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Making Connections: Linking Cognitive Psychology and Intervention Research

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Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 29(1), 17–24

C 2014 The Division for Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children

Making Connections: Linking Cognitive Psychology and Intervention

Research to Improve Comprehension of Struggling Readers
Kristen L. McMaster
University of Minnesota
Christine A. Espin and Paul van den Broek
University of Leiden

Many studies have demonstrated the efficacy of reading comprehension interventions for
struggling readers, including students with learning disabilities. Yet, some readers continue to
struggle with comprehension despite receiving these interventions. In this article, we argue that
an explicit link between cognitive psychology and intervention research contributes to knowl-
edge regarding for whom and under what conditions reading comprehension interventions are
most likely to be beneficial. First, we provide a brief overview of a cognitive perspective on
reading comprehension. Next, we illustrate an application of this perspective by describing
a collaborative project in which we examined interactions among reader characteristics, text
properties, and instructional contexts. Last, we highlight directions for future research and
implications for practice.

Many students, including those with learning disabilities
(LD), struggle to learn to read—a skill that is critical for suc-
cess in school and society. Whereas many struggling readers
have difficulties primarily with basic skills such as decoding,
others have difficulties with both decoding and comprehen-
sion or with comprehension alone. Readers who struggle
with comprehension, and are at risk for or have been identi-
fied with LD, are the focus of this article.
Several research syntheses have described interventions
that are effective for improving comprehension skills of
struggling readers (Berkeley, Scruggs, & Mastropieri, 2010;
Edmonds et al., 2009; Gajria, Jitendra, Sood, & Sacks, 2007;
Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Swanson, 1999).
Convergent findings from these syntheses are that: (1) com-
prehension of struggling readers, including those with LD,
can be improved; (2) effective interventions include identifi-
cation of text structure, vocabulary instruction, use of prior
knowledge, and cognitive strategy use; and (3) instruction
is most effective if it is overt and explicit. Despite these
positive findings, research also reveals that not all strug-
gling readers benefit from generally effective interventions
(Fagella-Luby & Deshler, 2008), and that positive inter-
vention effects are not always maintained and generalized
(Gersten et al., 2001). Thus, research focused on improving
struggling readers’ comprehension remains a priority in the
field.
Part of the call for continued research emphasizes the im-
portance of a stronger connection between theory and prac-
tice (e.g., Fagella-Luby & Deshler, 2008; Pressley, Graham,
& Harris, 2006; van den Broek & Espin, 2009). For exam-
Requests for reprints should be sent to Kristen McMaster, University of
Minnesota. Electronic inquiries should be sent to mcmas004@umn.edu.
ple, in their review of reading comprehension intervention
research, Fagella-Luby and Deshler (2008) noted that few
interventions were grounded explicitly in theory, and argued
that greater progress would be made if research and practice
were built upon theory. Thus, the purpose of this article is
to describe a collaborative program of research that connects
research, practice, and cognitive theory to address compre-
hension difficulties of struggling readers. We describe results
of this collaborative work, and illustrate how such connec-
tions can lead to advances in both cognitive theory and inter-
vention research. First, we describe reading comprehension
from a cognitive psychology perspective (also see Kendeou,
van den Broek, Helder, & Karlsson, this issue). Next, we
describe factors related to reading comprehension difficul-
ties, and discuss how we have examined interactions among
these factors in our research. Last, we highlight directions
for further research and implications for practice.
WHAT IS READING COMPREHENSION?
Within a cognitive psychology perspective, reading compre-
hension is often defined as: (1) the translation of written
code into meaningful language units that are combined to (2)
build a coherent mental representation of the text (Kintsch
& van Dijk, 1978; Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985; van
den Broek, White, Kendeou, & Carlson, 2009). Although the
breakdown and organization of these components vary some-
what among different theories of reading comprehension,
most theories include these two components. For example,
the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) por-
trays reading comprehension as the product of decoding and
linguistic comprehension. Decoding includes phonological
18 MCMASTER, ESPIN, AND VAN DEN BROEK: MAKING CONNECTIONS
Sammy and the New Bike
1. Once there was a boy named Sammy.
2. Sammy had dark hair
3. and brown eyes.
4. Sammy wanted a bike.
5. He asked his mother for a bike,
6. but she refused.
