The Effects of Material Difficulty upon Learning Disabled Children's Oral Reading and Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Efficient reading instruction has become of interest to researchers operating within an applied behavior analysis framework. For older learning disabled students, the lack of functional reading skills restricts acquisition of content subjects in the mainstream. One aspect of teaching reading is determining the skills on which to focus instructional time. Two frequently taught reading skills are oral reading and reading comprehension. Previous research has investigated the effects of reinforcement of one skill and the indirect effects upon the other. The present study explored this relationship further by having subjects read material at two levels of difficulty in a multi-element design. Results indicated that previous studies may have underestimated the effects of increasing oral reading rates upon comprehension. Guidelines for oral reading rate criteria are suggested.