secondary test. Reading frequency had a
marginal effect and, together, the variables explained 53% of the variance in reading
comprehension. Contrary to expectation, the association between word identification
and reading comprehension did not diminish in middle relative to early adolescence, nor
Table 9. Pearson product moment correlations between standardized scores in the reading
comprehension, word identification (SWRT), and reading fluency components of the YARC Secondary
test and reading frequency (upper quadrant = skilled comprehenders [n = 41]; lower quadrant = less
skilled comprehenders [n = 33])
Reading comp. SWRT Reading fluency Reading frequency

†
Reading comp. – .29 .41** .38*
SWRT .33† – .57*** .10
Reading fluency .22 .61*** – .26
Reading frequency .18 .08 .06 –
Note. SWRT = Single Word Reading Test; YARC = York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension.
***p < .001 level, **p < .01 level, *p < .05 level, †p ≤ .07 (all two-tailed).
did the influence of reading fluency increase. Only word identification was significant in
middle adolescence, explaining 41% of the variance.
SES correlated positively with word identification in middle adolescence but did not
mediate the regression results. While the outcome suggests that word identification
continues to make a strong contribution to reading comprehension during adolescence
(Cunningham et al., 1990; Perfetti & Hart, 2001), it should be noted that listening
comprehension was not measured in the present study. Nonetheless, the lexical quality
hypothesis predicts this type of continuing influence as the richness of the phonological,
orthographic, and semantic information stored in lexical representations is seen as a stable
predictor of reading comprehension due to the resulting efficiencies in lexical access
(Perfetti & Hart, 2001).
Concurrent links between adolescent reading habits, gender, and reading

comprehension
Gender differences in reading were limited, but clear differences emerged in reading
habits: Males spent more time reading comics/graphic novels and computer gaming,
whereas females favoured song lyrics, text/e-mail messages, social networking websites,
poetry, and, in a smaller sample where SES was controlled, fiction books.
Student reading habits reflected the growing tendency for more time to be spent with
digital than with traditional texts (see Pitcher et al., 2007). Nevertheless, more
associations with reading comprehension, word identification, and fluency were
observed for traditional than for digital literacies. The strongest correlate of reading in
early adolescence was the extended traditional text, fiction books, and, in middle
adolescence, school textbooks related to word identification and fiction books to reading
comprehension. Thus, time spent with extended texts was identified as an important
predictor of reading comprehension across adolescence. Nevertheless, the association
between reading skill and choice of reading material is likely to be reciprocal as students
with better reading skills may be more likely to seek out extended and challenging texts,
thereby further developing their reading skills.
Predictors of literal and inferential comprehension subskills in adolescence

