The reading process

Front matter

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Chapter I. Language

Reading an elaborate form of language behavior — Genuine language behavior limited to the human race — Communication of feeling attitudes through animal cries— Levels of language development — Language development in the child — The nature of meaning — How words acquire meanings — Processes entering into the recognition and interpretation of words and sentences — Social origin and function of language — References 1

Chapter II. The Evolution of Written Language — Picture Writing and Transition Stages

Stages in the evolution of graphic language symbols— I. The picture writing stage — 1. The mnemonic — 2. The pictograph — 3. The ideograph — Conventionalization and symbolization on the ideographic level — II. The transition stage — References 22

Chapter III. The Evolution of Written Language — The Phonetic Stage

III. The phonetic stage — 1. The verbal phonogram — The Chinese language as an example of the verbal level — 2. The syllable as phonogram — The Japanese language as an example of the syllabic level — 3. The letter as phonogram — Ancient systems of writing which reached the alphabetic level — The cuneiform — The Egyptian hieroglyphics — Origin of modern alphabets — The evolution of the book — The introduction of paper — The invention of printing — The spread of printing — The improvement of printing — References 42

Chapter IV. English Spelling — Present Status and Pending Simplification

Unphonetic character of modern alphabets — The English alphabet — Vowel characters representing several sounds — Vowel sounds represented by a variety of characters and combinations of characters — Irregularities in case of digraphs — Relationship between vowel sounds and vowel characters in Spanish — The consonant situation — Silent letters — Causes leading up to present irregularities — Social bearings of present

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PAGE system of spelling — Spelling reform — History of reform movement — -The Simplified Spelling Board — Policy of the Simplified Spelling Board — Activities of the Simplified Spelling Board — Progress of the simplified spelling movement — The Simplified Spelling Society of Great Britain — References . 64

Chapter V. Teaching Beginners to Read

Symbols and meanings — Form versus thought — Steps in the evolution of modern methods of teaching beginning reading — 1. The alphabet method — 2. Phonetic methods — >3. The word method — 4. The phrase method — 5. The sentence method — 6. The story method — Modern methods of teaching beginning reading — The basis of phonetics — Phonetic facts and principles — 1. The elementary sounds — 2. Phonograms — 3. Phonetic principles — The blend — References 88

Chapter VI. Analysis of the Reading Process through an Investigation of Eye Movement

Methods employed in the investigation of eye movement- Character of interfixation movements and return sweep — The fixation pause — The average number of pauses per line — 'The duration of the pauses — Perception time — The location of pauses — Age differences — Individual differences — Differences

between oral and silent reading — References 108

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Chapter VII. Perceptual and Interpretative Processes in Reading

The visual field — Ruediger's investigation of the visual field — The perceptual span — The effect of practice upon the perceptual span — The nature of the perceptual process in reading — Goldscheider and Mueller's investigation — Zeitler's investigation — Messmer's investigation — Cattell's and Erdmann and Dodge's investigations — Dearborn's investigation — Huey's investigation — Conclusions regarding the nature of the perceptual process in reading — The inner speech in reading — The experimental study of the problem — Experiments intended to determine whether inner speech is an essential characteristic or merely a superfluous habit — Secor's investigation — Pintner's investigation — The significance of Pintner's results — O'Brien's investigation — References 131

Chapter VIII. Reading Ability — Its Development and Variation

Early studies of rate and comprehension — Recent investigations of rate and comprehension — Waldo's investigation —

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Oberholtzer's investigation — Courtis's investigation — Starch's standard scores — Scores obtained through the Kansas Silent Heading Tests — Monroe's standard scores — McLeod's investigation — W. S. Gray's investigations — King's investigations — Summary — Individual variation — The development of rate in oral reading — The development of rate in silent reading — The development of comprehension — Relation between rate and comprehension — References 152

Chapter IX. Oral and Silent Reading — A Comparison

Oral reading and tradition — Objective character of oral reading — Oral reading and training in expression — Recent criticism of oral reading instruction — Investigations intended to compare the efficiency of oral and silent reading — Pintner's investigation — Pintner and Galliland's investigation — Mead's investigations — W. S. Gray's investigation — Judd and Gray's investigation in Cleveland — Schmidt's comparison of oral and silent reading on the basis of eye movement — Needed readjustments in the teaching of reading — The place of oral reading — The place of silent reading — Necessity of clearly defined aims and carefully worked out methods for teaching silent reading — Whipple's investigation of skimming — References 179

