Reading comprehension
Reading comprehension is essential not only for academic success but also for navigating everyday life. Whether it's grocery shopping or filing taxes, we depend heavily on this skill. This is why research in this area is so important. In school, children first learn to read. Over time, this skill evolves into reading to learn, making it a critical milestone in literacy development that requires close monitoring. Professor Kate Cain has dedicated her career to studying both reading and listening comprehension. Her research focuses on the cognitive and language-related skills that support the development of these abilities, in both typical and atypical populations.
In this colloquium, she will present findings from a longitudinal study of two groups of learners in the U.S.: monolingual students who entered pre-kindergarten speaking English and Spanish-English bilingual students who entered speaking Spanish. Both groups received English-language instruction throughout their schooling. Research has consistently shown an achievement gap between these groups; by the end of elementary school, Spanish-English bilingual students often have reading comprehension scores below what would be expected based on their word-reading abilities (Lesaux et al., 2010; Nakamoto et al., 2007).
Professor Cain will share analyses comparing the reading ability profiles and inference-making skills of both groups in grade 6. The results show that reading comprehension difficulties and weaker inference skills were more pronounced among the bilingual students. These challenges were attributed not to weaknesses in strategic processing but to gaps in language proficiency and general knowledge.
About the speaker
Kate Cain is a Professor of Language and Literacy in the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University. Her research concerns the different cognitive and language-related skills that underpin the development of reading and listening comprehension, both in atypical and typical populations. To date, this work has identified several higher-level skill weaknesses that may be causally linked to poor comprehension, including the ability to generate inferences, knowledge and use of reading strategies, and the ability to construct coherent and integrated narratives. Her work has shown that these skills (assessed as oral language skills in preschool and as oral and written language skills in the early school years) predict reading comprehension development. Current projects are examining (a) preschool predictors of early reading acquisition, (b) the structure and predictors of reading comprehension in adolescence, (c) the similarities and differences in reading and learning from print and digital, and (d) engagement and learning from digital reading supplements.
External Roles
- President, Society of the Scientific Study of Reading, 1 January 2022 - present
- Elected member governing board of Society for Text and Discourse, 2018 - present
- Editor of Scientific Studies of Reading, the journal of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, 1 March 2012 - 28 February 2015
Location
This colloquium will take place in room MM 03.120 (Maria Montessori building).