Performance on the YARC Secondary test was broken down by text type (non-fiction,
fiction) and question type (vocabulary, literal, inferential). This enabled us to be more
explicit about the competencies measured by our test (see Cutting and Scarborough,
2006). Across adolescence, accuracy was highest for literal questions regardless of text
type as predicted by Perfetti et al. (1996), suggesting that literal comprehension may
often rely on the formation of a textbase rather than implicating more demanding
constructive text processing. Vocabulary was better than inference-making for non-
fiction passages, but these subskills were equivalent for fiction. Vocabulary questions
were answered more accurately for nonfiction than for fiction passages, whereas literal
comprehension and inference-making were better for fiction than for non-fiction.
Adolescents were generally more accurate at fiction than at non-fiction inferences,
which is consistent with their expressed preference for fiction texts. A characteristic of
expository text comprehension is the necessity to integrate content with background
topic knowledge (McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996; Recht & Leslie, 1988;
Wolfe & Woodwyk, 2010), and, as a result, comprehension is often worse for non-fiction
texts. When concepts are unfamiliar or abstract, processing load increases, making it more
difficult to establish global coherence and forcing reliance on a textbase rather than on a
situational model, which in turn may restrict inference-making (Diakidoy, Mouskounti, &
Ioannides, 2011; Kintsch, 1998).
Text-specific vocabulary knowledge was the strongest and most consistent predictor
of comprehension subskills across adolescence. This measure was part of the YARC
Secondary test, so the vocabulary measured was directly related to the text being read,
making this a particularly strong control variable. Across adolescence, reading vocabulary
was a reliable predictor of inferential comprehension for both text genres but a stronger
predictor of non-fiction than of fiction literal comprehension. This appears consistent
with the importance of background knowledge in making elaborative inferences to form
the situational model and the increased reliance on topic knowledge in expository text
even for literal comprehension (Cromley et al., 2010; Graesser et al., 1994, 2002).
Awareness of the importance of vocabulary is increasing either as an index of lexical
quality (Perfetti & Hart, 2001) or as a component of both listening comprehension and
word identification (e.g., Tunmer & Chapman, 2012). Word identification also predicted
unique variance in comprehension subskills, but evidence that this effect was stronger for
fiction was mixed (cf. Best et al., 2008). While word identification was only a marginal
predictor of non-fiction inference-making, the regression coefficients were very similar in
scale to their fiction counterparts, and it was a moderate predictor of non-fiction literal
comprehension in early adolescence. By middle adolescence, word identification was no
longer a significant predictor of literal comprehension for non-fiction or fiction. Reading
fluency was only a predictor in early adolescence and then only for non-fiction literal
comprehension.
Reading habits
Fiction book reading contributed unique variance to fiction inference-making across
adolescence and non-fiction literal comprehension in early adolescence. These are robust
findings as they survived controls for word identification, reading fluency, and text-
specific vocabulary. As the only reading habit to be a predictor of inference-making, the
narrative elements of fiction books may be well suited to the development of formal
schemas to support inference. Narratives are similar in structure to events in our daily lives
and may easily engage the episodic memory system that monitors our personal experience
(Tulving, 1984), with the links to specific episodes forming a basis for inference
(Eichenbaum, 2004).
The negative contribution of computer gaming to literal comprehension across text
genres was a striking finding among older students. It is assumed that this outcome does
not reflect a negative contribution of some aspect of gaming itself but rather that gaming
could reduce time for activities that might increase background knowledge (e.g., Perfetti
et al., 1996) or that weaker reading skills may lead to increased frequency of gaming (e.g.,
Willoughby, 2008). Using the PISA 2009 data set from 22 OECD countries, Drummond and
Sauer (2014) found only a trend for reduced reading achievement among 15-year-olds who
were daily users of multiplayer computer games compared to those who never played.
Therefore, the influence of gaming is a key outcome of the present study, which suggests
that longitudinal examination of this issue within individual OECD countries is warranted
using a measure like ours that is sensitive to the number of hours spent gaming over set
time periods.
Overall, limited evidence emerged of genre-specific predictors except for younger
adolescents’ text/e-mail time which predicted non-fiction literal comprehension.
Gender
In contrast, text genre interacted with gender in early adolescence as females scored
better on fiction than on non-fiction, but male comprehension was unaffected by text
genre. In middle adolescence, non-fiction literal comprehension was better among males
than among females.
While the scarcity of gender effects stands in contrast to the OECD-PISA outcome
(OECD, 2010), Logan and Johnston (2009) note that effect sizes among English speakers
are often small and gender differences in ability are much less pronounced than those for
attitudes to reading. If so, gender effects may be closely related to societal norms as
reading is known to be a gender-typed activity (Hall & Coles, 1999; Jacobs, Lanza, Osgood,
Eccles, & Wigfield, 2002; McGeown, Goodwin, Henderson, & Wright, 2012), which may
link to our finding that reading frequency is consistently higher among females.
Skilled versus less skilled adolescent reading comprehension