Chapter X. The Content of Readers

Early content chiefly religious — "The New England Primer" — Gradual secularization of reading materials — Webster's "Elementary Spelling Book" — Early readers — Webster's reader — Bingham's readers — Lindley Murray's series — Pierpont's series — Cobb's series — Mid-century readers — The McGuffey readers — Late nineteenth and early twentieth century readers — Current readers — Special and supplementary readers — The future of the school reader — References 198

Chapter XL Standard Tests for Measuring Reading Ability

Tests measuring mastery of words as phonograms — The Jones Scale for Teaching and Testing Elementary Reading — The Haggerty Scales for Reading Vocabulary of Primary Children — Gray's Standard Oral Reading Test — Tests measuring mastery of word meanings — The Thorndike Visual Vocabulary Scales — The Haggerty Visual Vocabulary Scales — The Starch English Vocabulary Test — Tests measuring comprehension of sentences and paragraphs — The Thorndike Scales for Measuring the Understanding of Sentences and Paragraphs — The Thorndike-McCall Reading Scale for the Understanding of Sentences — The Haggerty Reading Examination — xii CONTENTS

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Sigma 1. — The Kansas Silent Reading Tests — Monroe's Standardized Silent Reading Tests — Tests measuring mastery of word meanings and comprehension of sentences and paragraphs — The Haggerty Reading Examination — Sigma 3. — > Tests measuring rate and comprehension of reading extending over a given unit of time — The Starch Silent Reading Test — Brown's Silent Reading Test — The Courtis Standard Research Test in Silent Reading — Test Number 2. — Gray's Standard Silent Reading Tests — Present status of test movement — References 226

Chapter I

Reading an elaborate form of language behavior. — To the casual observer reading appears to be a simple and commonplace performance. A little reflection, however, will convince anyone that this is far from true; and the farther the analysis goes the more one becomes conscious of the astounding complexity of the process. The printed word, so familiar and so natural to the eye of the accomplished reader, is in reality a very intricate contrivance — a contrivance representing not only the unitary sound of the spoken word, but — through letters and groups of letters — its component sounds as well. The mechanism of the spoken word is even more elusive. In some mysterious way it has come to stand for our ideas and meanings, and to stand for them so inextricably that were we to be deprived of its use we should cease to think and to speak — at least until we could find a substitute for it. And reading without thinking and speaking would in the very nature of the case be quite out of the question.

To evolve this elaborate form of language activity was of course no easy task. Before man could enter upon this undertaking it was essential that he acquire some facility in thinking and in communicating with others. Before

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Communication of feeling attitudes through animal cries. — But it must not be inferred that the absence of genuine language capacity precludes all possibilities of communication between animals. The only conclusion which we are warranted in drawing is that they have not reached the level of mental development on which it is possible to label experiences with symbols so that they may be rearranged indirectly — thought over — and communicated to others independently of the situations giving rise to them. The animal must, therefore, deal with his experiences directly in terms of concrete situations while man has the capacity to deal with them indirectly in terms of free ideas. Although he lacks the capacity of free ideational communication, the animal succeeds — and often in a striking manner — in communicating his feeling attitudes to other animals. The most common media of such communication are the so-called animal cries. These cries are largely instinctive emotional expressions of such attitudes as hunger, fear, anger, surprise, and exhilaration. They differ from true language symbols in that they are direct and natural responses to experience — the latter being indirect and symbolic. They serve as media of intercommunication because they arouse in other animals — especially in the case of those related in structure and organization — similar emotional attitudes and responses. Although the communication of feeling attitudes through instinctive utterances is far removed from genuine language behavior, the two are not unrelated. Human language arises out of instinctive emotional expression, and it never becomes completely divorced from it. The exclamation plays an important part in human speech and without an ever present emotional coloring our words would lose much of their charm.

Levels of language development. — Human language has in the course of its evolution passed through a variety of stages. In the first of these — essentially a pre-language stage — communication was on a purely emotional level. Attitudes rather than ideas were communicated from one individual to another. There was on this level no intrinsic difference between human and animal language. Such differences as existed were quantitative rather than qualitative. The range of human communication was, however, even at this stage much greater than that of the animal because early man was endowed with a far more complex vocal mechanism and with a much greater variety of reflexes and instincts than the highest animals.

During the second stage of its development language was on the gesture level. In order to reach this, man took a step which the animal could not take. In other words, he began to raise communication to ideational and purposive levels. Hitherto he had reacted to the various situations in which he found himself in a purely spontaneous emotional manner. Now he began to view such situations as objective and as subject to adjustment provided certain steps were taken. If he was suffering pain, for instance, he could communicate his condition to another to the end that he might obtain relief. He could do this through the use of the gesture or natural sign which in the very nature of the case closely resembled the situation in which he found himself and the end which he desired.

