Return to References: Verbal Reasoning factor page.
Numerous measures exist to gain a full picture of a student's learning strengths and challenges. Following are examples of measures used to assess this Learner Factor. These measures should be administered and interpreted by experienced professionals.
Verbal Reasoning Assessment: (Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001): Students listen to a story and are asked questions that require integrating information from the knowledge base to accurately make inferences
Inference Making Worksheets: Informal assessment activities
Best, J. R., Miller, P. H., & Naglieri, J. A. (2011). Relations between executive function and academic achievement from ages 5 to 17 in a large, representative national sample. Learning and Individual Differences, 21(4), 327–336.
Currie, N. K., & Cain, K. (2015). Children's inference generation: The role of vocabulary and working memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 137, 57-75.
Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. V. (1999). Inference making ability and its relation to comprehension failure in young children. Reading and Writing, 11(5-6), 489-503.
Cain, K., Oakhill, J., Barnes, M. A., & Bryant, P. E. (2001). Comprehension skill, inference-making ability, and their relation to knowledge. Memory & Cognition, 29(6), 850-859.
Cain, K., Oakhill, J., & Bryant, P. (2004). Children's reading comprehension ability: Concurrent prediction by working memory, verbal ability, and component skills. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(1), 31-42.
Crumpler, M., & McCarty, C. (2004). Diagnostic reading analysis. London, UK: Hodder Education.
Dunn, L. M., Dunn, D. M., Styles, B., and Sewell, J. (2009). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale III (3rd ed.). London: GL Assessment Limited.
Dunn, L.M., Dunn, L.M., & Whetton, C.W. (1997). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale (2nd ed.). Windsor, England: NFER-Nelson.
Edwards, L., Figueras, B., Mellanby, J., & Langdon, D. (2011). Verbal and spatial analogical reasoning in deaf and hearing children: the role of grammar and vocabulary. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 16(2), 189-197.
Elbro, C., & Buch-Iversen, I. (2013). Activation of background knowledge for inference making: Effects on reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(6), 435-452.
Hirsch, E.D. (2003). Reading comprehension requires knowledge - of words and the world: Scientific insights into the fourth-grade slump and stagnant reading comprehension. American Educator, 27(1), 10-22, 28-29, 48.
Kendeou, P., & van den Broek, P. (2007). The effects of prior knowledge and text structure on comprehension processes during reading of scientific texts. Memory & Cognition, 35(7), 1567-1577.
Norbury, C. F. (2004). Factors supporting idiom comprehension in children with communication disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(5), 1179-1193.
Pickering, S., & Gathercole, S. (2001). Working Memory Test Battery for Children. London: Psychological Corporation.
Semel, E.M., Wiig, E.H., & Secord, W. (2017). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (5th ed.). London: The Psychological Corporation.