The Effect of Early Reading Failure on Acquisition of Knowledge Among Students with Learning Disabilities

Vicki E. Snider and Sara G. Tarver

Children with learning disabilities who are handicapped in reading cannot decode the printed word quickly and easily. As a result, word recognition processes drain attentional capacity that might otherwise be allocated to comprehension processes. Comprehension is complicated further by a secondary effect of the basic decoding problem-failure to acquire the information and vocabulary that is normally gained through reading experiences. Because of a limited knowledge base, the learning disabled (LD) student may be unable to demonstrate the higher level thinking abilities involved in reading comprehension despite normal intelligence. In this paper, the ramifications of early reading failure are considered within Chall's (1983) five-stage model of reading development.

Although learning disabilities can occur in any subject area, the majority are in reading. Many learning disabled (LD) students have reading achievement significantly below that which would be expected on the basis of IQ. These students are limited in what they can learn from reading because poor decoding skills present a barrier to the acquisition of knowledge. The inability to profit from the usual reading experiences makes it difficult for LD students to acquire the prior knowledge (i.e., vocabulary concepts and information) that is essential for higher level reading comprehension and intellectual development. To use Chall's (1983) terms, the student who has not "learned to read" cannot "read to learn."

There is no single body of research that demonstrates the effects of early reading failure on comprehension. Rather, research in several areas converges to provide a rationale for the hypothesis that LD students' apparent comprehension problems may be a secondary result of failure to acquire adequate decoding skills in the earliest stages oflearning to read. The focus of this paper is on children with learning disabilities who experience difficulty with initial decoding; however,

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the implications are applicable to many children with reading problems, regardless of the cause of the disability. In this paper, Chall's (1983) five-stage model of reading development is used to organize and facilitate interpretation of the literature relevant to the hypothesis.

It should be pointed out that our interpretation of Chall's developmental model is different from the usual interpretation of cognitive developmental models (e.g., Piaget's developmental theory). Reading development is not conceptualized here as the unfolding of more and more complex reading abilities within the child as the child gets older; instead, reading development is conceptualized as the acquisition of increasingly complex reading skills and strategies under the influence of effective reading instruction. In a sense, we consider the model to be a model of reading instruction rather than a model of reading development.

STAGES OF READING DEVELOPMENT

Reading is a continuously developing skill. Learning to read does not stop when a child is able to decipher

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the printed code. Once children become competent decoders (i.e., able to decode both quickly and accurately), reading becomes a tool for learning and understanding. Such understanding is, to a great extent, dependent on prior knowledge. Chall's (1983) fivestage model illustrates the way in which the nature of reading changes throughout our lives. During the first stage, which typically occurs in first grade, children learn to use lettersound relationships to decode the printed word. During the second stage, which begins in second and continues through the end of third grade, children gain fluency through practice. In the third stage, which begins at about fourth grade, children stop "learning to read" and begin "reading to learn." They acquire a rich base of information and vocabulary concepts by reading a wide variety of ma terials. In high school most students enter stage 4, in which information from a variety of sources is compared and evaluated. Stage 5 involves synthesis of information and hypothesis formation that is usually restricted to a specific area of study at an advanced level.

Each stage is dependent on mastery of the previous one. For example, accurate decoding (stage 1) is a prerequisite to fluency (stage 2). Both accuracy and fluency are necessary for the acquisition of knowledge in stage 3. Stage 4 builds upon the knowledge acquired in stage 3. The acquisition of the highly specialized knowledge in stage 5 is dependent upon the rich base of information acquired in stages 3 and 4.

Despite recent recognition that stage 3 learning plays a pivotal role in students' transition from the decoding and fluency emphasis in stages I and 2 to the comprehension emphasis in stages 4 and 5, few investigations of LD students' stage 3 deficiencies have been conducted. It seems likely that an indirect result of LD students' slow and inaccurate decoding is a failure to learn many of the concepts that are typically acquired during stage 3. Failure to acquire concepts from reading experiences in stage 3 may result in an impoverished knowledge base that is insufficient for comprehension of the

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increasingly complex reading material confronted by students in stages 4 and 5. The difficulties that LD students experience as they progress through the stages of reading development will be detailed below.

