Measures and References: Verbal Reasoning

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Measures

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

References

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.

Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. V. (1999). Inference making and its relation to comprehension failure. Reading and Writing, 11(5), 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.

Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5-51.

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.

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.

Gibbs, R. W. (1987). Linguistic factors in children's understanding of idioms. Journal of Child Language, 14(3), 569-586.

Hirsch, E. D. (2003). Reading comprehension requires knowledge of words and the world: Scientific insights into the fourth-grade slump and the nation's stagnant reading comprehension scores. American Educator, 27, 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.

MacKay, G., & Shaw, A. (2004). A comparative study of figurative language in children with autistic spectrum disorders. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 20(1), 13-32.

Norbury, C. F. (2004). Factors supporting idiom comprehension in children with communication disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(5), 1179-1193.

Oakhill, J. V., & Cain, K. (2012). The precursors of reading ability in young readers: Evidence from a four-year longitudinal study. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16(2), 91-121.

Van Herwegen, J., Dimitriou, D., & Rundblad, G. (2013). Development of novel metaphor and metonymy comprehension in typically developing children and Williams syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(4), 1300-1311.