During the next stage man reached the final language

Communication of feeling attitudes through animal cries. — But it must not be inferred that the absence of genuine language capacity precludes all possibilities of communication between animals. The only conclusion which we are warranted in drawing is that they have not reached the level of mental development on which it is possible to label experiences with symbols so that they may be rearranged indirectly — thought over — and communicated to others independently of the situations giving rise to them. The animal must, therefore, deal with his experiences directly in terms of concrete situations while man has the capacity to deal with them indirectly in terms of free ideas. Although he lacks the capacity of free ideational communication, the animal succeeds— and often in a striking manner — in communicating his feeling attitudes to other animals. The most common media of such communication are the so-called animal cries. These cries are largely instinctive emotional expressions of such attitudes as hunger, fear, anger, surprise, and exhilaration. They differ from true language symbols in that they are direct and natural responses to experience — the latter being indirect and symbolic. They serve as media of intercommunication because they arouse in other animals — especially in the case of those related in structure and organization — similar emotional attitudes and responses. Although the communication of feeling attitudes through instinctive utterances is far removed from genuine language behavior, the two are not unrelated. Human language arises out of instinctive emotional expression, and it never becomes completely divorced from it. The exclamation plays an important part in human speech and without an ever present emotional coloring our words would lose much of their charm.

Levels of language development. — Human language has in the course of its evolution passed through a variety of stages. In the first of these — essentially a pre-language stage — communication was on a purely emotional level. Attitudes rather than ideas were communicated from one individual to another. There was on this level no intrinsic difference between human and animal language. Such differences as existed were quantitative rather than qualitative. The range of human communication was, however, even at this stage much greater than that of the animal because early man was endowed with a far more complex vocal mechanism and with a much greater variety of reflexes and instincts than the highest animals.

During the second stage of its development language was on the gesture level. In order to reach this, man took a step which the animal could not take. In other words, he began to raise communication to ideational and purposive levels. Hitherto he had reacted to the various situations in which he found himself in a purely spontaneous emotional manner. Now he began to view such situations as objective and as subject to adjustment provided certain steps were taken. If he was suffering pain, for instance, he could communicate his condition to another to the end that he might obtain relief. He could do this through the use of the gesture or natural sign which in the very nature of the case closely resembled the situation in which he found himself and the end which he desired.

During the next stage man reached the final language level. On this level the medium of communication — be it gesture or sound — no longer resembles the situation or the idea. It has become a symbol. The fact that sound rather than gesture symbols were selected is not without significance. A highly developed gesture language would have been quite possible. However, as has been repeatedly pointed out by leading authorities, sound was a far more desirable medium of communication than the gesture. Not only were the vocal reflexes so abundant and so highly developed in man that they placed at the service of language an almost unlimited number of highly differentiated sound symbols, but they represented marked advantages in other respects. They could be used without interfering with normal activities of various kinds. They could be used in the dark and at distances where physical gestures were quite useless. Finally, the human voice is peculiarly responsive to changing emotional states. It could express these as no other medium possibly could.

Language development in the child. — The development of language in the case of the child is in a sense much like the racial development of which we have just spoken. Long before the dawn of true language, the child develops a vocal behavior of considerable extent. His earliest sounds and cries are purely reflex and instinctive emotional reactions to a variety of situations such as hunger, anger, pleasure, and pain. As time goes on, many of these sounds become more or less dissociated from the original situations, but the child — largely for the sake of the pleasure which such vocal play affords him — continues to use these expressions in the most varied combinations. Gradually, too, he comes to add further to his stock in trade by imitating those about him. All this time he is of course — contrary to popular opinion — on the lowest language level, for his utterances are anything but true language symbols.

Presently, however, his behavior begins to change. It becomes more objective. He points toward and reaches for fairly definite things. For this purpose he uses his voice often quite as freely as his arms. He has entered upon the gesture stage, and in spite of the fact that his media of communication are rather clumsy, he succeeds in a remarkable manner in making himself understood. All this time his stock of words continues of course to increase, and, more important still, he comes to learn that they serve him far more effectively than cries, gestures, and other forms of direct behavior. Hence, words come to take the place of these increasingly, and in consequence the child finds himself on the highest language level. His words — although still comparatively few — have become true language symbols. Before him lie, however, almost unlimited possibilities. All his life he is to add to his ever increasing stock of symbols. The meanings, too, — for which the symbols stand — are destined to undergo change upon change. He has, indeed, entered upon a conquest the significance and the vastness of which are not readily appreciated.

