Do Reading Tests Measure "Reading?" Final Report

A recent finding that good and poor readers may bring different response patterns to the reading task comes from a pilot study in which so-called good readers achieved a higher score on a comprehension test than did poor readers, even when they had not had a paragraph or story to read as a basis for answering the questions. This study was a more systematic attempt to replicate the findings of the pilot study and a test of the formulation that reading is more than the decoding of visual material. Sixteen good and sixteen poor seventh grade readers were given comprehensive questions taken from a standard reading test under four conditions: graphic form/story and questions, graphic form/questions only, auditory form/story and questions, and auditory form/questions only. It was hypothesized that under the questions only condition and the stories and questions condition, good readers would score higher than poor readers on both modes of presentation; And, although poor readers may score better on the auditory presentation than on the graphic, their performance would still be lower than that of the good readers. The data show that, while the groups did differ for the most part as predicted, good readers scored lowest for the graphic form/questions only condition. The implications of these findings are discussed. (TO)