1. Ian Brewer
Psyc 589
Final Exam
5/6/14
Part I. Reading Improvement Programs
http://www.readingsoft.com/
This site sells software that it claims can improve reading speed and comprehension. The
first thing I encountered on the site was a test of baseline reading speed. I was provided with a
standard text consisting of eight paragraphs with “start” and “stop” buttons at the beginning and
end. Before reading the text, I took the comprehension test provided at the end to get an idea of
what my baseline comprehension level was without reading the text. The test consisted of eleven
questions and I got six right placing my score at approximately 55%. At the end of the test, the
site reads, “If you really think it is impossible to do better, that is, to both read faster and improve
your reading comprehension, then redo the speed reading test” (Speed). As test scores will
naturally improve with retests, this was the first of the site’s dubious claims.
After going back and reading their test text again, I received a wpm of 226. Since the
only comprehension test available to me was the one I’d already taken, I had to take it again. Of
course, my test results were much higher than the first time I took the test. I scored 100%. Given
that the test was so short and I repeated it, it should be no surprise that my score improved. This
website actually uses the RE Index described in our textbook (Rayner, 2012, p. 381). So with a
score of 226 wpm and 100% comprehension, I received what they termed an “efficient words per
minute” score of 226 ewpm which is close to what I would receive for a speed of 400 wpm with
my original, baseline comprehension score. So the baseline ewpm for me reading at the speed of
“never-read-it” is about 226 wpm. Wow, I can read at 226 wpm while not reading.

2. The software they are selling is described saying, “FReader or Efficient Reader is an
innovative computer program designed to improve reading skills” (Speed). The site goes on to
explain the methods by which users will assess their performance saying, “FReader includes
exercises designed to continuously improve reading skills; for example, exercises to expand
visual span. In addition reading tests are performed at the beginning of each session and finally
the results for each kind of exercise or test are logged. Each user can then track his progression”
(Speed). The site also specifically claims to be teaching users what it calls “integral reading”
which means reading all the words of a text as opposed to skimming techniques in which the
reader takes in only certain words very quickly. The site reads, “The training program focuses on
reading all words, that is integral reading. Partial reading techniques like skimming require a fast
perception of words and rapid reading of short passages. Integral reading is thus the basis of all
speed reading techniques” (Speed). The site also makes reference to the same Woody Allen joke
referenced in our textbook on page 384 making fun of speed reading. In response it says,
“However, all reading tests show that [speed] readers are not only reading faster, but are actually
reading more and with a higher comprehension. They are more productive and better decision-
makers as they are efficient information managers” (Speed).
The evidence discussed in our textbook paints a very different picture of the results
yielded by speed reading with regard to comprehension. I see no reason to doubt that the
software marketed by this site is effective for increasing reading speed. After all, as our textbook
says citing Glock and Tinker studies of 1949 and 1958, respectively, “By simply practicing
reading more quickly you can learn to increase your reading speed dramatically” (Rayner, 2012,
p. 383). If this software provides some sort of practice in reading quickly as the site claims it
does, then users should see an increase in their reading speed. That increase is, perhaps, not

3. worth money when it can so easily be achieved with the materials the average internet surfer
already possesses. Our authors go on to say, “Reading speeds of 600–800 wpm may be
obtainable with reasonably good comprehension provided that the reading material is very easy
going” (Rayner, 2012, p. 383).
As to this site’s claim that their software teaches users to take in all the words of a text,
“integral reading” as they call it, the evidence presented by our book disagrees that this is
possible. I have searched the site for some clarification as to what is meant when it says that
every word is taken in by the reader but I can find none. I must assume that they mean that the
reader will learn by using their software to take in more textual information per fixation thus
decreasing the number of fixations required to take in all the information on a page. The only
other explanation is that they teach readers to fixate on every word. Given the amount of time
each saccade takes, this strategy would most likely decrease wpm dramatically, so I doubt this is
their method. Our authors write about the evidence they have presented concerning fixations
saying, “The evidence indicates the ability to resolve the details of letters presented parafoveally
and peripherally with respect to the fixation point is severely limited” (Rayner, 2012, p. 378).
They are speaking of the experiments in chapter one in which researchers looked for disruptions
in reading time when the text was changed in the parafoveal region of the participants’ visual
fields. They go on to say, “In experiments using the moving-window technique it has been found
that readers are generally not influenced by erroneous material lying more than 4 letter spaces to
the left of fixation (or the beginning of the currently fixated word) or more than 15 letter spaces
to the right of fixation (or more than three words to the right of fixation)” (Rayner, 2012, p. 378).
I have searched this site top to bottom for some citation of scientific evidence supporting
their claims and I can find none. Many instances of allusions to supposed empirical support are