A word of caution is in order at this point. We have spoken rather freely of rarial and individual levels of language development. Such classifications are at best a means rather than an end. They are always more or less artificial and arbitrary. It must not be inferred, therefore, that the boundaries between these stages are clearly defined or that the stages themselves are mutually exclusive. Language development was continuous and progressive — each level often representing all that had gone before. Emotional expression couched in more or less conventional forms, as well as gestures of a great variety, play an important part in human language. Has it ever occurred to the reader how shallow and lifeless human speech would be if it were not for the glow which comes from a rich emotional coloring and for the emphases and picturesqueness which are introduced by the ever varying vocal, facial, and bodily gestures of the speaker? And what is this emotional coloring but a more or less spontaneous feeling reaction to the meaning and significance associated with the symbols of our speech? And the gestures, are they not obvious attempts to reenforce the communication of ideas in a direct manner?

The nature of meaning. — It now becomes our task to inquire more closely into the nature of the meanings which are associated with the symbols of genuine language behavior. The crucial difference between the words of a human being and those of the parrot lies — as has been repeatedly stressed — in the fact that the former are associated with meanings and ideas while the latter are not. Accordingly, man is able to use his words as instruments of thought and communication while the parrot can do little more than play with them. In considering the nature of meaning, two problems present themselves to us: We must inquire how words acquire meanings, and we must examine the processes which enter into the recognition and interpretation of words and sentences.

How words acquire meanings. — In endeavoring to answer the question raised by the first problem — howwords acquire meanings — we cannot do better than quote several prominent authorities. Watson — writing from the standpoint of behavioristic psychology — takes the position that vocal habits (words) cannot become language habits (symbols) until they have become associated with bodily habits (reactions to situations), or until they have become substitutes for these. In other words, he holds that the symbols of a language derive their meaning and their significance from the fact that they have in some manner become associated with our experiences with things and our reactions to real situations. By the time the child is prepared to form genuine language habits, it has acquired much experience with things and many bodily habits. "The use of the hands, arms, fingers, and organs of locomotion has been more or less perfected" — "hundreds of habits of response to objects" having been formed. It "has learned to respond by appropriate acts to its doll, bottle, small boxes, and to hundreds of other objects." "These habits of response to objects," Watson holds, "are essential to the formation of language habits." He aptly illustrates the way in which these reactions become associated with the vocal habits (words) of the child:

The stimulus (object) to which the child often responds, a box, for example, by movements such as opening and closing and putting objects into it, may serve to illustrate our argument. The nurse, observing that the child reacts with his hands, feet, etc., to the box, begins to say "box" when the child is handed the box, "open box' 7 when the child opens it, "close box" when he closes it, and "put doll in box" when that act is executed. This is repeated over and over again. In the process of time it comes about that without any other stimulus than that of the box which originally called out only the bodily habits, he begins to say "box" when he sees it, "open box" when he opens it, etc. The visible box now becomes a stimulus capable of releasing either the bodily habits or the word habit; that is, development has brought about two things: (1) a series of functional connections among arcs which run from visual receptor to muscles of throat, and (2) a series of already earlier connected arcs which run from the same receptor to the bodily muscles. When the box is presented now, which set of arcs will function? Evidently either (1) or (2) or both simultaneously. It is at this time that the influence of the environment upon shaping language habits comes again clearly to the front. The object meets the child's vision. He runs to it and tries to reach it and says "box." The box happens to have been put beyond his reach. The nurse, seeing the child's efforts to reach it and hearing the word "box," hands it to the child. This situation being repeated day in and day out, not only with this object but with hundreds of others, brings it about that the arcs running from receptors to throat muscles offer the least resistance so far as concerns the neural impulses aroused by the box. Frnally, the word is uttered without the movement of going to the box being executed. There has been a substitution (mechanical process) of a language habit for a bodily habit. One other step and the process is complete. We found in our studies on the maze that every cul-de-sac represented what we might call a simple unit habit. These simple habits when perfected rise serially. When learning is complete, we can put the animal down anywhere in the maze, and after a few trial movements the remaining part of the journey is executed without a break. Something similar of course occurs in all complete systems of bodily habit and in language habits as well. Habits are formed of going to the box when the arms are full of toys. The child has been taught to deposit them there. When his arms are laden with toys and no box is there, the word habit arises and he calls "box"; it is handed to him and he opens it and deposits the toys therein. This roughly marks what we would call the genesis of true language habit. 1

