COGNITIVE STRATEGIES USED IN READING AS THEY RELATE TO VERBAL ABILITIES: AN INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES APPROACH

In the field of reading research a central problem has been discovery of the types of encoding cues used for access to the internal lexicon. Three types of cues hypothesized to contribute significantly towards guiding access to the lexicon are contextual, phonological, and orthographic. However, previous research has shown mixed results as far as the actual role that each of these plays in word identification. This study attempts to clarify previous investigations using adult readers who represent the full range of reading ability.; Fifty-eight Introductory Psychology students were presented with three verbal ability tests and three lexical decision tasks designed to evaluate use of encoding cues in lexical access. The verbal ability tests included a word fluency test, a verbal comprehension test, and a reading speed and comprehension test. The three lexical decision tasks included a contextual lexical decision task, an orthographic/phonological lexical decision task, and a phonological lexical decision task. Results indicated that a wide range of ability levels were represented in the subject population. The lexical decision tasks showed interpretable results in the orthographic/phonological task and the phonological study. The context task failed to show results which could be presumed to reflect any sort of cognitive variables. Correlations among ability scores and lexical decision task results were mixed. There were no significant correlations between the reading test and any of the lexical decision tasks. There were no significant correlations between the orthographic/phonological lexical decision task and any of the verbal ability tests. There were significant correlations between the word fluency and verbal comprehension test and the phonological lexical decision task.