Literacy as a complex activity: deconstructing the simple view of reading

The Rose Review into the teaching of early reading recommended that the conceptual framework incorporated into the National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching – the Searchlights model of reading and its development – should be replaced by the Simple View of Reading. In this paper, we demonstrate how these two frameworks relate to each other, and show that nothing has been lost in this transformation from Searchlights to Simple View: on the contrary, much has been gained. That nothing has been lost is demonstrated by consideration of the underlying complexity inherent in each of the two dimensions delineated in the Simple View. That much has been gained is demonstrated by the increased understanding of each dimension that follows from careful scientific investigation of each. The better we understand what is involved in each dimension, the better placed we are to unravel and understand the essential, complex and continual interactions between each dimension which underlie skilled reading. This has clear implications for further improving the early teaching of reading.

Assessing reading at Key Stage 2: SATs as measures of children's inferential abilities

This article describes two studies. The first study was designed to investigate the ways in which the statutory assessments of reading for 11-year-old children in England assess inferential abilities. The second study was designed to investigate the levels of performance achieved in these tests in 2001 and 2002 by 11-year-old children attending state-funded local authority schools in one London borough. In the first study, content and questions used in the reading papers for the Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) in the years 2001 and 2002 were analysed to see what types of inference were being assessed. This analysis suggested that the complexity involved in inference making and the variety of inference types that are made during the reading process are not adequately sampled in the SATs. Similar inadequacies are evident in the ways in which the programmes of study for literacy recommended by central government deal with inference. In the second study, scripts of completed SATs reading papers for 2001 and 2002 were analysed to investigate the levels of inferential ability evident in scripts of children achieving different SATs levels. The analysis in this article suggests that children who only just achieve the 'target' Level 4 do so with minimal use of inference skills. They are particularly weak in making inferences that require the application of background knowledge. Thus, many children who achieve the reading level (Level 4) expected of 11-year-olds are entering secondary education with insecure inference-making skills that have not been recognised.

What is the function of nail biting: an analog assessment study

Objective: To compare the frequency of nail biting in 4 settings (interventions) designed to elicit the functions of nail biting and to compare the results with a self-report questionnaire about the functions of nail biting. Design: Randomised allocation of participants to order of conditions. Setting: University Psychology Department. Subjects: Forty undergraduates who reported biting their nails. Interventions: Left alone (boredom), solving maths problems (frustration), reprimanded for nail biting (contingent attention), continuous conversation (noncontingent attention). Main Outcome measures: Number of times the undergraduates bit their nails. Results: Nail biting occurred most often in two conditions, boredom and frustration. Conclusion: Nail biting in young adults occurs as a result of boredom or working on difficult problems, which may reflect a particular emotional state. It occurs least often when people are engaged in social interaction or when they are reprimanded for the behavior. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Judgments of path, not heading, guide locomotion

To steer a course through the world, people are almost entirely dependent on visual information, of which a key component is optic flow. In many models of locomotion, heading is described as the fundamental control variable; however, it has also been shown that fixating points along or near one's future path could be the basis of an efficient control solution. Here, the authors aim to establish how well observers can pinpoint instantaneous heading and path, by measuring their accuracy when looking at these features while traveling along straight and curved paths. The results showed that observers could identify both heading and path accurately (similar to 3 degrees) when traveling along straight paths, but on curved paths they were more accurate at identifying a point on their future path (similar to 5 degrees) than indicating their instantaneous heading (similar to 13 degrees). Furthermore, whereas participants could track changes in the tightness of their path, they were unable to accurately track the rate of change of heading. In light of these results, the authors suggest it is unlikely that heading is primarily used by the visual system to support active steering.

The role of visual and nonvisual information in the control of locomotion

During locomotion, retinal flow, gaze angle, and vestibular information can contribute to one's perception of self-motion. Their respective roles were investigated during active steering: Retinal flow and gaze angle were biased by altering the visual information during computer-simulated locomotion, and vestibular information was controlled through use of a motorized chair that rotated the participant around his or her vertical axis. Chair rotation was made appropriate for the steering response of the participant or made inappropriate by rotating a proportion of the veridical amount. Large steering errors resulted from selective manipulation of retinal flow and gaze angle, and the pattern of errors provided strong evidence for an additive model of combination. Vestibular information had little or no effect on steering performance, suggesting that vestibular signals are not integrated with visual information for the control of steering at these speeds.

Controlling steering and judging heading: retinal flow, visual direction, and extraretinal information

The contribution of retinal flow (RF), extraretinal (ER), and egocentric visual direction (VD) information in locomotor control was explored. First, the recovery of heading from RF was examined when ER information was manipulated; results confirmed that ER signals affect heading judgments. Then the task was translated to steering curved paths, and the availability and veracity of VD were manipulated with either degraded or systematically biased RE Large steering errors resulted from selective manipulation of RF and VD, providing strong evidence for the combination of RF, ER, and VD. The relative weighting applied to RF and VD was estimated. A point-attractor model is proposed that combines redundant sources of information for robust locomotor control with flexible trajectory planning through active gaze.