Title: The Relationship Between a Silent Reading Fluency Instructional Protocol on Students’ Reading Comprehension and Achievement in an Urban School Setting

Authors: Timothy Rasinski, S. Jay Samuels, Elfrieda Hiebert, and Yaacov Petscher

Publication: Reading Psychology, Vol. 32, No. 1, January 2011, pp. 75-97

Summary: The study examined a large-scale implementation of Reading Plus® to validate the effects as well as the feasibility of deployment of Reading Plus® within a wide range of school settings. A total of 16,143 students from grades 4 through 10 in 23 schools in Regions II and III in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools participated in the study.

Findings: Results indicated that students participating in Reading Plus® for a minimum of 40 or more lessons over approximately six months made significantly greater gains on both the criterion-referenced and norm-referenced reading tests that are part of the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT) than students who did not participate in the program. Positive results also were demonstrated for various subpopulations often considered at risk for reading difficulties. African-American, Latino-American, special education, and learning disabled students who participated in the Reading Plus® intervention demonstrated significantly and substantially greater gains in measures of reading achievement on both the CRT and NRT portions of the FCAT than students not participating in the intervention.

Title: The Effect of the Reading Plus® Program on Reading Skills in Second Graders

Authors: John Shelley-Tremblay and Joshua Eyer

Publication: Journal of Behavioral Optometry, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2009

Summary: The study assessed gains in reading skills and oculomotor efficiency in second graders in a public school in Woodland, TX.

Findings: Results demonstrated that Reading Plus® produced significantly larger gains than randomly assigned controls in comprehension and word knowledge in normally achieving second graders. These results suggest that, in addition to the findings of Solan and collaborators using poor readers, normal and above-average readers in a normal classroom setting can benefit significantly from the addition of Reading Plus® to their school curriculum. Analysis of the Visagraph data demonstrated that measures of ocular efficiency were significant predictors of changes in reading skills.

Title: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and its Implications for Reading Instruction

Publication: Report of the National Reading Panel, Report of the Sub-Groups (MIH Publication No. 00-4754). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 2000

Summary: The report reviewed and assessed scientific research on reading instruction conducted by the National Reading Panel and various other researchers. In the chapter on fluency, it describes how eye-movement research in the past “has provided a perspective from which to observe the fluent reading process.” Through studies of eye-movement measures by Stanford E. Taylor, founder and chairman of Reading Plus®/Taylor Associates, and other researchers, it was found that fluent readers make fewer fixations, shorter duration of fixations, and fewer regressions than those of poor readers. Taylor’s norms for oculomotor behavior with over 12,000 students were cited.

Link to Article: http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/smallbook.cfm

Title: Evaluation of an Eye-Movement Recording Technique in a Population of Autistic Children

Authors: Darrel G. Schlange, Janice E. Scharre, and Brian Caden

Publication: Optometry and Vision Science, 74, poster 27, 1997

Summary: The purpose of this study was to evaluate Taylor Associate's Visagraph II for recording fixations and saccades in autistic children.

Findings: The study suggested that this technique has clinical value for evaluating eye-movement skills in a population of autistic children. Guidelines are provided to assist the clinician in interpreting the results and integrating them with data from other members of the interdisciplinary team.