The Relationship of Context-Use Skills to Reading: A Case for an Alternative Experimental Logic

Abstract

SINGER, MARTIN H., and CnoUJS, JAMES. The Relationship of Context-Use Skills to Reading: A Case for an Alternative Experimental Logic. CHILD DEVELOPMENTr, 1981, 52, 1326-1329. DiVesta, Hayward, and Orlando reported that the ability to use context correlates with reading comprehension. They inferred a causal relationship between context use and comprehension, possibly overlooking other variables that predict both context use and comprehension. The present report demonstrates that a significant difference between groups of good and poor readers on some skill can therefore be very misleading. Specifically, the consideration of causally prior skills such as nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, and decoding reduces the independent effect of context-use skills on reading comprehension. The paper's primary purpose is to outline an experimental logic that considers these causally prior skills and that emphasizes the relative importance of component reading skills rather than simple differences between groups of good and poor readers.