Speed Reading Articles

Benefits of assistive reading software for students with attention disorders

This study investigated how assistive reading software affected the reading performance of a group of 20 post-secondary students who had a primary diagnosis of attention disorder. These students used assistive reading software for most of a semester to read assignments for an English class and in testing sessions in which comparisons were made between normal, unassisted reading, and reading assisted by the soft

ware. This software provides a synchronized visual and auditory presentation of text, and incorporates study skills tools for highlighting and note taking. Attention measures, reading speed, comprehension scores, and attitude questionnaire responses were obtained during these sessions. The principal findings were that the assistive software allowed the students to attend better to their reading, to reduce their distractibility, to read with less stress and fatigue, and to read for longer periods of time. It helped them to read faster and, thereby, to complete reading assignments in less time. It did not have a significant effect on comprehension, but it helped some students whose comprehension was very poor. The study results indicate that assistive reading software should be considered as a significant intervention to assist students who have attention disorders and as an accommodation to help them compensate for their disabilities.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last several years, software that helps people with reading disabilities compensate for their poor reading skills has become widely available. This software scans printed documents, recognizes the characters on the page, speaks the text to the user through a loudspeaker or earphones using a speech synthesizer, and simultaneously displays the printed page on the computer monitor. As the computer speaks a word, it is highlighted on the computer monitor, thereby providing a synchronized auditory and visual presentation of the text. The phrase, sentence, or paragraph containing the spoken word is also highlighted, but in a different color, to call attention to the context in which the word is used. The characteristics of the speech synthesizer (male or female voice and pitch, for example), speed of speech, and magnification of the text on the monitor are controlled by the user. The user can also decide to have the reading pause after each phrase, sentence, or paragraph, which is often useful when diff icult material is being read. In addition, the software integrates electronic dictionaries and study skills tools that facilitate active reading strategies such as previewing section headings; highlighting main ideas, supporting details, and other important segments of text in distinctive colors; taking notes by typing, dictating, or copying; automatically creating study and writing outlines; and building glossaries of important terms. This software also works with electronic documents from word processors, Web pages, and other sources. In this paper, we use the term "assistive reading software" to refer to software with these capabilities; other terms used in the field include "reading machines" and "literacy software." Assistive reading software is available from several companies.1

Students with reading disabilities who have good receptive oral language have found that assistive reading software can enhance their reading speed and comprehension. Elkind (1998) and Elkind, Black, and Murray (1996), working with postsecondary students, found that the changes in reading rate and comprehension test scores observed when students used assistive reading software were inversely related to the students` unassisted performance: that is, students who read slowest or with poorest comprehension benefited the most. Higgins and Raskind (1997) obtained a similar result. In an earlier study, Elkind, Cohen, and Murray (1993) found an enhancement of comprehension in a study of middle school students. Leong (1992) studied the effects of text-to-speech systems on reading comprehension of elementary school students in a task in which the students were given word knowledge training. His results were equivocal in that the text-to-speech system improved comprehension of only a few of the passages that his stu dents read. Students with reading disabilities also have reported that reading was less tiring and less stressful when they used assistive reading software and that they could double or triple the time that they could sustain reading (Elkind, et al., 1996).

This paper reports on an exploratory study of the effect of assistive reading software on students who have a primary diagnosis of attention disorder2 rather than a reading disability. This study was carried out at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont, a small (enrollment is 360 students), private college in a rural setting that offers a two-year Associates Degree in Liberal Studies. It is a fully accredited post-secondary institution exclusively serving students with learning disabilities and attention disorders.

Our interest in students with attention disorders grew out of two observations: (1) In their 1993 study, Elkind, Cohen and Murray observed that several of their middle school students who had difficulty maintaining attention to their reading were able to read for longer periods of time when they used assistive reading software. They reported that the combination of the computer display of the text and the auditory input seemed to allow these students to focus their attention better and to block out distractions. (2) More recently, after Landmark College installed assistive reading software to support a new curriculum that addresses the needs of students with very poor decoding skills (Hecker, 2000), students with attention disorders reported that they were able to read for longer periods of time when they used the software and that it improved their reading. Although there is a large literature on accommodations and interventions for students with attention disorders (see Katz, Goldstein, & Beers, 2001, an d DuPaul & Eckert, 1998, for summaries), we were not able to find studies relevant to our interest in the use of assistive reading software by students with this disability. As a result, we decided to undertake a formal study at Landmark College to determine if the reported benefits could be substantiated and quantified.

Thomas Cranmer, A Life

Thomas Cranmer, A Life. By Diarmaid MacCulloch. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996. xii + 692 pp. $35.00 (cloth).

This is a magnificent book! It deserves to be widely and carefully (to paraphrase a famous Cranmerian Collect) read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested. This biography brings to life the long public career of the primary architect and leader of the English Reformation; further, it sheds nuanced light on the character and temperament of a notoriously private man. With consummate skill, MacCulloch studiously revises once-standard assumptions about the Primate`s theological pilgrimage, including his changes of mind and, more significantly, the core integrity of his mature theological convictions. This biographer`s Cranmer is not only more sympathetically presented, his genuine consistencies and passions, hesitations and confusions are developed, warts and all, so that by the end of this study we are reintroduced to a surprisingly more complex and theologically committed Cranmer.

