Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Educational Studies

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the repeated reading and dialogic reading interventions on listening comprehension outcomes of at-risk preschoolers. Repeated reading is defined as reading the text of the storybook twice while dialogic reading is defined as employing a series of prompts and questions to engage the child in a back-and-forth about the storybook. The first phase of the intervention involved repeated reading while the second phase of the intervention combined repeated reading with dialogic reading. The researcher used single-subject multiple baseline experimental designs across participants. The participants were four students from a university-affiliated preschool who were identified as at-risk. Participants' listening comprehension of storybooks was measured through a series of factual and inferential researcher-developed questions. Visual analysis and descriptive statistics were used to examine the effects of the interventions. Results indicate that repeated reading and dialogic reading can improve listening comprehension outcomes of at-risk preschool students.

Committee: Antoinette Miranda (Advisor); Laurice Joseph (Committee Member); Kisha Radliff (Committee Member) Subjects: Early Childhood Education; Education; Preschool Education

Master of Education (MEd), Bowling Green State University, 2011, Reading

Traditionally, mathematics and reading are seen as two separate entities; however, research suggests that problem solving and reading comprehension are linked. Much research is available regarding reading comprehension and fiction texts. The amount of research available decreases when reading comprehension and nonfiction texts are combined, and there is scant research reviewing reading comprehension and problem solving in the math classroom. To further explore this area of education, this research study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the math and reading comprehension strategy Survey, Question, Read, Question, Compute, Question (SQRQCQ) on students' word problem performance and their attitudes towards word problems. Fourth grade students learned and practiced SQRQCQ while being surveyed and assessed. It was found that in such a short time period, the usage of SQRQCQ did not increase students' assessment scores; however, there was an increase in students' confidence when solving word problems. The researcher concluded that although SQRQCQ did not show an immediate benefit in student achievement, comprehension strategies should be explicitly taught in the math classroom. The researcher suggests that further research surrounding math and reading comprehension be conducted over a longer period of time.

Committee: Dr. Nancy Fordham (Committee Chair); Dr. Cindy Hendricks (Committee Member); Dr. Mark Earley (Committee Member) Subjects: Mathematics Education; Middle School Education; Reading Instruction

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2009, Computer Science and Engineering

Graphs of various kinds are important in modern culture. Humans can understand and draw inferences from large amounts of data represented in a graphical format more easily than the same data represented in textual form. Even though graphs seem to be very effective, a badly designed graph may affect the accuracy or speed in comprehending information represented in a graph. Graph designers, instead of just depending on just their intuitions about what makes a good graph, need guidance based on a set of scientific principles. The relevant science involves understanding the various cognitive processes involved in graph comprehension. This has led many scientists to study graph comprehension as a cognitive task. However, most of the models proposed by the various scientists are qualitative descriptions of aspects of the graph comprehension process. Though these models are consistent with a computational approach, they were neither expressed as computer programs, nor were they sufficiently detailed to support implementation as a computer program. Computational models are more useful than descriptive models, since they can be run on a computer to predict behavioral details such as time taken to perform tasks under varying assumptions. Our goal in this work is to build a computational cognitive model for graph comprehension that unifies the multiplicity of models proposed by the various researchers in our survey. Instead of multiple models, we will have one model that exhibits the multiplicity of identified phenomena under appropriate conditions. We should be able to explain how background knowledge, the attention mechanism, visual activities such as scanning and anchoring, and mental imagery – all features of a general architecture – are deployed opportunistically in the specific graph comprehension task in response to the specifics of the task and agent's situation. The thesis describes a set of models for a range of graph comprehension tasks that together provide the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Balakrishnan Chandrasekaran (Advisor); John Josephson (Committee Member) Subjects: Artificial Intelligence

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2018, Speech Language Pathology

