At the Dore Presentation, Wynford Dore explained how children could score reasonably well with on their reading age but not so well on their comprehension age.
I asked Mr Dore if he could explain further as I couldn’t write my notes fast enough. He explained more about how the working memory affects the difference between the reading age and the comprehension age:
“It’s often noticed that children with a learning difficulty can score reasonably well with a reading age but far worse with their comprehension age. What we believe is happening is that many of the functions used during the process of reading have not been automatised.
Virtually everyone that goes through the Dore Programme is found to have serious problems with eye tracking, in other words they are unable to smoothly move their eyes across a line of words so that those words go into the brain in a smooth manner.
The fact that the eyes are jumping rather than moving smoothly suggests that that process has not been automatised and is, therefore, probably being controlled in working memory. The fuller working memory is with those things that have not been automatised and, therefore, should not really be there the less space is left for processing.
Thus for someone with a learning difficulty trying to read they may well be using up all their available working memory space just working out what that particular word means. They then move on to the next word and the process starts again.
The problem seems to be that after they have worked out what each individual word means they do not have the working memory capacity to retain that word and the subsequent ones in the sentence.
Thus the lack of working memory capacity will reduce the comprehension ability even though that person has been able to work out what each individual word means. It is, therefore, quite common and explainable that someone can have a good reading age but poor comprehension age.
And, of course, this makes all the difference between wanting to read for pleasure and not.” – Wynford Dore
www.dore.co.uk
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