1. THINKING OUT LOUD:
The Internalization of Speech and its Roles in the Development of Silent Reading
Lola Less & William Horton
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Many children read “out loud” to themselves before acquiring the ability to read silently.
 Are reading aloud and reading silently two sides of the same coin, or are they two
different points on a spectrum of reading acquisition?
 Does reading aloud provide benefits for children in the early stages of reading
development?
The speech internalization theory of silent reading suggests…
 Reading begins as a purely oral process, creating a bridge between the written word
and oral language
 Oral reading is gradually internalized over time:
 First, as private speech (overt speech not addressed to anyone else)
 Then, as subvocalizations (movement in the speech musculature)
 And finally, in the form of completely silent reading
Previous research has demonstrated that…
 Children and adults produce more private speech in cognitively challenging tasks
 Discouraging speech can be detrimental to performance on some cognitive tasks
(e.g. the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task)
 Encouraging private speech increases performance on difficult cognitive tasks
The present study examines how encouraging or suppressing oral movement (and,
therefore, speech) during reading will impact children’s reading comprehension and
fluency, and whether these effects are mediated by children’s tendency to
spontaneously read aloud or read silently to themselves.
Hypotheses:
1. Suppressing oral movement should hurt reading comprehension and fluency.
Especially for children who spontaneously read aloud (i.e. children in earlier
stages of silent reading internalization) compared to those who
spontaneously read silently (i.e. children in later stages of silent reading
internalization).
2. Encouraging oral movement should help reading comprehension and fluency.
Especially for children in earlier stages of silent reading internalization,
compared to children in later stages of silent reading internalization.
Participants: Twenty-eight 5- through 7-year-olds (N = 11 female, Mage = 79 mo., SD = 10.9 mos.)
from the Chicago Metropolitan area and surrounding suburbs.
Procedure:
1) First, spontaneous reading behavior was observed. Children read a story (matched to their
reading level) without any instructions as to how they should read it (i.e. aloud or silently).
2) Then, based on spontaneous reading, children were sorted into two groups:
Aloud (any vocalization) or Silent (no vocalizations).
3) Then, children participated in two counterbalanced conditions:
Suppression condition (read while wearing wax lips intended to prevent vocalizations)
Encouragement condition (explicitly told read the stories aloud).
Comprehension Scores
 A main effect of Group: Silent readers answered comprehension questions with greater
accuracy than aloud readers, F(1,20) = 4.75, MSE = 0.06, p = 0.04
 A main effect on Condition, F(2,40) = 4.26, MSE = 0.02, p = 0.02
 Mean comprehension scores in the suppression condition were significantly lower
than the spontaneous condition, t(21) = 2.92, p = 0.008
 Mean comprehension scores in the suppression condition were marginally lower
than the encouragement condition, t(21) = -2.04, p = 0.054
 The encouragement and spontaneous conditions did not significantly differ, t(27) =
1.22, p = 0.233.
 Non-significant group X condition interaction, F(2,40) = 0.921, MSE = 0.02, p = 0.41
 Post-hoc comparisons across conditions were computed for the Aloud cohort:
 Comprehension was significantly worse in the suppression condition than the
spontaneous condition, t(12) = 2.73, p = 0.02
 Comprehension was marginally worse in the suppression condition than the
encouragement condition, t(12) = -1.87, p = 0.08
 Comprehension did not significantly differ between the spontaneous and
encouragement conditions, t(16) = 1.44, p = 0.17
 Post-hoc comparisons for the silent cohort did not show any significant differences across
conditions, with all t-tests yielding p > 0.26.
* These results remain even after controlling for age and reading level (i.e. running the same
analyses as ANCOVAs with mean-centered age and reading level as covariates)
Fluency Scores
 No main effect of group, F(1, 20) = 0.03, MSE = 3941.71 p = 0.88
 No main effect of condition, F(2, 40) = 1.03, MSE = 646.31, p = 0.37
 No group X condition interaction, F(2, 40) = 1.87, MSE = 646.31, p = 0.17
INTRODUCTION
The present study set out to provide a better understanding of reading
development through the suppression and encouragement of oral movement.
 Suppressing oral movement did negatively impact reading comprehension
(specifically, as compared to spontaneous reading comprehension).
 However, encouraging oral movement did not yield the predicted effects. In fact,
reading aloud actually yielded slightly lower scores than reading spontaneously
 Suppressing speech also appeared to have a greater negative effect on children who
spontaneously read aloud. However, the absence of a statistically significant interaction
suggests this should be treated with caution.
 Finally, silent readers were found to have significantly better overall comprehension
across conditions than did children who read aloud.
 No effects were found with regard to fluency, but this may not have been a sensitive
measure of fluent reading.
While encouraging reading out loud may not have a positive effect on comprehension,
subarticulations may play an important role in the reading comprehension process.
Reading comprehension suffered when readers were stifled, especially for less advanced
readers (who may still rely on oral language to derive meaning from written words).
Regardless of age, children who read silently tend to be better at comprehending texts.
Future directions include following up with the same participants and observing their
reading behaviors to see how and/or if they have changed, monitoring which types of
questions suffered the most during different reading modalities, and identifying the
temporal location of the neglected content in a story
This work was supported by the Benton J. Underwood Research Fellowship and an
Academic Year Undergraduate Research Grant (IRB # STU00095658)
METHOD
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
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of Psychology of Education, 9(4), 321–330.
4. Miyake, A., Emerson, M. J., Padilla, F., & Ahn, J. (2004). Inner speech as a retrieval aid for task goals: the effects of cue type and articulatory
suppression in the random task cuing paradigm. Acta Psychologica, 115(2-3), 123–42. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2003.12.004
5. Prior, S. M., & Welling, K. A. (2001). The transition form oral to silent reading. Reading Psychology, 22, 1–15
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All
Participants
Spontaneous
Reading Condition
Suppression
Condition
Suppression
Condition
Encouragement
Condition
Encouragement
Condition
0.4
0.45
0.5
0.55
0.6
0.65
0.7
0.75
0.8
0.85
0.9
Aloud Silent Grand Total
ComprehensionScore(%)
Groups
Reading Comprehension
Spontaneous
Suppression
Encouragement
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Aloud Silent Grand Total
Fluency(wordsperminute)
Groups
Reading Fluency
Spontaneous
Suppression
Encouragement
Silent readers performed better that children who read aloud. Overall, all children
demonstrated significantly worse comprehension in the suppression condition
than the spontaneous condition. There was no significant interaction.
Overall, there were no main effects of group or condition, and no significant group
X condition interaction
Group N (f) Mage (SD) mo.
Aloud 17 (8) 75.5 (9.0)
Silent 11 (3) 80.1 (7.2)
• Children in the Aloud group and children in the Silent group were not significantly different
in previous preschool attendance, previous reading instruction, or in frequency of reading
with parents at home.
• The two groups did not differ significantly in age, t(26) = -1.43, p = 0.17 or in mean reading
level, t(20) = 0.86, p = 0.40.
Measures:
Comprehension Score: Children answered a series of multiple-choice questions testing their
understanding of each story.
Fluency Score: Video data was analyzed to measure reading fluency (words read per minute).
Analysis:
Using a 2 X 3 analysis of variance (ANOVA) calculation, both comprehension scores and fluency
scores were compared between groups and between conditions.