Speech comprehension in multitalker backgrounds is particularly challenging for non-native listeners. Previous studies have shown that although native listeners consistently outperform non-native listeners in listening comprehension tasks, both native and non-native listeners are sensitive to dialectal cues in target and masking speech when targets are presented in background babble of varying intensities. The present study examined the listening comprehension skills of 24 Korean-English bilingual listeners who were presented with sentence stimuli in two-talker babble. Stimuli and babble were comprised of two dialects, General American English (GAE) and Southern American English (SAE), which were systematically varied throughout testing at three signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). In a previous study by Fox, Jacewicz, and Hardjono (2014), the nonnative (Indonesian-English bilingual) pattern of responses was highly similar to that of native GAE listeners in the +3 and -3 dB SNR conditions, but differed at the 0 dB condition. The present study aimed to determine whether or not these results are replicable in a comparable group of non-native bilinguals with a different L1 (Korean). Results revealed that the pattern of responses matched that of Fox et al. (2014) in all conditions; like both Indonesian listeners and monolingual GAE listeners, Korean listeners performed best when target sentences were in SAE at the +3 dB and -3 dB SNR conditions. However, like Indonesian listeners, the Korean listeners demonstrated no benefit from the acoustic features of SAE targets at the 0 dB SNR condition. These findings suggest that bilinguals are consistent in their comprehension of target sentences in masking speech irrespective of their L1 background; unlike at +3 dB and -3 dB conditions, at 0 dB SNR, nonnative listeners exhibit a decreased ability to attend to phonetic details of regional dialects.

Committee: Robert Fox (Advisor); Ewa Jacewicz (Advisor) Subjects: Acoustics; English As A Second Language; Speech Therapy

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2015, Elementary Education-Literacy

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension through the lens of developing readers in an actual classroom setting. In order to provide targeted fluency instruction, the study implemented the Fluency Development Lesson (FDL), a widely recognized and research-based instructional framework for fluency development, to analyze its impact on the reading comprehension of students in a second grade classroom. The study was conducted in a suburban school district located in a Midwestern state. Twenty-two students between seven and nine years old took part in the study by participating in the FDL daily from September through January. The participant sample employed was a purposeful, nonprobability sample. The researcher was the classroom teacher. The data were collected and analyzed using the 3-Minute Reading Assessment: Word Recognition, Fluency and Comprehension to generate the following scores: (a) word recognition accuracy; (b) automaticity in reading fluency; (c) multidimensional fluency skills including expression and volume, phrasing and intonation, smoothness, and pace; and (d) retelling comprehension. The organization of data for this quasi-expeimental study determined the statistical significance of change and the existence of a correlation between oral reading fluency and comprehension among the second grade students using the analysis of repeated measures and the Pearson's r statistical test. Findings from the data suggested that with regular use of the FDL, significant statistical improvements were seen in retelling comprehension, words read correctly per minute, expression and volume, phrasing and intonation, smoothness, and pace in reading. In this study, the FDL proved to be an effective way of improving students' reading performance in fluency and comprehension skills. In conclusion, using the FDL in the classroom has the potential to provide positive outcomes for student readi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lisa Lenhart Dr. (Advisor); Xin Liang Dr. (Committee Member); Brandi Noll Dr. (Committee Member); Alfred Daviso Dr. (Committee Member); Ronald Otterstetter Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Curriculum Development; Education; Literacy; Reading Instruction

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2011, Speech-Language Pathology (Health Sciences and Professions)

The goal of the current study was to develop a pupillometric method for assessing auditory comprehension in individuals with aphasia. There are many potential confounds when assessing such individuals because common impairments of attention, vision, and motor function may influence results of language comprehension testing. Pupillometry has been used to determine aspects of participants' responses to verbal and visual stimuli, but has not been used in comprehension assessment. Forty control participants and 38 participants with aphasia (PWA) participated. Visual and auditory stimuli were presented simultaneously as pupils were monitored. A sorting task was completed to validate stimulus selection. Pupillary responses were analyzed according to a series of dependent measures. Significant differences were not found in pupillary responses between people with and without aphasia or significant trends related to severity of aphasia within PWA. Significant correlations were found between pupillary responses and certain aspects of estimated word difficulty.

Committee: Brooke Hallowell PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2012, Speech Pathology and Audiology

Background: With current medical advances, severe, chronic auditory comprehension deficits secondary to aphasia may persist longer than ever before. The aim of this study was to determine an effective treatment protocol and cueing hierarchy for this population. Method: A single-subject research study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of intensive treatment on single word comprehension, as well as the use and benefit of repetition and lip-reading cues. Results: Five of six participants demonstrated increased comprehension percentage accuracy and effect size. Three participants exhibited maintenance of gains. Participants increased self-initiated requests for repetition that positively supported comprehension across treatment. Five of six participants did not consistently utilize lip-reading cues. Visual support did not improve comprehension percentage accuracy for the one participant who utilized lip-reading cues. Conclusions: Individuals with severe, chronic comprehension impairments can increase single word comprehension and benefit from repetition cues when provided intensive treatment.