STAGE I-INITIAL DECODING

A substantial body of research indicates that the majority of students who experience difficulty acquiring beginning decoding skills do so not because of visual perceptual problems, as commonly hypothesized in the past, but because of problems with the phonological aspects oflanguage (Liberman & Shankweiler, 1979; Perfetti, 1985). These phonological problems go beyond the well-recognized language abilities involved in the production and comprehension of speech. As explained by Liberman and Shankweiler (1985),

A language user does not need to be aware of what the parts are in order to speak and understand speech because the built-in speech apparatus processes them automatically. But to learn to use an alphabet, to read and to spell, the learner needs to become aware of the parts to make the connection between speech and writing. (p. 15)

As implied by Liberman and Shankweiler's (1985) statement, the most basic phonological problem of poor readers is one of grasping that words have parts-phonemes, syllables, morphemes. This problem has been described as a lack of awareness of sub lexical structures or a lack of metalinguistic awareness. This basic awareness deficiency has been linked to two other phonological processes involved in the acquisition of early decoding skills: (a) unreliable access to the phonological representations of the names of objects and (b) deficient use of phonetic properties as a basis for short-term memory operations that underlie the processing of connected language, whether it be in spoken or in written form. Liberman and Shankweiler (1985) further emphasize that the poor reader's basic problem lies,

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not in the domains of syntax or semantics, but in the domain of phonology.

Fortunately, research shows that the sub lexical phonological abilities described above can be taught successfully and that effective phonological instruction has beneficial effects on both word reading and sentence comprehension. It seems likely, however, that students who experience severe problems with the phonological aspects of prereading skills are likely to require expert prereading instruction for extended periods of time if they are to be able to benefit from the typical stage 1 phonics instruction, which involves the sequencing and blending of sounds to form words (Fox & Routh, 1980; Williams, 1984). In the absence of adequate prephonics and phonics instruction, many students are likely to fail to acquire basic decoding skills. Even with expert instruction, many may be delayed in the acquisition and/or mastery of these skills. These deficiencies and/or delays can interfere with the development of reading fluency, which is the primary objective of reading instruction at stage 2.

STAGE 2-FLUENCY

Long dismissed as unimportant, speed of passage reading is now recognized to be a necessary prerequisite to comprehension. It is only when the decoding process becomes automatic, that is, both accurate and rapid, that attention is freed for higher level reading comprehension skills (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Perfetti, 1985; Perfetti & Lesgold, 1979; Samuels, 1981; Stanovich, 1982a). Decoding speed and reading achievement are highly correlated in the early grades (Perfetti & Lesgold, 1979). A child's first grade speed of reading score is a very good predictor of that child's second grade comprehension score (Lesgold & Resnick, 1982). Perfetti (1984) asked teachers to identify children who had good word recognition skills, but who had difficulty with comprehension. All but one of the nine children identified as having a comprehension problem actually were deficient in speed of word recognition. They were more than one

standard deviation below the mean compared to a same-grade comparison group in speed of naming the isolated words. The results of this study, in combination with other studies, led Perfetti (1985) to conclude that speed of decoding is a major difference of high ability and low ability readers.

Rapid word recognition indicates that the decoding process has become automatic; slow word recognition indicates that that process has not yet become automatic. When decoding is automatic, students are better able to simultaneously perform both decoding and comprehension tasks (Samuels, 1981). Because less attention is required for decoding, more attention is freed for comprehension. Most people develop automaticity as a result of the familiarity that develops from extended practice. Students with reading disability no doubt require even more practice and repetition to reach the level of automaticity. In the absence of sufficient practice and repetition in stage 2, reading disabled students must continue to devote a great deal of attention to decoding when they are confronted with stage 3 reading materials. The remaining attentional capacity is insufficient for understanding and remembering the more complex reading materials involved in stage 3 instruction. This is why it is essential that measures of reading speed, as well as measures of reading accuracy, be included in reading assessment to determine if the student is ready to move from stage 2 to stage 3 reading instruction (Perfetti, 1985).