Less skilled comprehenders underperformed on all reading measures and were marginally
more likely to be of lower SES than of skilled comprehenders. Among less skilled
comprehenders, word identification and (marginally) reading frequency were lower
among male than among female students. Males were also over-represented among less
skilled word identifiers in early adolescence, who scored more than one SD below the
mean for word identification, v2 (1) = 3.86, p = .049.6 In the YARC Secondary test, less
skilled comprehenders appeared better at literal than at inference-making or reading
vocabulary, which were both subject to floor effects. This may reflect a greater reliance on
the textbase perhaps due to difficulties in the construction of a situational model.
In terms of reading habits, skilled and less skilled comprehenders differed only in
relation to their reading of extended traditional texts, fiction and non-fiction books. This is
consistent with the DIME model, which predicts that students who lack background
knowledge and vocabulary are at a particular disadvantage because these skills have direct
and mediated effects on comprehension (Cromley & Azevedo, 2007).
Limitations
The study has a number of limitations. First, the cross-sectional nature of the research
limits conclusions about the extent to which differences between early and middle
adolescence should be regarded as developmental or participant effects, and a
longitudinal follow-up is necessary. Second, the study is correlational and so experimental
manipulations of the variables identified here are necessary to establish causation. Third,
SES information was only available for a subset of the sample which may have reduced the
number of effects reaching significance due to low power. A fourth limitation is the lack of
data about listening comprehension as our information about language skills was limited
to reading vocabulary.
Conclusions
Theoretically, the results document the strong contribution from the cognitive domain
to adolescent reading comprehension with the influence of word identification
6
No such gender differences were observed for decoding in middle adolescence or for comprehension at either age (all v2s ≤ 1).
spanning adolescent groups and text genres, consistent with the predictions of the
SVR. Nevertheless, variables from the psychological domain (gender) and ecological
domain (print exposure) were found to have an additional impact, reinforcing the need
to extend the range of variables used to build models of reading comprehension in
adolescence.
In terms of print exposure, gender differences were evident in reading habits,
coinciding with better female than male comprehension of fiction in early adolescence
and better male than female literal comprehension of non-fiction in middle adolescence.
Shorter traditional and digital texts did not appear to have the same explanatory value as
traditional extended texts. Indeed, fiction book reading was the only reading habit to
make a robust, unique contribution to the higher-level comprehension skill of inference-
making. Equally striking was the finding that the only difference in reading habits
between skilled and less skilled comprehenders concerned the reading of traditional
extended texts. Future longitudinal research should examine the causality of this
association and explore how key features of extended text structure such as the
indexing of time or understanding sequences of related events may foster component
comprehension skills.
Evidence of the importance of reading frequency also warrants further research as
this correlated extensively with reading measures in early adolescence and remained a
predictor, albeit marginal, of reading comprehension even after controlling for gender
and cognitive reading skills (word identification, reading fluency). Both reading
frequency and reading comprehension were lower and unrelated in middle adoles-
cence, although comprehension was still well within average levels. Reading frequency
also distinguished skilled from less skilled comprehenders, and males generally read less
frequently than females. Reading frequency may be linked to the observed predictive
value of background knowledge in the form of text-specific reading vocabulary, as
vocabulary development and reading are thought to have a reciprocal relationship. It
will be important to test the direction of any such relationships as it remains possible
that the associations with reading frequency arise because less skilled readers are
simply reluctant readers since reading is very effortful for them. Nevertheless, a recent
UK report suggests that societal norms, which gender-type reading as ‘feminine’, are a
key factor in male underachievement in reading (National Literacy Trust, 2012), and the
