Future adult literacy research should examine neglected higher-order skills and test reader demographics as moderators¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 6 claims (6 for) · 1 study (1 quant-synthesis), q3 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 6 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The authors identify gaps for future work: comprehension monitoring, verbal reasoning, nonverbal reasoning, and working memory are "either minimally studied (i.e., working memory) or neglected entirely from the adult literacy research," and the large heterogeneity in effect sizes calls for studies testing "reader demographics and study characteristics as moderators of the strength of the various predictor-reading comprehension effect sizes."

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• More studies of adult literacy students must accumulate before moderator analyses and finer-grained construct separations are feasible.

Constraints¶

• The current meta-analysis could not conduct moderator analyses because of the limited number of included studies and the heterogeneity of the ABE population.

Target Learners¶

• struggling adult readers in Adult Basic Education programs

Target Learning Goals¶

• reading comprehension

Claims¶

• Most predictor effect sizes showed high heterogeneity; only morphological awareness, working memory, and language comprehension fell in the moderate I² range [+W]
• Six component reading skills show strong average relationships with reading comprehension in struggling adult readers (rs ≥ .50) [+W]
• Pseudoword decoding, orthographic knowledge, and phonological awareness show moderate relationships with adult reading comprehension (rs .34–.42) [+W]
• Morphological awareness is a significantly stronger correlate of adult reading comprehension than phonological awareness and RAN [+W]
• Rapid automatized naming is the only component skill weakly related to reading comprehension in struggling adult readers (r = .15) [+W]
• Real word decoding relates more strongly to adult reading comprehension (r = .52) than pseudoword decoding (r = .42), though not significantly [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Tighe, Elizabeth L.; Schatschneider, Christopher. (2016). Examining the Relationships of Component Reading Skills to Reading Comprehension in Struggling Adult Readers: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219414555415