7. Sammy’s mother loved to cook.
8. Sammy decided to earn some money,
9. and asked for a job at a nearby grocery store.
10. The grocery store had lots of shelves,
11. and the shelves were different colors.
12. Sammy made deliveries for the grocery store,
13. and earned lots of money.
14. Finally, Sammy bought a new bike.
FIGURE 1 Illustration of a causal network for a story about Sammy and his bike.
awareness, phonics, and word recognition—skills needed to
translate written code into meaningful language units. Lin-
guistic comprehension includes vocabulary, syntactic and
semantic awareness, inference making, and construction of
mental schemas—skills needed to build coherent mental rep-
resentations of text. Much research has been conducted to
test and refine theories for how these components interact to
support (or prevent) reading comprehension. See, for exam-
ple, work on the lexical quality hypothesis (e.g., Perfetti,
2007), interactive–compensatory model (e.g., Stanovich,
1984), and semantic–deficit model (e.g., Nation & Snowling,
1998).
In our research, we have been primarily concerned with
the construction of a coherent mental representation of text.
Specifically, we have focused on the connections that readers
must identify to build coherence. To build a coherent mental
representation of a text, readers must connect and integrate
current information in the text with information that appeared
earlier in the text and/or with background knowledge (van
den Broek et al., 2009). To illustrate what it means to build
a coherent representation, we invite you to read the story
in Figure 1, and then create a summary of the story before
reading on.
1 2 3
4
5
6 7
8
9 10 11
12
13
14
Most likely, your summary included the following story
events: There was a boy named Sammy (1) who wanted a
bike (4). He asked his mother for a bike (5) but she refused
to buy it for him (6). Sammy decided to earn some money
(8) by working in a grocery story (9) to buy the bike himself
(not in the text; requires background knowledge about earn-
ing money to be able to buy something). He earned enough
money (13) to buy the bike (14). Your summary likely did
not include the following events: Sammy had dark hair (2)
and brown eyes (3), his mother loved to cook (7), the grocery
story had lots of shelves (10) and the shelves were different
colors (11).
The events that readers are most likely to include in sum-
maries of a story are those that are causally and logically
related to each other, and thus contribute to the coherence
of the text (Trabasso, Secco, & van den Broek, 1984; van
den Broek, Fletcher, & Risden, 1993). For two events (A and
B) to be causally and logically related, the following criteria
must be met: (1) A must occur prior to B; (2) A must be ac-
tive at the time of B; (3) A must be necessary for B to occur
within the context of the story; and (4) A must be sufficient
for B to occur within the context of the story. In “Sammy
and the New Bike,” the events Sammy wanted a bike and he

asked his mother for a bike are causally and logically related;
the relation between the two events fits the above criteria.
Sammy wanting a bike occurs prior to and is active when he
asks his mother for a bike, and it is a necessary and sufficient
reason for him to ask his mother for a bike.
In building a coherent representation of a text, readers
create a causal network representing the causal and logical
relations among events in the story (Trabasso et al., 1984). A
causal network for the Sammy story is depicted in Figure 1.
Each circle—or node—represents an event in the story, and
the arrows represent the causal connections between events.
As shown in Figure 1, some events have many connections;
others have few or none. Events with few or no causal con-
nections do not contribute significantly to a coherent rep-
resentation of the story. For example, Event 7, “Sammy’s
mother loved to cook,” is not related to any other event in
the story. In fact, you may have stopped reading for a mo-
ment when you reached that event, and wondered why it was
in the story. You may even have reread part of the story to
determine whether you missed something, or scanned ahead
to see if his mother’s love for cooking would become impor-
tant. Other events, such as “Sammy had dark hair and brown
eyes,” have few connections and therefore are not central to
the meaning of the text.