Committee: Dr. Donna Scarborough PhD (Committee Chair); Dr. Kelly Knollman-Porter PhD (Advisor); Dr. Laura Kelly PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2011, Speech Pathology and Audiology

Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States. As medical technology improves, more people are surviving stroke and living longer with stroke-related disabilities, including aphasia. Auditory comprehension deficits resulting from aphasia are associated with lower functional outcomes and higher treatment dropout rates. Previous research has indicated the effectiveness of treatment intensity which targets verbal expression abilities; however, the results of these studies cannot be transferred to auditory comprehension. The present study explored the feasibility of an intensive treatment protocol on single-word auditory comprehension abilities, the ability to self-detect breakdowns in auditory comprehension, and tolerance of an intensive treatment among three people with severe chronic aphasia resulting from a single, left hemisphere stroke. Results of the study reveal that an intensive protocol leads to increased single-word auditory comprehension in some people with severe chronic aphasia; however, not all people are candidates for this type of treatment.

Committee: Kathleen Hutchinson PhD (Advisor); Kelly Knollman-Porter MA (Committee Member); Donna Scarborough PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

Master of Education (MEd), Bowling Green State University, 2011, Reading

Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading and affects the understanding of all content areas. Students are successful readers when they are able to pull important information from texts and connect the new information with previously stored schemata. In the science content area, new information is very difficult to acquire because of the difficult concepts and vocabulary. For students to connect previously learned materials with schemata, prior knowledge must be activated. When prior knowledge is activated, students begin to prepare for reading. However, it is equally as important that students have a reading strategy in place when they begin reading science materials. The reading strategy SQ3R is a systematic strategy that can be used to aid students in comprehending expository materials. This research study was conducted with the purpose of determining whether integrating SQ3R into fifth grade students' science reading strategies would improve their overall comprehension. The study also investigated students' preexisting reading strategies and their thoughts on whether they would continue to implement SQ3R into their reading habits. The results of the study indicated that SQ3R significantly improved fifth grade students' overall comprehension scores of expository texts. The study also indicated that 46.9% of the students used in the study had a preexisting reading strategy. The most common preexisting reading strategy was note taking. It was found that 68.7% of the students used in the study would use the reading strategy SQ3R in the future. It is recommended that teachers as well as administrators recognize the importance of reading strategies and educate the students and parents on possible strategies that can be used to improve comprehension.

Committee: Dr. Cindy Hendricks (Committee Chair); Dr. Nancy Fordham (Committee Member); Dr. Mark Earley (Committee Member) Subjects: Reading Instruction

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2012, Higher Education

Students with learning disabilities, including a reading comprehension learning disability, are attending higher education institutions at an increasing rate. As a result, higher education institutions will need to be prepared to accommodate these students, especially with those accommodations perceived as most valuable by the students who use them. This phenomenological study gave a voice to the lived experiences of eight Midwestern community college students diagnosed with a reading comprehension learning disability. Interviews with these students identified the perceived value of the accommodations they receive and how these accommodations contribute to their self-efficacy and perceptions of academic success. Study conclusions will provide institutions of higher education with knowledge as to the accommodations students diagnosed with a reading comprehension learning disability perceive as most valuable to their academic success.

Committee: Ronald Opp Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Penny Poplin Gosetti Ph.D. (Committee Member); Cynthia Beekley Ed.D. (Committee Member); Richard Welsch Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; Higher Education; Special Education