present data indicate that reading frequency tends to be lower among males than
among females even when both genders have equally low levels of reading
comprehension. Future challenges for educators appear to lie in combatting adolescent
attitudes about the gender-typed nature of reading and in motivating extended text
reading habits.
References
Aaron, P. G., Joshi, R. M., Gooden, R., & Bentum, K. E. (2008). Diagnosis and treatment of reading
disabilities based on the component model of reading: An alternative to the discrepancy model of
LD. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 41(1), 67–84. doi:10.1177/0022219407310838
Adlof, S. M., Catts, H. W., & Little, T. D. (2006). Should the simple view of reading include a fluency
component? Reading and Writing, 19, 933–958. doi:10.1007/s11145-006-9024-z
Anderson, R. C., & Pearson, P. D. (1984). A Schema-Theoretic view of basic processes in reading
comprehension. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.), Handbook of reading research (pp. 255–291). New
York, NY: Longman.
Anderson, R. C., Wilson, P. T., & Fielding, L. G. (1988). Growth in reading and how children spend
their time outside of school. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 285–303. Retrieved from http://
www.jstor.org/stable/748043
Barnes, M. A., Dennis, M., & Haefele-Kalvaitis, J. (1996). The effects of knowledge availability and
knowledge accessibility on coherence and elaborative inferencing in children from six to fifteen
years of age. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 61, 216–241. doi:10.1006/
jecp.1996.0015
Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the
evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39, 775–786. doi:10.1111/j.1467-
8535.2007.00793.x
Best, R. M., Floyd, R. G., & Mcnamara, D. S. (2008). Differential competencies contributing to
children’s comprehension of narrative and expository texts. Reading Psychology, 29, 137–164.
doi:10.1080/02702710801963951
Bohn-Gettler, C. M., Rapp, D. N., van den Broek, P. W., Kendeou, P., & White, M. J. (2011). Adults’
and children’s monitoring of story events in the service of comprehension. Memory and
Cognition, 39, 992–1011. doi:10.3758/s13421-011-0085-0
Brasseur-Hock, I. F., Hock, M. F., Kieffer, M. J., Biancarosa, G., & Deshler, D. D. (2011). Adolescent
struggling readers in urban schools: Results of a latent class analysis. Learning and Individual
Differences, 21, 438–452. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2011.01.008
Cain, K. (1996). Story knowledge and comprehension skill. In C. Cornoldi & J. Oakhill (Eds.),
Reading comprehension difficulties (pp. 167–192). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Cain, K., Oakhill, J., Barnes, M. A., & Bryant, P. E. (2001). Comprehension skill, inference-making
ability, and their relation to knowledge. Memory and Cognition, 29, 850–859. doi:10.3758/
BF03196414
Cain, K., Oakhill, J., & Bryant, P. E. (2004). Children’s reading comprehension ability: Concurrent
prediction by working memory, verbal ability and component skills. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 96(1), 31–42. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.96.1.31
Castek, J., Zawilinski, L., McVerry, J. G., O’Byrne, W. I., & Leu, D. J. (2011). The new literacies of
online reading comprehension: New opportunities and challenges for students with learning
difficulties. In C. Wyatt-Smith, J. Elkins & S. Gunn (Eds.), Multiple perspectives on difficulties in
learning literacy and numeracy (pp. 91–110). New York, NY: Springer.
Catts, H. W., Hogan, T., & Adlof, S. M. (2005). Developmental changes in reading and reading
disabilities. In H. W. Catts & A. G. Kamhi (Eds.), The connections between language and
reading disabilities (pp. 25–40). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Clark, C. (2011). Setting the baseline: The national literacy trust’s first annual survey into reading
– 2010. London, UK: National Literacy Trust.
Clark, C., Torsi, S., & Strong, J. (2005). Young people and reading: A school study conducted by the
National Literacy Trust for the reading Champions initiative. London, UK: National Literacy
Trust.
Coiro, J., & Dobler, E. (2007). Exploring the online reading comprehension strategies used by sixth-
grade skilled readers to search for and locate information on the Internet. Reading Research
Quarterly, 42, 214–257. doi:10.1598/RRQ.42.2.2
Cook, L. K., & Mayer, R. E. (1988). Teaching readers about the structure of scientific text. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 80, 448–456. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.80.4.448
Cromley, J. G., & Azevedo, R. (2007). Testing and refining the Direct and Inferential Mediation model
of reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99, 311–325. doi:10.1037/