When asked to recall or summarize texts, good readers
tend to include the most highly connected events, and leave
out events with few connections. Van den Broek, Helder, and
van Leijenhorst (2013) refer to this characteristic as sensitiv-
ity to structural centrality, or “the extent to which a reader
identifies and processes information central to the semantic
structure of the text” (p. 132). Younger readers and readers
who struggle with comprehension are less sensitive to struc-
tural centrality, whereas more proficient readers are more
sensitive to structural centrality. Good readers are able to
generate connections that span multiple episodes and events
in a story, and to connect abstract parts of the text such as
intentions and goals of the characters (van den Broek et al.,
2009). In addition, good readers tend to add information from
their background knowledge to fill in gaps in the coherence of
a text. For example, in the Sammy story, you may have used
background information about earning money to be able to
purchase something to infer that Sammy used his own money
to buy the bike. In contrast, struggling readers often fail to
add relevant background knowledge (even if they have it) or
they add irrelevant knowledge (e.g., Williams, 1993).
Sensitivity to structural centrality and the building of
semantic networks depend in part on the reader’s “stan-
dards of coherence” (van den Broek, Bohn-Gettler, Kendeou,
Carlson, & White, 2011; van den Broek & Espin, 2012).
“Standards of coherence” refers to the “type and degree of
semantic coherence that a reader aims to maintain while
reading” (van den Broek & Espin, 2012: p. 41). Poor read-
ers often have lower standards of coherence. That is, dur-
ing reading, they are more easily satisfied with a less-than-
coherent depiction of the text, so they devote less attention
and energy to the processes required to build a coherent
representation.
Many factors contribute to the standards of coherence
adopted by a reader, and the subsequent representation of
text, including the characteristics of the reader, the prop-
LEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH 19
erties of the text, and the instructional context (McNamara
& Kendeou, 2011; RAND Reading Study Group, 2002; van
den Broek et al., 1993, 2013). Reader characteristics include
decoding and comprehension skill, as well as motivation,
interest, and goals for reading. Text properties include the
genre, content, format, and difficulty of a text. Instructional
context includes the purpose for learning, the instructional
tasks, the mode of delivery, student group size, duration and
frequency, feedback and reinforcement, and so on. Any one
of these factors—and the interactions among them—can con-
tribute to reading comprehension success or failure (van den
Broek & Kramer, 1999). Below, we discuss how we have
addressed each of these factors, and the interactions among
them, in our research.
A COLLABORATIVE PROGRAM OF RESEARCH
ON READERS, TEXTS, AND INSTRUCTIONAL
CONDITIONS
In the past decade, our research team has sought to better
understand when and how comprehension processes break
down, with the ultimate goal of designing interventions that
address struggling comprehenders’ specific problems. We
have focused on fourth-grade readers, because late elemen-
tary school marks a critical transition point when academic
requirements include comprehension of increasingly com-
plex texts. At this point, some students who appeared to be
on track in reading in the early grades begin to struggle—a
phenomenon often referred to as the “fourth-grade slump”
(e.g., Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; Sweet & Snow, 2003).
Throughout this research, we have identified students
whose primary difficulties are with comprehension rather
than decoding. Our general approach has involved two steps.
First, we have identified students who perform at the bot-
tom 25th percentile in overall reading proficiency, using
Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) maze tasks (e.g.,
Fuchs & Fuchs, 1992). Students’ reading skill level is then
confirmed by other reading assessments (e.g., standardized
measures of reading comprehension or district measures),
and teacher judgment. Second, we have screened out students
whose primary difficulties relate to decoding and fluency
(e.g., those performing below grade-level on oral reading
fluency). Below, we describe this research, focusing on how
characteristics of struggling comprehenders interact with text
properties and instructional contexts.
Understanding Characteristics of Struggling
Readers
Not all struggling comprehenders fit one specific profile, but
rather form a heterogeneous group (e.g., Cain & Oakhill,
2006; Nation, Clarke, & Snowling, 2002). An initial goal of
our research was to better understand individual differences
among struggling readers, as well as how the comprehen-
sion processes of struggling readers differ from nonstrug-
gling readers (Rapp, van den Broek, McMaster, Kendeou, &
Espin, 2007; van den Broek et al., 2006). Thus, we iden-
tified struggling, average, and good readers using maze
20 MCMASTER, ESPIN, AND VAN DEN BROEK: MAKING CONNECTIONS
(Fuchs & Fuchs, 1992), confirming their status with the
Gates-MacGinitie Reading Comprehension test (MacGinitie,
MacGinitie, Maria, & Dreyer, 2002). Participants completed
measures of word identification, word attack, fluency, vocab-
ulary, listening comprehension, IQ, working memory, and
motivation, along with eye tracking and think-aloud tasks.