4. to be found such as: “If top readers read at speeds of above 1000 words per minute (wpm) with
near 85% comprehension, they only represent 1% of readers. Average readers are the majority
and only reach around 200 wpm with a typical comprehension of 60%,” “The average reader is
five times slower than the good reader,” “All reading tests show that good readers are not only
reading faster, but are actually reading more and with a higher comprehension,” and “Reading
for pleasure even has a positive impact on health as it provides a unique escape from stress,
overwork and depression” (Speed). Some of these examples sound as if there may be empirical
support to back them up but this site is not forthcoming with any citations.
My review for this site would be as follows:
The services provided by readingsoft.com could very well teach a college student to
improve his or her reading speed and comprehension. Unfortunately, I am unable to evaluate
these claims in the light of any actual evidence. Given what I have learned about reading this
semester, I am skeptical of the worth of the software being peddled here. Research shows that
reading times can be dramatically increased when a reader simply practices reading quickly
(Rayner, 2012, p. 383). Nothing on this site indicates to me that I should pay them for their
services when empirical evidence assures me of results I can achieve free of charge.
As college students, we are already poor enough. If you are considering purchasing this
software in addition to paying your tuition and buying your books, I would advise you to think
twice. If you were reading this site quickly enough to miss the lack of empirical evidence or any
other kind of support, perhaps you already read quickly enough.
Part II. Reading Disabilities
1. Developmental Dyslexia

5. Our textbook defines developmental dyslexia saying,
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is
characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and
poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a
deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in
relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom
instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading
comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede the growth of
vocabulary and background knowledge (Rayner, 2012, p. 354).
The last sentence of this definition describes the reading difficulties of those with developmental
dyslexia as secondary consequences of their condition. Let us explore the reasons for this.
First, the position that is adopted here is supported in our textbook in its position on what
exactly reading is. It says, “Reading is a complex skill that is pretty much taken for granted by
those who can do it” (Rayner, 2012, p. 3). Here, reading is described as a skill. This means that
reading is not a natural ability of humans. It will not arise spontaneously the same way the ability
to speak or walk does in toddlers. Logically, we cannot have primary deficits in a
neurobiological disorder which compromise our execution or acquisition of a skill. Any such
deficits must by definition be secondary.
In order, therefore, to justify this position it is necessary to examine the evidence that
reading is not, in fact, a natural ability and is, rather, an acquired skill. The idea that the ability to
read emerges naturally in children who are exposed to the written word is called emergent
literacy. The authors of our textbook are skeptical of emergent literacy writing, “First, the broad
use of the term ‘emergent’ literacy implies that phonological awareness, letter identification, and

6. orthographic knowledge emerge naturally in children. We question whether current research
actually supports the claim that these skills usually develop spontaneously without instruction”
(Rayner, 2012, p. 314). So what does current research actually indicate? Our authors write about
the results of a 2008 study by Douglas and Montiel that showed that 30% of children around five
years old living above the poverty level were not able to identify all the letters of the alphabet
(Rayner, 2012, p. 314). This study assumes that children above the poverty level are highly
likely to have been exposed to the written word in many forms from an early age. Our authors
also cite the results of several recent studies which accounted for several mitigating variables
such as parent expectations, size of spoken vocabulary, and time spent on reading and writing
activities saying, “In studies that include these other variables, storybook reading fails to account
for much unique variance in early literacy development. Instead, the time children spend on
reading and writing activities is consistently predictive of early reading development” (Rayner,
2012, p. 315). Therefore, our authors point out that simply being exposed to reading materials is
not enough to teach developing children the alphabetic principle. Rather, engaging with the
actual text and writing text was predictive of the development of the ability to read.
All this is to say that if a child suffers from a neurological impairment to the centers of
the brain which are engaged in the process of learning to read, then he or she will experience
difficulty reading as a secondary consequence of that impairment. In other words, because
reading is not a natural human ability, it must engage parts of the brain which have functions
other than reading. Therefore, any neurological impairment to the areas of the brain involved
with reading will, first and foremost, primarily impair the functions of those areas of the brain. In
this case, as we see in the definition of developmental dyslexia that began this essay, the deficit
is normally in the phonological component of language.