STAGE 3-READING FOR MEANING

Once reading has become both accurate and fluent, the task of reading changes from deciphering the print to understanding the content. In stage 3 reading, students expand their knowledge base as they increase their understanding of both single words (vocabulary concepts) and passages (information). It is at this point that prior knowledge plays a major role in reading comprehension. Although the precise nature of the relationship between

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prior knowledge and reading comprehension is not well understood, the relationship seems to be one of reciprocitysuch that prior knowledge facilitates comprehension and comprehension enriches and expands the knowledge base. Students acquire new knowledge when they comprehend a text. That is, comprehension increases the knowledge base. This new knowledge, in turn, constitutes the prior knowledge which is stored in memory and which students use to facilitate text comprehension. That is, prior knowledge increases comprehension. The way in which prior knowledge is acquired through context and through analogical reasoning is considered below. Then the crucial role that prior knowledge plays in comprehension is summarized.

The Acquisition of Knowledge

Students acquire both vocabulary concepts and information in two ways: through context and by analogy. The following discussion will illustrate how a failure to profit from reading experiences in stage 3 can result in an insufficient knowledge base.

Contextual Inference. There are two types of context use. One acts to speed word recognition and the other facilitates memory and comprehension of the text (Stanovich, 1984). The first is automatic, requiring little cognitive capacity. Using context to speed word recognition is a part of gaining automaticity in decoding, which occurs in stage 2. Using context to ascertain unfamiliar word meanings is part of gaining meaning from the text, which occurs in stage 3. This latter type of context use may actually decrease fluency at the same time that it increases vocabulary.

Contrary to the previously popular belief that LD students do not use context clues, recent research indicates that LD students are just as likely as good readers to use contextual information if they can decode fluently (Perfetti, 1984; Stanovich, 1982b, 1984). In fact, LD students may overrely on context clues to compensate for poor decoding skills (Stanovich,

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1982b). This implies that they may also be able to use context clues to increase vocabulary if decoding skills are sufficient to allow for this second type of context use.

Vocabulary knowledge plays a major role in reading comprehension (Singer & Crouse, 1981). Correlations between intelligence and vocabulary are in the neighborhood of.8 (Jenkins, Stein, & Wysocki, 1984). Even though explicit vocabulary instruction in the classroom is rare (Becker, 1977; Durkin, 1979), children's vocabularies approximately double between third and seventh grade (Jenkins et al., 1984), indicating that students learn word meanings even in the absence of instruction. A study by Jenkins et al. (1984) supports the assertion that new vocabulary can be acquired incidentally from repeated exposures to new words in context. When students were instructed to read passages containing unfamiliar words, the word meanings were learned. More frequent presentation of the unfamiliar words in context (0,2,6, or 10 presentations) increased incidental learning of the word meanings. The implication is that poor decoders who read laboriously, and therefore as little as possible, are at a disadvantage in respect to the expansion and enrichment of their vocabularies.

Similarly, poor decoders are at a disadvantage for acquiring information from reading. Information is acquired from passages in the context of a story in much the same way that single word meanings are acquired from the content of a single sentence. For example, although children are not directly taught that elephants are used for transportation in Asia, one need only read one Rudyard Kipling story to acquire that bit of information. Knowledge of the world is gained from a wide variety of reading experiences of this sort that are provided by most upper elementary basal reading series. LD students often do not engage in, or at least do not profit from, such reading experiences because they lack the prerequisite reading fluency.

