Literacy skills seem to fuel literacy enjoyment, rather than vice versa

Unraveling individual differences in learning potential: A dynamic framework for the case of reading development

Children show an enormous capacity to learn during development, but with large individual differences in the time course and trajectory of learning and the achieved skill level. Recent progress in developmental sciences has shown the contribution of a multitude of factors including genetic variation, brain plasticity, socio-cultural context and learning experiences to individual development. These factors interact in a complex manner, producing children's idiosyncratic and heterogeneous learning paths. Despite an increasing recognition of these intricate dynamics, current research on the development of culturally acquired skills such as reading still has a typical focus on snapshots of children's performance at discrete points in time. Here we argue that this 'static' approach is often insufficient and limits advancements in the prediction and mechanistic understanding of individual differences in learning capacity. We present a dynamic framework which highlights the importance of capturing short-term trajectories during learning across multiple stages and processes as a proxy for long-term development on the example of reading. This framework will help explain relevant variability in children's learning paths and outcomes and fosters new perspectives and approaches to study how children develop and learn.

Print and digital reading habits and comprehension in children with and without special education needs

BACKGROUND

Text comprehension is a major obstacle for many Primary school students with special education needs (SEN). Reading episodes bring students opportunities to be exposed to new vocabulary and knowledge, potentially boosting their development of text comprehension skills.

AIMS

Our study seeks to understand how reading frequency (leisure and academic) and reading medium (print and digital) contribute to the development of text comprehension during Primary school in students with and without SEN.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

We tested 2289 Spanish students from fourth to sixth grade, from which 212 had an official decision of SEN. Students self-reported their reading frequency (as a measure of their reading habits) and completed a standardized text comprehension test. We employed multiple regression models with a robust maximum likelihood estimator to test associations between reading frequency and comprehension.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Students' comprehension was positively associated with their leisure print reading habits, and negatively associated with their frequency of academic digital reading. Those associations were independent of SEN status.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Results highlight the importance of promoting leisure reading in print to all students, regardless of SEN status. In addition, caution is advised when encouraging Primary school children to use digital texts when the emphasis is on comprehending texts for acquiring knowledge.

The detrimental effects of student-disordered behavior at school: evidence from using the cusp catastrophe

Introduction

The purpose of the present study is to examine the potentially complex relationship between disordered behavior at school and students' engagement with reading activities given that they enjoy reading. Of particular interest is the role of disordered behavior which we believe moderated the relationship between liking reading and reading engagement.

Methods

Participants were 2,420 fourth graders who participated in the 2021 PIRLS study from Saudi Arabia and were selected using stratified random sampling from 117 schools in the Kingdom. Data were analyzed using linear and nonlinear means such as the linear model, the logistic model, and the cusp catastrophe.

Results

Results pointed to the superiority of the cusp catastrophe towards predicting student engagement in reading by highlighting the splitting role of students' disruptive classroom behavior.

Discussion

It was evident that exceeding a critical upward level in disruptive classroom behavior was associated with unpredictable and sudden changes in reading engagement. It is concluded that the application of non-linear means may be conducive to understanding complex educational phenomena.

The relationship of school performance with self-control and grit is strongly genetic and weakly causal

The non-cognitive skills self-control and grit are often considered predictors of school performance, but whether this relationship is causal remains unclear. We investigated the causality of this association using a twin design. Specifically, we evaluated the direct impact of self-control and grit on school performance, while controlling for genetic or environmental influences common to all three traits (i.e., confounding). Teachers of 4891 Dutch 12-year-old twin pairs (of which 3837 were complete pairs) completed a survey about school performance (school grades), self-control (ASEBA self-control scale), and the perseverance aspect of grit. Our analysis aimed to determine the direct impact of self-control and grit on school performance, while simultaneously controlling for genetic or environmental confounding. Establishing the regression relationship corrected for confounding supports the interpretation of the regression relationship as causal. In all analyses, we corrected for sex, rater bias of the teachers, and parental socioeconomic status. Initially, in the standard regression, self-control, and grit explained 28.4% of the school performance variance. However, allowing for genetic confounding (due to genetic pleiotropy) revealed that most of this association could be attributed to genetic influences that the three traits share. In the presence of genetic pleiotropy, the phenotypic regression of school performance on self-control and grit accounted for only 4.4% (i.e., the effect size association with the causal hypothesis). In conclusion, self-control and grit predict school performance primarily due to genetic pleiotropy, with a much smaller causal effect (R2 = 4.4%). This suggests that interventions targeting self-control and grit alone may yield limited improvements in school performance.

Using a willingness to wait design to assess how readers value text

What affects moment-to-moment motivation to read? Existing reading motivation questionnaires are trait-based and not well suited to capturing the dynamic, situational influences of text or social context. Drawing on the decision science literature, we have created a paradigm to measure situational enjoyment during reading. Using this paradigm, we find reading enjoyment is associated with further decision-making about the text and with reading comprehension.