An Empirical Study of the Role of Pictures on Decoding Fluency and Comprehension amongst Year 1 and 2 Students
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This study addresses a feature of teaching reading that has been held as common sense: that pictures help students decode text and understand their reading. It is hypothesised that students who are weak in their underlying reading skills may be distracted by the pictures, which will not be of assistance to them in either decoding the words on the page or in understanding what they are reading. This study investigated the reading strategies of skilled and less skilled readers and how the reading process is manipulated in order to decode and comprehend text. The theoretical framework supporting this investigation is the interactive cognitive-processing model of reading proposed by David Rumelhart (1976). This model views the reader as manipulating and processing an array of skills and strategies through accessing knowledge sources and cueing systems to decode text fluently, and make sense of the content. The skilled reader manipulates these strategies efficiently with little cognitive energy in order to decode text fluently with understanding. In these situations, pictures may be used as a cross-checking device to confirm predictions, rather than a decoding tool that predicts text. Less skilled readers use these skills and strategies with greater cognitive energy, hence their decoding fluency is reduced, and comprehension is limited. It is postulated that pictures may be distracting to the reading process. One hundred Year 1 and 2 students from a Sydney metropolitan primary school were assessed on their knowledge of the alphabet, phonological processing skills, decoding fluency, reading strategies, and comprehension. The outcomes of this study will highlight the critical skills and strategies an individual needs to be a skilled reader, and the corresponding impact pictures have on their reading outcomes.
Author: Susanna Brikha
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3021681274