Analogical Reasoning. Analogies have been found to be among the best

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predictors of overall intelligence (Sternberg, 1977; Wagner & Sternberg, 1984). Analogies involve a type of inductive reasoning in which an individual must determine the rule governing a set of examples. Induction problems are frequently found on standardized aptitude or intelligence tests (Pellegrino & Glaser, 1979). Raven's Progressive Matrices, considered to be a language-free measure of Spearman's g factor (Jensen, 1980; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Feeman, 1984), the quintessence of intelligence, is essentially a test of figural analogies. Indeed, reasoning by analogy is pervasive in everyday life. Analogies make what is novel, understandable, by comparing it to familiar, prior knowledge. The most common way in which people apply knowledge learned in one domain to another is by analogy(Rumelhart& Norman, 1981). For example, the concepts of voltage, amperage, and resistance in electricity are often explained by comparing them to the familiar garden hose. The force of the water going through the hose is like volts, the speed of the water going through the hose is like amps, and the hose itself poses resistance.

The process of modeling a new schema on an existing one is called learning by analogy (Norman, Gentner, & Stevens, 1976; Rumelhart & Norman, 1981). Schemata can be viewed as organized packets of specific knowledge. Schemata are constantly in flux as new information is added. New schemata are created when the learner compares the elements of a new situation to an existing schema. If the new information does not make sense in terms of existing schema ta, a new schema is formed. The inappropriate elements of the established schema define the distinctive features of the new schema. That is, the elements of the old schema that do not fit the new situation, are not incorporated into the new schema. When noncontradictory but incorrect elements are carried over from the old to the new schema, errors can occur. If the analogy is a good one, most of the inferences will be correct. If the analogy is not good, inferences are likely to be incorrect. When the differences be-

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tween the old and new schema are only minimally different, the new learning is more likely to be correct. If too many features are different, erroneous inferences may cause mislearning.

Teachers do not always consider the composition of the novice leamer's schemata. What appears to be a breakdown in logic in arriving at an answer, may be very reasonable inferences derived from inadequate schemata. That is, the student does not have a schema in his or her repertoire that is only minimally different from the new one being formed. When the student models the new schema on the old one by analogy, he or she brings along too many irrelevant, often erroneous, features. Norman et al. (1976) provide an amusing example of how mislearning can happen. An interviewer inquired, "How would you make something like mayonnaise?" to which the subject replied, "Mayonnaise? How do you make mayonnaise? You can't make mayonnaise, it has to be bought in jars. Mayonnaise, Um. You mix whipped cream with, um, some mustard" (p. 185). To a noncook, the ingredients used to make mayonnaise (eggs and oil) are not obvious. When a naive subject is forced to use the closest schema (whipped cream has a similar texture and appearance) and has to determine ingredients (mustard could be added to give it a tangy taste), the result can be erroneous.

Vocabulary concepts as well as other types of information are acquired by analogical reasoning. After all, "words are just labels for concepts" (Beck, Perfetti, & McKeown, 1982, p. 508). The student who has a broad knowledge base will have more schemata to draw on when encountering new information. Therefore, the new information is more likely to be correctly interpreted and integrated.

To summarize, as a result of reading experiences, people acquire a great deal of information that is stored and organized into many schemata. Greater availability of schemata increases the likelihood that new learning will occur as the result of inference. Analogical reasoning is one type of inference that is particularly important in the acquisition of new knowledge.

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Inferences based on too little information may result in mislearning.

The Importance of Prior Knowledge

Prior knowledge plays a critical role in the understanding of new knowledge. This is a familiar theme in the literature. In the problem-solving literature, for example: "Problem-solving difficulty of novices can be attributed largely to the inadequacies of their knowledge bases and not to limitations in their processing capabilities such as the inability to use problem solving heuristics" (Glaser, 1984, p. 99). This theme is also stated in the content area literature: "Students with learning problems often suffer because they don't have as much background knowledge as their peers" (Hansen, 1984, p. 71). Again, this theme is stated in the education literature:

Stage 3 reading is characterized by the growing importance of word meanings and of prior knowledge. The need to know some new things if more is to be learned from reading, becomes greater. Readers need to bring knowledge and experience to their reading if they are to learn from it. (Chall, 1983, p. 21)

In fact, "researchers from diverse fields have reminded us that comprehension is always to some extent idiosyncratic building on individual's responses to the pragmatics of the particular reading situation as well as their understanding of the 'content of the text" (Langor, 1984, p. 469).