PHD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

This naturalistic basic interpretive inquiry study investigated what individual and social meanings students constructed while engaging with paired picture books presented in two different languages: One in English and the other in Arabic. The research aimed to uncover how middle grade male students interpreted and comprehended the narratives and themes of the paired picture books; specifically, how possible language background influences were shaping their comprehension and interaction with given texts, through intertextual engagement, within and across languages. A total of 12 eighth-grade students participated in this paired picture books qualitative interpretive study. By examining the students' responses and interactions, the study sought to reveal the possible differentiational and nuanced ways in which language and cultural context shape their interpretation. This research aimed to provide insights into the cognitive and social comprehension processes involved in literary experiences. It also sought to explore the potentiality of paired picture books to serve as a bridge between languages and cultures in educational settings. Using a qualitative data analysis approach, the study intended to highlight the meanings that might emerge from the students' engagement with the paired picture books, offering a deeper understanding of the language's role in shaping literary comprehension and social interaction. The major findings highlight the potential benefits of incorporating intertextual methods into reading curricula. Different meanings intertextually constructed individually, and socially showed how paired picture books in two languages played a significant role in enriching reading comprehension. These findings validate the theoretical frameworks discussed in Chapter 1. These theories advocate that intertextuality is a mechanism of mind used to comprehend texts, and reading comprehension is Psycho-linguistic and Socio-Psycho-linguistic process. They believed (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: William Bintz (Advisor); Ryan Miller (Committee Member); Stephen Mitchell (Committee Member) Subjects: Curriculum Development; Education

PHD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Computer Science

Eye trackers are an important tool in cognitive science research. Advances in eye-tracking technology reduce the invasive nature of early forms of the equipment along with the costs to acquire the devices for research. As such, eye-tracking is becoming an essential device for research on software engineering and program comprehension. The main focus of this work is to study how developers read and understand source code in the context of various software engineering tasks (e.g., debugging, summarizing code, defect localization, etc.). However, eye-tracking devices create challenges for researchers. Eye tracking devices have inherent margins of error in sampling introduced by various factors, which introduces errors in data sampling during studies that cannot be controlled. As such, despite best efforts, eye-tracking data always needs some form of correction to help identify and remove invalid data or adjust the data as samples drift or become displaced over time by participant movements, fatigue, or other factors. The processes used to correct eye-tracking data are time-consuming and require trial and error to correct the data reasonably while mitigating the impact of the corrections. Additionally, eye-tracking infrastructure to support program comprehension studies with realistic stimuli in natural software development environments is limited. This dissertation addresses these limitations. Focusing on program comprehension-based studies using eye-tracking, SrcGaze, an algorithm to support the automatic correction of fixation gaze event data using source code stimulus, is presented. Compared to the state-of-the-art fixation correction methods, SrcGaze is capable of 73\% agreement with manually corrected fixation data. The algorithm also has a linear run time, making it the most computationally efficient approach; it can correct over 44,000 fixations in only 6 seconds. During this work, contributions are also made to iTrace, an infrastructure to support eye-tra (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jonathan Maletic (Committee Chair); Jong-Hoon Kim (Committee Member); Qiang Guan (Committee Member); Michael Carl (Committee Member); Bonita Sharif (Committee Member); Jocelyn Folk (Committee Member); Michael Collard (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2006, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Educational Studies

Students with learning disabilities (LD) often struggle with a variety of literacy skills including reading comprehension. Fortunately, students with LD can learn strategies to help them better comprehend what they read. Self-questioning is one reading comprehension strategy that has been validated to be effective for students across a range of age and ability levels. To use the self-questioning strategy, students stop periodically while reading a passage, generate a question about what they read, and then answer that question before continuing to the next paragraph. This study examined the effects of teaching a self-questioning strategy to three sixth graders with learning disabilities. Specifically, a multiple baseline across participants design demonstrated that self-questioning was functionally related to improved reading comprehension quiz scores. Additionally, all participants demonstrated generalization of the strategy to a different content area. This thesis also presents limitations of this study, directions for future research, and implications for practitioners.

Committee: Moira Konrad (Committee Chair); Sheila Morgan (Advisor) Subjects: Special Education

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2024, Speech Pathology and Audiology

Pupillometry is a tool in which pupil dilation can be associated with cognitive effort. Limited research has been done to assess the correlation between pupil dilation and listening and reading skills. This paper presents findings of a preliminary study examining pupil dilation in auditory comprehension and silent vs oral reading tasks in neurotypical third graders. Results indicate greater pupil dilation, and thus greater cognitive effort for listening compared to listening and reading simultaneously and reading silently. Using a visual world paradigm, we found that there was an increased duration of fixation for the semantic area of interest compared to the phonological area of interest, indicating that children attended more to semantic distractors than phonological distractors. Results of this study support further research on the use of pupillometry to assess cognitive efforts across different language modalities, with implications for literacy effort.