0022-0663.99.2.311
Cromley, J. G., Snyder-Hogan, L. E., & Luciw-Dubas, U. A. (2010). Reading comprehension of
scientific text: A domain-specific test of the Direct and Inferential Mediation model of
reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 687–700. doi:10.1037/
a0019452
Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1991). Tracking the unique effects of print exposure in
children: Associations with vocabulary, general knowledge, and spelling. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 83, 264–274. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.83.2.264
Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1997). Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading
experience and ability 10 years later. Developmental Psychology, 33, 934–945. doi:10.1037/
0012-1649.33.6.934
Cunningham, A. E., Stanovich, K. E., & Wilson, M. R. (1990). Cognitive variation in adult college
students differing in reading ability. In T. H. Carr & B. A. Levy (Eds.), Reading and its
development: Component skills approaches (pp. 129–159). New York, NY: Academic Press.
Curtis, M. E. (1980). Development of components of reading skill. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 72, 656–669. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.72.5.656
Cutting, L. E., Materek, A., Cole, C. A., Levine, T. M., & Mahone, E. M. (2009). Effects of fluency, oral
language, and executive function on reading comprehension performance. Annals of Dyslexia,
59(1), 34–54. doi:10.1007/s11881-009-0022-0
Cutting, L. E., & Scarborough, H. S. (2006). Prediction of reading comprehension: Relative
contributions of word recognition, language proficiency, and other cognitive skills can depend
on how comprehension is measured. Scientific Studies of Reading, 10, 277–299. doi:10.1207/
s1532799xssr1003_5
Diakidoy, I.-A. N., Mouskounti, T., & Ioannides, C. (2011). Comprehension and learning from
refutation and expository texts. Reading Research Quarterly, 46(1), 22–38. doi:10.1598/
RRQ.46.1.2
Drummond, A., & Sauer, J. D. (2014). Video-games do not negatively impact adolescent academic
performance in science, mathematics or reading. PLoS ONE, 9, e87943. doi:10.1371/
journal.pone.0087943
Eason, S. H., Goldberg, L. F., Young, K. M., Geist, M. C., & Cutting, L. E. (2012). Reader–text
interactions: How differential text and question types influence cognitive skills needed for
reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 515–528. doi:10.1037/
a0027182
Eichenbaum, H. (2004). Hippocampus: Cognitive processes and neural representations
that underlie declarative memory. Neuron, 44(1), 109–120. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2004.
08.028
Foster, H. (2007). Single Word Reading Test 6-16. London, UK: GL Assessment Limited.
Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Hosp, M. K., & Jenkins, J. R. (2001). Oral reading fluency as an indicator of
reading competence: A theoretical, empirical, and historical analysis. Scientific Studies of
Reading, 5, 239–256. doi:10.1207/S1532799XSSR0503_3
Garcıa, J. R., & Cain, K. (2014). Decoding and reading comprehension: A meta-analysis to
identify which reader and assessment characteristics influence the strength of the
relationship in English. Review of Educational Research, 84(1), 74–111. doi:10.3102/
0034654313499616
Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special
Education, 7(1), 6–10. doi:10.1177/074193258600700104
Graesser, A. C., Le on, J. A., & Otero, J. (2002). Introduction to the psychology of science text
comprehension. In J. Otero, J. A. Le on & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), The psychology of science text
comprehension (pp. 1–15). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Graesser, A. C., Singer, M., & Trabasso, T. (1994). Constructing inferences during narrative text
comprehension. Psychological Review, 101, 371–395. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.101.3.371
Hall, C., & Coles, M. (1999). Children’s reading choices. London, UK: Routledge.
Hayes, D. P., & Ahrens, M. G. (1988). Vocabulary simplification for children: A special case of
‘Motherese’? Journal of Child Language, 15, 395–410. doi:10.1017/S0305000900012411
Jacobs, J. E., Lanza, S., Osgood, D. W., Eccles, J. S., & Wigfield, A. (2002). Changes in children’s self-
competence and values: Gender and domain differences across grades one through twelve.
Child Development, 73, 509–527. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00421
Jenkins, J. R., Fuchs, L. S., van den Broek, P., Espin, C., & Deno, S. L. (2003). Sources of individual
differences in reading comprehension and reading fluency. Journal of Educational Psychology,
95, 719–729. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.95.4.719