Typical comprehension measures (such as recall or ques-
tioning) assess the products of reading—what the reader un-
derstands about a text after reading it. Yet, it is during the
process of reading that comprehension occurs (Rapp et al.,
2007). To better understand characteristics of readers who
struggle with comprehension, we sought ways to assess the
reading process itself—what the reader is doing while reading
a text. We used two approaches commonly used in cognitive
psychology to assess the process of reading: eye-tracking and
think-aloud tasks.
Eye-tracking is a behavioral measure that provides infor-
mation about the moment-by-moment processes in which
readers engage during reading (Rayner, Chace, Slattery, &
Ashby, 2006). In our research, participants wore a head-
mounted eye-tracker while they read short passages dis-
played on a computer screen. The eye-tracker recorded read-
ers’ eye movements from one point in the text to another
(saccades), where and for how long readers paused in the
text (fixations), and where readers looked back in the text
(regressions).
Think-aloud tasks (see Ericsson & Simon, 1993) are de-
signed to reveal what people are thinking during completion
of a task. With regard to reading, think alouds are used to
reveal the processes readers employ while reading a text. In
a think aloud task, participants read passages one sentence at
a time and say whatever comes to mind after each sentence.
In our research, think-aloud protocols were audio recorded,
transcribed, parsed into idea units, and coded to identify spe-
cific cognitive processes reflected in each thought unit. These
processes include elaborative and predictive inferences (use
of background knowledge to explain or predict text, coded
as either valid or invalid depending on relevance to the text),
connecting and reinstatement inferences (inferences related
to either the immediately preceding sentence or to earlier
parts of the text), associations (comments relating the text to
a personal experience), paraphrases/text repetitions (restate-
ments of the current sentence in the readers’ own words or
verbatim), metacognitive comments (comments on the read-
ers’ own understandings or opinions about the text), and
questions (questions about the text that could not be coded
in the other categories).
Among the fourth graders in the study (n = 241), strug-
gling readers performed lower than average and good readers,
and average readers performed lower than good readers, on
word attack, fluency, vocabulary, listening comprehension,
and IQ. There were no reliable group differences with re-
spect to motivation or working memory. Eye-tracking results
showed that struggling readers had similar numbers of fixa-
tions as did average and good readers, but spent more time
on each fixation. Further, struggling readers looked back at
previous text as often as did average and good readers but
spent more time rereading text, suggesting that struggling
readers were encountering greater difficulty comprehending
the text (cf. Rayner et al., 2006).
Think-aloud results indicated that struggling readers gen-
erated more invalid elaborative inferences than did average
and good readers. Further, a cluster analysis of struggling
readers’ think-aloud data revealed two subgroups of strug-
gling readers. One group, called Paraphrasers, made few in-
ferences but produced significantly more text repetitions and
paraphrases than did average and good readers as well as the
other group of struggling readers. The other group, called
Elaborators, made many elaborative inferences—similar to
the number of elaborative inferences made by average and
good readers and reliably more than Paraphrasers—but their
inferences often were inaccurate or invalid. These subgroups
replicated across several samples in several different years in
studies that have used the think-aloud approach with fourth-
grade struggling readers (e.g., Carlson, Seipel, & McMaster,
unpublished data; McMaster et al., 2012; van den Broek et al.,
2006).
The above findings suggest that subgroups of struggling
comprehenders engage in different processes while they read,
and thus may struggle with comprehension for different rea-
sons. These findings led to questions such as: (1) Does a
student’s subgroup classification as Paraphraser or Elabo-
rator depend on the type of text? and (2) Does a student’s
subgroup classification as Paraphraser or Elaborator interact
with instructional contexts?
Do Subgroups of Struggling Readers Vary
as a Function of Text Properties?
Whether a student’s subgroup classification as Paraphraser
or Elaborator depends on the type of text has potential in-
structional implications. For example, a struggling reader
might paraphrase extensively while reading stories, but rely
more on irrelevant or inaccurate elaborative inferences while
reading informational texts. Alternatively, a struggling reader
might paraphrase exclusively across all types of texts, which
might support comprehension of some texts but not oth-
ers. Such information would be useful in designing instruc-
tion to help struggling readers comprehend a wide range of
texts.