In summary, an indirect result of the LD student's slow and inaccurate decoding is a failure to learn many of the concepts that are typically acquired during stage 3 by inference from context and by analogical reasoning from prior knowledge structures called schemata. Failure to acquire concepts from reading experiences in stage 3 results in an insufficient knowledge base. A rich knowledge base is essential to comprehension of stage 3 reading material and to further development of reading in stage 4.

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STAGE 4-RELATIONSHIPS AND VIEWPOINTS

High school curricula require students to compare and evaluate what they read. In stage 4, students are expected to read quantitatively more and qualitatively more complex material from a variety of sources. Efficient reading is critical to success. It is at this level that metacognition plays a most important role. The metacognitive process involves three aspects: (a) awareness of one's own activities while reading, (b) monitoring and evaluating one's understanding ofthe text as one reads (comprehension monitoring), and (c) knowing how to compensate when one detects a problem (Baker & Brown, 1984).

There is some evidence to suggest that LD students are less apt than normal students to monitor their comprehension while reading (Bos & Filip, 1984; Kaufman, 1981). However, neither of these studies controlled speed of reading, and the criterion for accuracy of word recognition was not stringent. Jenkins, Heliotis, Haynes, and Beck (1986) found that both LD and average readers' comprehension was best in a structured situation in which they were asked to restate the text (forcing them to use meta cognitive strategies), and their comprehension was worst during individual silent reading (in which the use of metacognitive strategies was optional). Although LD students did not differ from average readers in their patterns of comprehension monitoring, they were consistently lower in comprehension, suggesting that LD students are not necessarily deficient in metacognitive skills, just less skilled at reading. Self-monitoring of comprehension may well be an important component of reading; it may also be that an LD student's apparent failure to monitor understanding of the text may reflect a more basic problem. If a student cannot decode rapidly and efficiently, if he or she does not possess the necessary information to understand the topic, monitoring his or her own comprehension by asking questions such as, "Am I paying attention?" or "Am I getting the main idea?" will not im-

Journal of Learning Disabilities

prove comprehension. That is, researchers ignore the possibility that the LD student's poor performance on comprehension tasks may be due, not to inadequate comprehension monitoring, but to more basic deficiencies in skills assumed to have been mastered in stages 1, 2, and 3.

STAGE 5-SYNTHESIS

In stage 5 the reader synthesizes information from a variety of sources to form hypotheses. Ideally, this is the type of intellectual pursuit that occurs at the college level. People do not engage in this integrative reading in all domains. For example, some can do stage 5 reading in behavioral sciences, while still functioning in stage 4 or even stage 3 in English literature. Stage 5 reading requires extensive background knowledge in highly specialized content areas. The acquisition of that highly specialized knowledge is dependent upon the rich base of information acquired in stages 3 and 4 which, in turn, is dependent upon the acquisition of automatic skills in stages 1 and 2. Formal reading instruction does not accompany stage 5 reading; rather, stage 5 reading emerges as a result of intensive study in a content area.

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICA nONS

The prognosis is not encouraging for students who remain in stages 1 and 2 for most of their school careers. Fortunately, however, complete school failure is not inevitable. The educational technology exists to provide LD students with successful school experiences despite an inauspicious beginning.

The Prognosis for LD Students

For students who spend many years reading slowly, painfully, and as little as possible, knowledge of the world and vocabulary concepts remains pitifully immature and incomplete. In view of this, it is not surprising that follow-up studies conducted on LD populations provide little cause forop-

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timism regarding their chances for success in later life (Deshler, Schumaker, & Lenz, 1984; Hinton & Knights, 1971; Horn, O'Donnell, & Vitulano, 1983; McKinney & Feagans, 1984). The majority of students cannot pass minimum competency tests even when tests are modified (Miller, 1983, cited in Deshler et al., 1984). They seem to plateau at the fourth- or fifthgrade reading level early in high school and show no further progress (Warner, Schumaker, Alley, & Deshler, 1980). Recall that fourth grade marks the beginning of stage 3 reading, in which the focus changes from learning to read to reading to learn. Since LD students spend most of their school years learning how to read (something their average peers can do at the end of third grade), they are deprived of 6 or more years (grades four through nine) of reading to learn fundamental vocabulary concepts and information. LD students are not able to benefit from the instruction that accompanies stage 3 reading, and yet they are expected to have the same extensive knowledge repertoire as their nondisabled peers. Even after students have learned to decode fluently (stages 1 and 2), it cannot be assumed that they are capable of reading high school texts (stage 4) when they have not acquired the prerequisite information (stage 3).