Committee: Arnold Olszewski (Advisor); Donna Scarborough (Committee Member); Kelly Knollman-Porter (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

PHD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Lifespan Development and Educational Sciences

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a rich vocabulary intervention on the comprehension and vocabulary learning of third-grade students with language learning disorders (LLD). The study used a repeated acquisition design (RAD), a single case design involving the repeated delivery of a vocabulary intervention on different sets of five vocabulary words and repeated pre-post measurement of students' comprehension and vocabulary acquisition of the different stimuli targeted each week. Students in the treatment group (n = 3) had three weeks of a baseline comparison phase, where they were taught sets of five untested vocabulary words (n = 15 words), and five weeks of a treatment phase, where they learned sets of five tested vocabulary words (n = 25 words). Comprehension was assessed using a passage-level Sentence Verification Technique (SVT) and vocabulary was measured using a nine-point Total Semantic Knowledge (TSK) measure that included an oral definitions component and a receptive vocabulary assessment called Context Test Questions (CTQ). Results indicated no treatment effect on students' comprehension, but a statistically significant moderate effect on vocabulary learning. Two students participated in maintenance phase testing after four weeks without intervention. Testing effects were evident on the comprehension measure at the maintenance phase only. Students scored lower on the vocabulary maintenance assessment than at posttest, but about one point higher than their pretest scores. These results suggest that explicit vocabulary instruction led to immediate improvements in taught vocabulary but not comprehension skills for the third-grade students with LLD in this study.

Committee: Nathan Stevenson (Committee Chair); Sanna Harjusal-Webb (Committee Member); Richard Cowan (Committee Member); Megan Kirby (Committee Member) Subjects: Special Education; Speech Therapy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Educational Studies

The ability to construct a cohesive and coherent mental representation of a word problem, along with advanced reading comprehension skills, constitutes pivotal factors in effectively solving mathematical word problems. Proficient problem solvers adeptly employ a problem-model strategy, whereby they skillfully translate the problem into a nuanced qualitative mental representation of the problem situation. In contrast, less successful problem solvers tend to adopt a simplistic and superficial direct translation strategy. Furthermore, advanced reading comprehension skills play a crucial role in adeptly navigating the complex semantic-linguistic characteristics of word problems, including the intricate sequencing of known elements, the explicitness of semantic relations, and the relevance of information embedded in the text. Consequently, this empirical study sought to investigate the impact of a self-questioning strategy on the comprehension of additive problems among four elementary school students, who were systematically trained to pose experimenter-generated questions in order to discern the semantic relations among the quantities presented in the problems. The findings of this study revealed a marked enhancement in the students' abilities to discern and interpret the semantic relations among the quantities in the problems, and to proficiently transfer the self-questioning strategy to comprehend two-step additive problems.

Committee: Sheila Alber-Morgan (Advisor); Leah Herner-Patnode (Committee Member); Laurice Joseph (Committee Member); Moira Konrad (Committee Member) Subjects: Mathematics Education; Reading Instruction; Special Education; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Psychology

Teasing is a regular part of everyday conversation between friends and family members, and recent research has sought to understand teasing in terms of how children develop their abilities to comprehend and respond to teases. According to cross-sectional studies, tease comprehension develops with age, but it has not been examined in longitudinal data following the same children across those ages. Possible mechanisms and covariates involved in this development are also underexplored, despite research showing that tease comprehension development follows the social information-processing model and thus information processing theories and aligns with irony comprehension development, all of which imply their own specific, theory-based mechanisms and covariates could apply to tease comprehension development as well. The current study sought to address these issues by utilizing secondary analysis to investigate the development of tease comprehension across early and middle childhood. Specifically, this study uses data from the National Head Start/Public School Early Childhood Transition Demonstration Study (Head Start Bureau, 1999), which includes an item assessing appropriate responding to teases at all four waves of data from kindergarten to third grade as well as a variety of variables that align with mechanisms and covariates that are expected to affect tease comprehension if tease comprehension development is indeed explained by the social information-processing model, information processing theories, and the parallel-constraint-satisfaction framework from irony comprehension development (namely, the roles of age, family interaction experiences, receptive language ability, social skills, child mental health, and bi/multilingualism). Results generally support previous cross-sectional findings as children were reported as appropriately responding to teasing more often as they get older and generally support possible roles in tease comprehension development for family in (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Gibbs (Advisor); Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan (Committee Member); Laura Wagner (Committee Member); James Bonus (Committee Member) Subjects: Developmental Psychology; Psychology