7. Phinney et al. found in 2007 that there is a positive relationship between total cerebral
volume and phonological awareness such that those with high phonological awareness who are
good readers tend to have greater cerebral volume while phonological awareness in poor readers
did not correlate to cerebral volume (Rayner, 2012, p. 360). This reinforces the evidence that
neurobiological structures underlie the phonological component of language processing which is
used in the skill of reading.
Our textbook’s authors also cite a study by Gallagher, Frith, and Snowling in 2000 which
showed that children with the poorest phonological abilities at age six developed reading
difficulties by age eight (Rayner, 2012, p. 356). In a 1996 study by Vellutino et al., the
researchers examined the differences between children with environmentally based reading
difficulties and those with cognitively based reading problems. The purpose of their study was to
establish whether there is a difference between the reading difficulties experienced by children
formally diagnosed as dyslexic and those who are simply poor readers because of any number of
environmental factors such as poor reading instruction or issues with a second language. All of
the children studied experienced phonological deficits. They found that among readers who
experienced environmentally based reading difficulties and were not formally diagnosed as
dyslexic that a semester of tutoring was enough to bring them into the average range of reading
ability typical of their grade level (first grade). As to those students whose reading deficits were
cognitive, our book says, “[They] continued to perform poorly on phonological tests into the
third grade” (Rayner, 2012, p. 357). This shows that there is a difference between the difficulties
encountered by those who are simply poor readers as a function of their environments and those
who experience phonological impairment as a consequence of their development. Therefore, one
can see in the success or failure of remediation how developmental dyslexia is more persistently

8. difficult to overcome because it is a “wired” neurological deficit in the phonological component
of language. A neurobiological impairment to the phonological component of language will
necessarily have primary effects on language as a whole while exhibiting itself secondarily as
reading difficulties in the sphere of reading which is obviously subsumed by the sphere of
language.
Part III.
2. Discourse Processing and Inferences (b)
An inference occurs any time a reader derives more information from the text than is
actually stated explicitly in the text. For instance, here are two sentences:
1. Tommy stopped by the pet supply store on his way home.
2. Sparky really enjoyed the new bone.
A skilled reader will likely see many connections between those two sentences. This is because a
skilled reader makes inferences about the sentences he or she is presented with in order to fill in
the gaps in the story. A skilled reader will surmise from these two sentences that Sparky is a dog,
that Tommy bought the bone during that trip to the pet supply store, that Sparky is Tommy’s
dog, that Tommy is a human being, etc. All of these are inferences a skilled reader may make in
order to tie the sentences together into a story. In the 1986 study by Duffy, she described
inferences saying,
Prior research has established that backward inferencing involves two major
components: (a) a search of the text for antecedents for the definite noun phrases
in the current sentence and (b) the inference of a higher level connection (e.g.,
causal, temporal, enabling) between the current sentence and some information
located in the prior text (Duffy, 1986, p. 208).