Juel, C., Griffith, P., & Gough, P. B. (1986). Acquisition of literacy: A longitudinal study of children in
first and second grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78, 243–255. doi:10.1037/0022-
0663.78.4.243
Kim, Y.-S., Wagner, R. K., & Lopez, D. (2012). Developmental relations between reading fluency and
reading comprehension: A longitudinal study from Grade 1 to Grade 2. Journal of Experimental
Child Psychology, 113(1), 93–111. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2012.03.002
Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Kintsch, W. (2004). The Construction-Integration model of text comprehension and its implications
for instruction. In R. Ruddell & N. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading
(5th ed., pp. 1270–1328). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Klauda, S. L., & Guthrie, J. T. (2008). Relationships of three components of reading fluency to
reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 310–321. doi:10.1037/0022-
0663.100.2.310
Kush, J. C., & Watkins, M. W. (1996). Long-term stability of children’s attitudes toward
reading. Journal of Educational Research, 89, 315–319. doi:10.1080/00220671.
1996.9941333
Landi, N. (2010). An examination of the relationship between reading comprehension, higher-level
and lower-level reading sub-skills in adults. Reading and Writing, 23, 701–717. doi:10.1007/
s11145-009-9180-z
Logan, S., & Johnston, R. (2009). Gender differences in reading ability and attitudes: Examining
where these differences lie. Journal of Research in Reading, 32, 199–214. doi:10.1111/j.1467-
9817.2008.01389.x
Long, D. L., Oppy, B. J., & Seely, M. R. (1997). Individual differences in readers’ sentence- and text-
level representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 36(1), 129–145. doi:10.1006/
jmla.1996.2485
McGeown, S. P., Goodwin, H., Henderson, N., & Wright, P. (2012). Gender differences in reading
motivation: Does sex or gender identity provide a better account? Journal of Research in
Reading, 35, 328–336. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9817.2010.01481.x
McKenna, M. C., Kear, D. J., & Ellsworth, R. A. (1995). Children’s attitudes toward reading: A national
survey. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 934–955. doi:10.2307/748205
McNamara, D. S., Kintsch, E., Songer, N. B., & Kintsch, W. (1996). Are good texts always better?
Interactions of text coherence, background knowledge, and levels of understanding in learning
from text. Cognition and Instruction, 14(1), 1–43. doi:10.1207/s1532690xci1401_1
Meyer, B. J. F., & Rice, G. E. (1984). The structure of text. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.), Handbook of
reading research (pp. 319–352). New York, NY: Longman.
Mol, S. E., & Bus, A. G. (2011). To read or not to read: A meta-analysis of print exposure from infancy
to early adulthood. Psychological Bulletin, 137, 267–296. doi:10.1037/a0021890
Moss, G., & McDonald, J. W. (2004). The borrowers: Library records as unobtrusive measures of
children’s reading preferences. Journal of Research in Reading, 27, 401–413. doi:10.1111/
j.1467-9817.2004.00242.x
Myers, S. S. (1997). Perspectives on schema and reading comprehension: Central or formal schema?
What promises? In: K. Camperel, B. L. Hayes & R. Telfer (Eds.), American reading forum online
yearbook (Vol. XVII). Retrieved from http://www.americanreadingforum.org/yearbook/
yearbooks/97_yearbook/volume97.htm#top
National Literacy Trust (2012). Boy’s reading commission: The report of the All-Party
Parliamentary Literacy Group Commission. London, UK: Author.
Oakhill, J. V., Yuill, N. M., & Parkin, A. J. (1986). On the nature of the difference between skilled and
less-skilled comprehenders. Journal of Research in Reading, 9(2), 80–91. doi:10.1111/j.1467-
9817.1986.tb00115.x
OECD (2010). PISA 2009 results: What students know and can do – Student performance in
reading, mathematics and science (Vol. I). Paris, France: PISA, OECD Publishing.
Ofcom (2012). Children and parents: Media use and attitudes report. Retrieved from http://
stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/oct2012/main.pdf
Ouellette, G., & Beers, A. (2010). A not-so-simple view of reading: How oral vocabulary and visual-
word recognition complicate the story. Reading and Writing, 23, 189–208. doi:10.1007/
s11145-008-9159-1
Palmer, J., MacLeod, C. M., Hunt, E., & Davidson, J. E. (1985). Information processing correlates of
reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 24(1), 59–88. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(85)90016-6
Perfetti, C. A. (1985). Reading ability. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Perfetti, C. A., & Hart, L. (2001). The lexical bases of comprehension skill. In D. Gorfien (Ed.), On the
