Easy‐to‐read Texts for Students with Intellectual Disability: Linguistic Factors Affecting Comprehension

Abstract

Background: The use of "easy-to-read" materials for people with intellectual disabilities has become very widespread but their effectiveness has scarcely been evaluated. In this study, the framework provided by Kintsch's Construction-Integration Model (1988) is used to examine (a) the reading comprehension levels of different passages of Spanish text that have been designed following easy-to-read guidelines (b) the relationships between reading comprehension (literal and inferential) and various linguistic features of these texts.Method: Sixteen students with mild intellectual disability (ID) and low levels of reading skills were asked to read easy-to-read texts and then complete a reading comprehension test. The corpus of texts was composed of a set of forty-eight pieces of news selected from www.noticiasfacil.es, a Spanish digital newspaper that publishes daily journalistic texts following international guidelines for the design of easy-to-read documents (IFLA, Tronbacke, 1997).Results: Participants correctly answered 80% of the comprehension questions, showing significantly higher scores for literal questions than for inferential questions. The analyses of the texts' linguistic features revealed that the number of co-references was the variable that best predicted literal comprehension but, contrarily to what previous literature seemed to indicate, the relationship between the two variables was inverse. In the case of inferential comprehension, the number of sentences was a significant negative predictor; i.e. the higher the sentence density, the lower the ability of these students to find relationships between them. The effects of the rest of linguistic variables, such as word frequency and word length, on comprehension were null. Conclusions:These results provide preliminary empirical support for the use of easy-toread texts but bring into question the validity of some popular design guidelines (e.g. augmenting word frequency) to optimally match texts and reading levels of students with intellectual disability. Two factors are suggested as contributing to the effect of sentence density on inferential comprehension: 1) long texts present higher conceptual density so there are more ideas to store, retrieve and integrate which increases the demand on inferential reasoning and 2) long texts are perceived as difficult which

The dream school: Mind‐changing perspectives of people with intellectual disabilities

“…This aligns with past research that suggests curriculum must be adapted to the needs of each student: objectives adjusted to the previous knowledge; practical, dynamic and cooperative methodologies in line with avisual learning style; transversal contents of empathy, tolerance and respect for differences; and oral, practical and simplified easy read evaluations (Fajardo et al, 2014). This aligns with past research that suggests curriculum must be adapted to the needs of each student: objectives adjusted to the previous knowledge; practical, dynamic and cooperative methodologies in line with avisual learning style; transversal contents of empathy, tolerance and respect for differences; and oral, practical and simplified easy read evaluations (Fajardo et al, 2014).…”

“…Previous studies have focused exclusively on aspects such as the evaluation of the contents (Datta & Talukdar, 2017), classroom methodology (Carter et al, 2011;Fajardo et al, 2014), interpersonal relations (Pham & Murray, 2016) or the feeling of belonging in schools (Goodall, 2018;Stiefel et al, 2018). However, such objectives constitute a long path that cannot afford to fall into utopia.…”

“…The search for the ideal model for educational inclusion is a pro- In relation to intellectual disability, the analysis of how to improve the school has also been addressed in some studies (Datta & Talukdar, 2017;Fajardo et al, 2014;Hall & Theron, 2016). From a structural and organizational point of view, exploratory studies point out the importance of physical aspects that are necessary in schools to create environments that favour learning (Boynton & Mahon, 2018;Priyanka & Samia, 2018).…”

Who do you refer to? How young students with mild intellectual disability confront anaphoric ambiguities in texts and sentences

“…More specifically, Fajardo, Tavares, Ávila, and Ferrer (2013) found that readers with ID were less likely to select the target connective in a cloze task than chronologically age-matched readers (mean age = 21 years). Conclusions by Fajardo et al (2014) added that the number of co-references (anaphors) contained in journalistic texts predicted negatively the literal comprehension (Fajardo et al, 2014). In other words, the higher the number of co-references (whatever the type) the lower the scores in literal comprehension questions by poor readers with ID.…”

A pilot evaluation of using symbol‐based information in police custody

“…Of the limited research that is available, there are contrasting findings, with some benefits for comprehension reported in a study comparing symbolised to nonsymbolised passages (Jones et al ., ), but no overall benefit reported by others (Poncelas & Murphy, ). Research on Easy Read formats is similarly mixed (Fajardo et al ., ; Hurtado et al ., ). In the absence of clear evidence about the relative effectiveness of different accessible formats for improving comprehension for people with learning difficulties and disabilities, we agree with Rodgers & Namaganda () who argue that:

‘…where no published research exists to tackle a problem, it is worthwhile reporting suggestions of techniques devised by people with relevant experience’ (p. 54) .

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