1 Watson, J. B.: Behavior, pp. 329-330.

Judd — who writes from the standpoint of functional psychology — takes a very similar position. He holds that words gain their significance or meaning through "direct association with bodily reactions" — reactions or responses called forth by the varied stimuli of the environment of the individual. The reactions thus associated with words are, however, in his estimation, not infrequently greatly reduced forms of the original. He gives the following illustration of the manner in which these associations take place :

When I seize an object I get at first an impression of that thing; if the impression is disagreeable, I react by pushing it away. The end of the whole process is the pushing away. Later as I become acquainted with the thing, I push it away without examining it in detail; that is, without a complete impression of it. Finally the merest suggestion that the thing is there will arouse the reaction. The reaction can now be detached from the thing and can be attached to some substitute for the thing. Thus the word danger sounded in my ear causes me to jump. The word danger is a substitute for an impression or an idea of a dangerous thing. The words rough and smooth arouse in me contrasting experiences without any necessity of first handling some rough or smooth thing. The words have in all these cases taken meanings to themselves; that is, they have taken on connection with interpreting forms of behavior.

It is not alone in the sphere of emotional interpretation that words become independent of the experiences from which they first derived their meaning. Take for purposes of illustration such words as up and down. These words were at first interpreted to us in childhood by someone who pointed upward or looked upward when he used the word up. Sometimes the word was associated with the observation of a flight of stairs or a ladder. Ultimately all these experiences were condensed into a few faint tendencies to roll the eyes upward or downward, and the adult thus appreciates in an easy way, through a mere tendency to move, the meaning which the child had to learn through many experiences and much effort. Furthermore, the rolling upward of the eyes has, in the course of mental development, attached itself not only to tall things and high things but also to such matters as abstract values, as when we say that prices have gone up. Again, we say that a man's career is downward. Words thus come to have a value of their own without going back to things for their interpretation. 1

These illustrations of the manner in which words come to assume significance make it clear that word meanings are intimately connected with our behavior. Indeed, they grow directly out of it. A word is obviously a meaningless sound until it comes to stand for or to represent some habitual reaction or response to our environment. Once words have acquired this representative power, however, they become instruments of inestimable value. They enable us to consider our experiences in an indirect and economical manner whenever and wherever we desire. Accordingly, we come to live in a world of words to a marked extent. We conceive our experiences and our behavior in terms of words. We analyze, rearrange, and elaborate them in terms of words. And, what is more, we anticipate through words the behavior and the experiences which are to come — in short, we think before we act and we plan before we execute.

The fact that word meanings grow out of the experiences of the individual — through association with his reactions and responses — is of tremendous significance for those intrusted with the education of children — and adults, too, for that matter. We have long been too much concerned with the teaching of words. The all important experience background has been too largely

x Judd, Chas. H.: Psychology of High School Subjects, pp. 154-155.

ignored or neglected. In consequence there has been — and still is — altogether too much parrotlike repetition in our educational institutions. In some cases this unfortunate condition may be readily corrected by providing for proper associations since the learner already possesses the requisite experiences. In other cases the experiences may be easily supplied. There are, however, many cases — especially in our elementary and high schools — in which the experiences cannot possibly be supplied because of the immaturity of the pupils. In other words, we are in such cases dealing with a content which is beyond the actual and — for the time being — beyond the possible experience background of the pupils. For illustrations we need not go beyond the content of some of our school readers and the classics studied in the English classes of many of our high schools.

Processes entering into the recognition and interpretation of words and sentences. — We have discussed at some length the manner in which words acquire meanings. As we progressed, it became increasingly evident that meanings arise out of our experiences — that they consist essentially of our habitual reactions and responses to real situations. We shall now consider the problem of the nature of meaning from a slightly different angle. The question before us is : What do we experience when we get the meanings of words and sentences?

It has been too often naively assumed that we experience on such occasions chiefly mental images — a sort of pictorial representation of the things and events read or talked about. The reader may have little difficulty in recalling how persistently some of his teachers stressed the necessity of imaging clearly whatever was being read. He may also recall discovering presently that he could read with greater speed and satisfaction when forgetting all about images and pictures. And his discovery was quite in keeping with the facts in the case. Any serious attempt to image the meanings of the words which are being read or spoken is not only an extremely slow and cumbersome process, but it is often quite impossible — particularly in the case of the more abstract words. For many of these words there could be — in the very nature of the case — little, if any, imagery in the sense in which structural and functional psychologists use the term. A critical examination of what actually happens when we recognize and interpret words and sentences shows that the phenomena — usually designated as mental imagery — are a later incident rather than the essence of meaning. Only when the meaning is allowed to unfold itself beyond the normal stage are these likely to appear to any extent. A rapid and efficient reader experiences little, if any, imagery as he goes along.