consequences of meaning selection (pp. 67–86). Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.
Perfetti, C. A., Marron, M. A., & Foltz, P. W. (1996). Sources of comprehension failure: Theoretical
perspectives and case studies. In C. Cornoldi & J. Oakhill (Eds.), Reading comprehension
difficulties: Processes and intervention (pp. 137–165). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Pitcher, S. M., Albright, L. K., DeLaney, C. J., Walker, N. T., Seunarinesingh, K., Mogge, S., . . .
Dunston, P. J. (2007). Assessing adolescents’ motivation to read. Journal of Adolescent and
Adult Literacy, 50, 378–396. doi:10.1598/JAAL.50.5.5
Protopapas, A., Simos, P. G., Sideridis, G. D., & Mouzaki, A. (2012). The components of the Simple
View of Reading: A confirmatory factor analysis. Reading Psychology, 33, 217–240.
doi:10.1080/02702711.2010.507626
Recht, D. R., & Leslie, L. (1988). Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readers’ memory of text.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(1), 16–20. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.80.1.16
Saarnio, D. A., Oka, E. R., & Paris, S. G. (1990). Developmental predictors of children’s reading
comprehension. In T. H. Carr & B. A. Levy (Eds.), Reading and its development: Component
skills approaches (pp. 57–79). New York, NY: Academic Press.
Sabatini, J. P., Sawaki, Y., Shore, J. R., & Scarborough, H. S. (2010). Relationships among reading
skills of adults with low literacy. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 43, 122–138. doi:10.1177/
0022219409359343
Samuelstuen, M. S., & Br aten, I. (2005). Decoding, knowledge, and strategies in comprehension of
expository text. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 46, 107–117. doi:10.1111/j.1467-
9450.2005.00441.x
Sesma, H. W., Mahone, E. M., Levine, T., Eason, S. H., & Cutting, L. E. (2009). The contribution of
executive skills to reading comprehension. Child Neuropsychology, 15(3), 1–15. doi:10.1080/
09297040802220029
Spear-Swerling, L., Brucker, P. O., & Alfano, M. P. (2010). Relationships between sixth-graders’
reading comprehension and two different measure of print exposure. Reading and Writing, 23
(1), 73–96. doi:10.1007/s11145-008-9152-8
Stanovich, K. E., & Cunningham, A. E. (1992). Studying the consequences of literacy within a literate
society: The cognitive correlates of print exposure. Memory & Cognition, 20(1), 51–68.
doi:10.3758/BF03208254
Stanovich, K. E., & Cunningham, A. E. (1993). Where does knowledge come from? Specific
associations between print exposure and information acquisition. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 85, 211–229. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.85.2.211
Stothard, S. E., Hulme, C., Clarke, P., Barmby, P., & Snowling, M. J. (2010). York assessment of
reading for comprehension. Secondary test. London, UK: GL Assessment.
Tilstra, J., McMaster, K., Van den Broek, P., Kendeou, P., & Rapp, D. (2009). Simple but complex:
Components of the simple view of reading across grade levels. Journal of Research in Reading,
32, 383–401. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9817.2009.01401.x
Topping, K. (2012). What kids are reading: The book-reading habits of students in British schools
2012. Retrieved from Read for Pleasure website http://www.readforpleasure.co.uk/wkar/
Tulving, E. (1984). Precis of elements of episodic memory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 223–
238. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0004440X
Tunmer, W. E., & Chapman, J. W. (2012). The simple view of reading redux: Vocabulary knowledge
and the independent components hypothesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 45, 453–466.
doi:10.1177/0022219411432685
Vellutino, F. R., Tunmer, W. E., Jaccard, J. J., & Chen, R. (2007). Components of reading ability:
Multivariate evidence for a convergent skills model of reading development. Scientific Studies of
Reading, 11(1), 3–32. doi:10.1207/s1532799xssr1101_2
Willoughby, T. (2008). A short-term longitudinal study of internet and computer game use by
adolescent boys and girls: Prevalence, frequency of use and psychosocial predictors.
Developmental Psychology, 44(1), 195–204. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.44.1.195
Wolfe, M. B. W., & Woodwyk, J. M. (2010). Processing and memory of information presented in
narrative or expository texts. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 341–362.
doi:10.1348/000709910X485700
Wood, C., Meachem, S., Bowyer, S., Jackson, E., Tarczynski-Bowles, M. L., & Plester, B. (2011). A
longitudinal study of children’s text messaging and literacy development. British Journal of
Psychology, 102, 431–442. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2010.02002.x
Received 2 September 2014; revised version received 23 March 2015

