Third graders' strategy use and accuracy on an expository text: an exploratory study using eye movements

Abstract

Background Of the myriad of reading comprehension (RC) assessments used in schools, multiple‐choice (MC) questions continue to be one of the most prevalent formats used by educators and researchers. Outcomes from RC assessments dictate many critical factors encountered during a student's academic career, and it is crucial that we gain a deeper understanding of the nuances of these assessments and the types of skills needed for their successful completion. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine how different component skills (i.e., decoding, word recognition, reading fluency, RC and working memory) were related to students' response accuracy as they read a text and responded to MC questions. Methods We monitored the eye movements of 73 third graders as they read an expository text and answered MC questions. We investigated whether the component skills differentially predicted accuracy across different question types and difficulty levels. Results Results indicated that readers who answered MC questions correctly were able to identify when they needed to reread the text to find the answer and were better able to find the relevant area in the text compared with incorrect responders. Incorrect responders were less likely to reread the text to find the answer and generally had poorer precision when attempting to locate the answer in the text. Finally, the component skills relied upon by readers to answer RC questions were related to the type and difficulty of the questions. Conclusions Results of the present study suggest that comprehension difficulties can arise from a myriad of sources and that reading abilities together with test‐taking strategies impact RC test outcomes.

Do Struggling Adult Readers Monitor Their Reading? Understanding the Role of Online and Offline Comprehension Monitoring Processes During Reading

“…It is possible we did not see interactive effects between comprehension monitoring behaviors and reading level because the passage-specific questions were easy and only required a yes/no response (there was a high probability of responding correctly across all participants; see Table 2) and thus did not demand more rigorous attempts to either repair or detect an error in the passages. Tremblay et al (2021) found that elementary school children were more likely to reread when responding to difficult reading comprehension questions (i.e., difficult to find the answer, needed to engage in more inferencing skills) than less difficult questions. Had we tasked participants with higher level questions (e.g., literal vs. inferential questions and questions with multiple answer responses), the comprehension monitoring behaviors may have varied by the participants’ reading level, such that the higher skilled participants would have dedicated more time to forming a coherent understanding of the entire text by demonstrating longer reread and regression path durations than the lower skilled participants.…”

“…Participants had a 50/50 chance of guessing the correct answer and consistent and inconsistent passages comprehension scores were high ( M s = 0.80, 0.76 across all 16 passages, respectively). Future research should include more comprehension questions per passage, different formats (e.g., yes/no, multiple-choice, open-ended oral response questions), varied difficulty levels, and questions that tap into the use of different component skills (e.g., inferential questions; Tremblay et al, 2021).…”

The impact of test-taking strategies on eye movements of elementary students during reading comprehension assessment.

“…Files were prepared prior to analysis using techniques applied in previous EM studies with children (e.g., Ardoin et al, 2016; Tremblay et al, 2021; Zawoyski et al, 2015). Specifically, fixations were aligned with regions of interest (i.e., passage words or questions and answer choices) to ensure that they would be included in data analyses.…”