Instructional Implications

In spite of average intelligence, LD students are typically unable to demonstrate their thinking ability. Research suggests that this is because their knowledge base is small and their concepts are imprecise. Future research is needed to determine how educators can enhance stage 3 instruction to allow LD students to reach their full intellectual potential. However, current research indicates that the following suggestions may improve instruction.

1. Teachers must emphasize reading fluency as soon as students can accurately decode letter-sound correspondences. Word-by-word reading indicates that automaticity has not been attained

c

and that the cognitive capacity available for comprehension is minimal. In the past, educators have been satisfied that word recognition-albeit slowis a sufficient indicator of reading progress. Most widely used tests of reading do not take speed into account. This often yields a misleading grade equivalent.

The technology exists to teach LD students to decode accurately and rapidly. Lloyd, Epstein, and Cullinan (1981) found that LD students receiving Direct Instruction with the Corrective Reading Program (Engelmann et al., 1975) made significantly greater gains in word recognition, speed of reading, and spelling than did LD students receiving the typical eclectic instruction delivered in most resource rooms. Although the initial progress of LD students may be slower than that of their nondisabled peers, LD students who receive intensive Direct Instruction early in their school careers can learn the automatic decoding skills that are prerequisite to the acquisition of the higher level comprehension skills and strategies.

2. Due to the cumulative effects of deficiencies at earlier stages, LD students are especially in need of effective and efficient instruction in stage 3. The Direct Instruction reading program used by Lloyd et al. (1981) also produced greater gains in reading comprehension than did eclectic instruction. This program specifically teaches vocabulary concepts, general information, and reasoning skills-the stage 3 reading components in which LD students are likely to need additional instruction.

Other compensatory means should be utilized to help LD youngsters expand their knowledge of the world until they acquire the skills necessary for wide reading on an independent basis. Parents should be encouraged to read to their children and to discuss current events and social issues with them. Public television can be a good source of information that will be useful in academic learning. Finally, resource teachers should avoid taking students out of content area classes. This deprives students of the opportunity to learn from discussions, films, and other activities.

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3. Older students should be taught metacognitive processes. Instruction in comprehension monitoring should include instruction in the detection of missing information. This must be followed by instruction in study skills and use of reference materials so that the student is able to find the missing information.

4. Curriculum developers and teachers must not assume that students have the necessary preskills (schemata) to profit from the typical comprehension instruction. Only if instructional materials are properly sequenced can students use analogical reasoning to learn new concepts. This consideration is particularly important at the high school level, where it cannot be assumed that students have acquired "common knowledge." Supplemental materials which emphasize vocabulary and background information should be developed to accompany content area texts. This would enable resource teachers and regular teachers to help LD and other low ability students to profit from reading in the content areas. Given adequate opportunities to acquire prior knowledge, LD students may be able to demonstrate higher level comprehension skills that are comparable to those of their nondisabled peers.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Vicki E. Snider, who received herdoctoratefrom the University of WISconsin-Madison, is an assistant professor in the Department of Special Education at the University ofWisconsin-Eau Claire. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a special education teacher in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Public School District for 11 years. She is currently conducting research regarding the effect of prior knowledge on the reading comprehension ability of students with learning disabilities. Sara G. Tarver is an associate professor and coordinator of the Learning Disabilities Teacher Certification Program in the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She reo ceived her doctorate from the University of Virginia. Address: Vicki E. Snider, Department of Special Education, 243 Allied Health Bldg., University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI 54701.

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