Adolescent Reading Skill and Engagement With Digital and Traditional Literacies As Predictors of Reading Comprehension

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Adolescent Reading Skill and Engagement With Digital and Traditional Literacies As Predictors of Reading Comprehension

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Adolescent Reading Skill and Engagement With Digital and Traditional Literacies As Predictors of Reading Comprehension

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

1

British Journal of Psychology (2015)

Adolescent reading skill and engagement with

This study investigates the concurrent predictors of adolescent reading comprehension

A shortage of information limits our understanding of whether or not children will

Cognitive components of reading comprehension

reading comprehension, whereas higher-level language comprehension processes

Exploring the comprehension processes involved in reading text

Expanding the theoretical view of reading comprehension

Psychological factor: Gender

Ecological factor: Print exposure

The present study

4. To examine gender differences responsible for British male underachievement in

Reading comprehension. Students completed 3, 4, or 5 comprehension (non-fiction or

Reading habits questionnaire

N Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD N

Reading skills and reading frequency as predictors of reading comprehension

Reading comprehension subskills

Reading comp. SWRT Reading fluency Reading frequency SESa

Reading comp. – .70*** .65*** .24*** .11

Note. SWRT = Single Word Reading Test.

N Vocabulary Literal Inferential Vocabulary Literal Inferential

A four-way mixed ANOVA examined within-participants factors, text type (non-

Reading skills and reading habits as predictors of reading comprehension subskills

Hierarchical multiple regression

Early adolescence Middle adolescence

Note. SWRT = Single Word Reading Test.

Early adolescence Middle adolescence

Early adolescence Middle adolescence

Early adolescence Middle adolescence

Note. SWRT = Single Word Reading Test.

Comparison of skilled versus less skilled comprehenders

Skilled comprehenders Less skilled comprehenders

Male Female Total Male Female Total

Chronological age (years)

Note. SWRT = Single Word Reading Test.

Reading comprehension, word recognition, and reading fluency in adolescence

Reading comp. SWRT Reading fluency Reading frequency

Concurrent links between adolescent reading habits, gender, and reading

Predictors of literal and inferential comprehension subskills in adolescence

Skilled versus less skilled adolescent reading comprehension

Received 2 September 2014; revised version received 23 March 2015

You might also like

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Reading comp. – .70* .65* .24*** .11