This study outdistances all prior attempts to account for this major Reformation figure. J. G. Ridley`s Thomas Cranmer (Oxford, 1962) was the last full biography of Cranmer. Although other scholars and religious polemicists over the past 35 years have written extensively and often decisively about him, Cranmer has remained a shadowy, largely misunderstood, controversial and underappreciated figure. This critical biography is the first scholarly study to take full advantage of the wide range of manuscript collections and other archival research now available on Cranmer and his English and Continental contemporaries. MacCulloch also draws with discrimination upon the large corpus of revisionist and other interpretations produced over the past three decades. Such scholarship has created a true renaissance in Reformation studies.

MacCulloch`s vantage points are those of an historian grounded in the local details of patronage and kinship that permeated Tudor life, an archivist with a keen eye for re-evaluating textual and manuscript evidence, and an historical theologian whose sympathy for the classical texts and statements of the early English Reformation is appropriately nuanced by his experience as an ordained Anglican.

Structurally, the book proceeds in a predictable chronological fashion. There is such a wealth of detail to digest, some of it revisionist in fact and implication, that speed-reading of this lengthy text is not recommended. Digesting a chapter, or less, at a sitting is a more appropriate pace for studying the life of an Archbishop whose own tendency was to move forward by slow, safe degrees, not hazarding too much.

From the first part of this study, focusing on Cranmer`s Cambridge years, MacCulloch sets aside Anglo-Catholic and Protestant myths alike. For example, Cranmer was distinctly not a member of the White Horse Tavern group of Cambridge reformers; instead, he was throughout the 1520s a conventional, biblical humanist and orthodox Catholic. Indeed MacCulloch describes him "certainly as a papalist, but even more a conciliarist" (p. 29). The relationship between Henry VIII and Cranmer-thanks to newly discovered correspondence with the Polish humanist, Johannes Dantiscus-is convincingly re-dated to the summer of 1527, long before the Boleyns` patronage kicked in. Even at this early date Cranmer was far from a retiring don; rather, MacCulloch depicts him as a "cosmopolitan figure" engaged in the "infinitely more dangerous life" of a diplomat (p. 37).

The sum and substance of bold revisions presented in Part II, "The King`s Good Servant," effect a progressive reassessment of the early English Reformation. In these years, thanks to MacCulloch`s wide vision on the progress of historical events and his careful appropriation of new scholarship, the decisive actions and theological passions of Thomas Cromwell, Stephen Gardiner, and Henry VIII also come into larger view. As one might expect of a scholar whose doctoral supervisor was Geoffrey Elton, MacCulloch`s portrait of Thomas Cromwell is sympathetic. Cromwell`s energetic reform imperatives eclipse Cranmer`s less demanding pace, with Cranmer in the mid-1530s as un-jealous "junior partner" to Cromwell in spiritual affairs. Later, when in the early 1540s treason charges were brought against Cromwell, Cranmer responds to the King with courage and support for his patron and devoted friend. The Prelate`s actions here are similar to his earlier courageous defense of Anne Boleyn. This biography expands the impact of Cranmer`s central rivalry with the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner. Building upon and critically challenging recent scholarship about Gardiner by Glyn Redworth, MacCulloch illustrates the parallel careers of "the two men [who] were to become joint and rival keepers of Henry`s Janus-like conscience" (p. 77). This centerpiece of Henry VIII`s efforts to control religious affairs ensured that religious power was not unilaterally claimed (at least for long) by either conservative or evangelical forces. Ironically, MacCulloch notes, it was Gardiner who brought Cranmer to Henry`s attention for preferment in 1527, and again in 1529, although after 1531 their theological and political divergences widened dramatically. MacCulloch amplifies the scope and danger of the so-called "Prebendaries Plot" against Cranmer during the early 1540s, proving this complex and detailed scheme was craftily coordinated by Gardiner to convince the King that Cranmer was indeed the greatest heretic in Kent. The Plot failed, but Ga rdiner`s hatred of Cranmer abided with telling effect into Mary Tudor`s reign.

Speed reading index

• Reading more, understanding less - research on speed reading and comprehension
• Reading a vacuum gauge
• SPEEDY deliverance
• STUFF TO DO, TO BUY, TO TALK ABOUT
• Does a Visual-Orthographic Deficit Contribute to Reading Disability?
• Benefits of assistive reading software for students with attention disorders
• Does a Visual-Orthographic Deficit Contribute to Reading Disability?
• Reading at the speed of life - speed reading
• PSYCHOLOGY: Speed Reading
• effects of phonological transparency on reading derived words, The
• Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
• Does a Visual-Orthographic Deficit Contribute to Reading Disability?
• SOFTWARE: Genome Speed-Reading
• Does a Visual-Orthographic Deficit Contribute to Reading Disability?
• Super speed-reading
• Speed reading, anyone?
• Effects of Mora Deletion, Nonword Repetition, Rapid Naming, and Visual Search Performance on Be
• Does a Visual-Orthographic Deficit Contribute to Reading Disability?
• Naming Speed Performance and Stimulant Effects Indicate Effortful, Semantic Processing Deficits
• Effects of Mora Deletion, Nonword Repetition, Rapid Naming, and Visual Search Performance on Be