9. So skilled readers search the text for the antecedents to pronouns or other phrases which stand in
for subjects or objects already introduced in preceding sentences and for such higher level links
between events such as those of a causal nature.
In order to study inferences several research designs have been utilized. Duffy performed
three experiments in her 1986 study on the role of expectations in sentence integration. For each
of these experiments response time to a target sentence was measured. In the first experiment, a
series of three sentences was presented to participants. Afterward, they were presented with the
target sentence and asked whether or not it was a possible next sentence based on the series of
sentences which preceded it. The preceding sentences belonged to either a high-expectation or
low-expectation group and the target sentences were either related or unrelated to the first three
sentences (Duffy, 1986, p. 209).
This experimental design was useful for the study of inference generation because it
tested whether higher-level expectations could contribute to or hinder a reader’s processing
speed depending on whether those expectations were fulfilled or subverted. By showing that
participants responded faster in the high expectation, related condition and the high expectation,
unrelated condition than either of the low expectation conditions, Duffy demonstrated that
skilled readers do make inferences about relationships between arguments and that those
inferences can have measurable effects on their reading.
Our textbook also describes an experimental method frequently applied to the study of
inferences. This method is to measure reading times for sentences containing pronouns or
fixation times for pronouns and the words following them. In studies utilizing this experimental
method, distance between the antecedent and the pronoun is varied and reading time for the
sentence or fixation times for the pronoun and the words that follow it are measured. Ehrlich and

10. Rayner, for instance, found that fixation time for the pronoun was about 20 ms longer than
preceding fixation times in all distance conditions. This suggested that the reader began to search
for the antecedent to the pronoun whether it was near or far away within the text. The next two
fixations in the two closest conditions quickly returned to normal length whereas the fixation
times in the farthest condition remained slow. This indicated that the reader spent more time
searching the text for the antecedent in the long-distance condition than in either of the
conditions of shorter distance (Rayner, 2012, p. 253).
As to the concept of embodied cognition, the Klin study defines it saying, “A critical
element in understanding the world around us, as well as the world described in language,
involves forming sensorimotor simulations of the actions and events that we directly perceive or
are described by a text” (Klin, 2013, p. 364). Hearing or reading words that describe actions, for
instance, can cause our brains to exhibit similar activation patters to those observed in brains of
people actually performing those actions. So if I were to say, “He tried so hard to hold back the
smile that his cheeks puffed out. When the smile finally broke through, a burst of laughter came
with it,” a reader may exhibit patterns of brain activity that relate to smiling and laughing
behaviors. That activity is called an embodied cognition. The reader, hearer, observer, or what
have you experiences a cognition which they then embody in sensorimotor simulations.
The study described in the Klin paper indicated that when the actions of the participant
and the subject of their reading matched, there was an effect on reading speed. The researchers
set up four conditions: Reader reading aloud/subject of reading reading aloud, reader reading
silently/subject of reading reading aloud, reader reading aloud/subject of reading reading silently,
and reader reading silently/subject of reading reading silently. In each of the four conditions,
participants read text that either described the subject of reading as reading slowly or quickly.

11. The researchers looked for a rate effect. Only in the conditions in which the actions of the reader
and the subject of their reading matched was a rate effect found (Klin, 2013, p. 364-370).
The results of this study indicated that readers form simulations of story characters’
linguistic actions such as speaking and reading. Klin writes, “It is difficult to explain the effect of
the match between the participant’s and the character’s actions without arguing that readers form
some type of sensorimotor simulation” (Klin, 2013, p. 369). If readers are forming sensorimotor
simulations of characters’ actions when they read a text then these simulations most likely serve
some purpose. One theory is that readers use these simulations to facilitate the process of making
inferences. As stated earlier, inferences “fill in the gaps” between sentences. They tie the story
together. No written story includes the full acoustic or idiosyncratic details of a character’s
speech. When readers form a sensorimotor simulation of the speech or reading of a character,
they are making an inference to fill in the gap left by the text. The ultimate effect of embodied
cognition is to facilitate discourse comprehension by “grounding” the cognitions of reading in
action.

12. Works Cited
Duffy, S. A. Role of expectations in sentence integration.. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 208-219.
Klin, C. M., Gunraj, D. N., & Drumm-Hewitt, A. M. Embodiment During Reading: Simulating a
Story Character’s Linguistic Actions.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Memory, and Cognition, 40, 364-375.
Rayner, K., Pollatsek, A., Ashby, J., & Jr., C. C. (2012). Psychology of reading (2nd ed.). New
York, N.Y.: Psychology Press.
Speed Reading Test Online. (2014, March 1). Speed Reading Test Online. Retrieved May 5,
2014, from http://www.readingsoft.com/