To address this question, we replicated the subgroup anal-
yses with both narrative and informational texts across two
fourth-grade samples in 2 years. We chose informational
text, given the focus on this type of text in the late elemen-
tary grades (Best, Floyd, & McNamara, 2008; Sweet & Snow,
2003). Struggling readers were identified using the two-step
process described previously (Year 1, n = 60; Year 2, n =
61). A think-aloud task was administered individually to each
student, using both narrative and informational texts.
For both years, think-aloud data were submitted to sepa-
rate cluster analyses for the narrative and informational texts.
Similar subgroups emerged as in previous research (McMas-
ter et al., 2012; van den Broek et al., 2006): Paraphrasers
(Year 1, n = 16 from stories and 18 from informational
texts; Year 2, n = 22 from stories and 21 from informa-
tional text) and Elaborators (Year 1, n = 44 from stories and
42 from informational texts; Year 2, n = 39 from stories
and 40 from informational text). The subgroups emerged
in similar proportions as in previous research, with more

Elaborators than Paraphrasers. A majority of students (93
percent in Year 1, 85 percent in Year 2) were identified as
being in the same subgroup using both narrative and infor-
mational texts. This finding suggests that the Paraphraser and
Elaborator subgroups are relatively stable across text types,
but that a small number of students may vary in their sub-
group status depending on text type, at least across the narra-
tive and informational texts included in these studies. Future
research should broaden the range of text types (including dif-
ferent types of informational texts, such as sequence, descrip-
tion, compare–contrast, problem–solution, cause–effect) to
determine whether subgroups remain stable.
Do Subgroups of Struggling Readers Respond
Differently to Instruction?
In addition to understanding the characteristics of struggling
readers and how they interact with different types of text,
we have sought ways to improve struggling readers’ com-
prehension of text. To do so, we developed and compared
different questioning interventions that build on cognitive
models of reading comprehension. We examined whether
the type of questioning matters, and whether the effects of
different questioning approaches vary for readers in different
subgroups.
As discussed earlier, building a coherent mental repre-
sentation of text depends on the extent to which the reader
identifies important causal or logical relations among events
and ideas in the text (Trabasso et al., 1984; van den Broek
et al., 1993). One way to prompt readers to identify such
relations is to ask specific “causal” questions at points in the
text where it is important to make connections. For example,
in “Sammy and the New Bike” (Figure 1), a good causal
question might be, “Why did Sammy decide to earn some
money?” This question is designed to prompt the reader to
attend to Sammy’s desire to get a bike, which is an event with
many causal relations to other events in the story. To gen-
erate a coherent representation of the text, the reader must
connect Sammy’s decision to earn money to his desire to get
a bike. A less useful question might be, “What color hair did
Sammy have?” because Sammy’s hair color is not relevant to
his desire to get a bike (or to get a job and earn money to get
the bike). Recalling the unimportant details is not necessary
for the reader to generate a coherent mental representation
of this story.
In three separate studies, we contrasted the causal ques-
tioning approach with a “general” questioning approach, in
which readers were periodically prompted to make any con-
nection between what they were currently reading and what
happened earlier in the text (by asking, “How does this sen-
tence connect to an earlier part of the text?”). We hypoth-
esized that making causal connections is particularly im-
portant to constructing a coherent representation of text (as
opposed to making any kind of text-based connection). We
were also interested in practical implications: causal ques-
tioning has a strong theoretical foundation, but it is rather
labor intensive to develop good causal questions. General
questioning, in contrast, is easily applied to any text, because
it simply repeats the same question.
LEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH 21
In an initial test of this approach (van den Broek et al.,
2006), we conducted a controlled experiment in which strug-
gling, average, and good fourth-grade readers (n = 78) an-
swered Causal or General questions while reading narrative
texts in separate, counterbalanced, one-to-one tutoring ses-
sions. The primary dependent variable involved verbal recall
of the texts read during the Causal and General conditions.
Recalls were coded for the proportion of all story events
recalled, as well as for the proportion of highly connected
events recalled. Results indicated that Causal questioning led
to significantly more complete recalls of text than did general
Questioning (d = .53). Findings did not vary by struggling,
average, or good reader status.
Next, we applied the questioning approach to a classroom-
based intervention in a small, randomized field trial (McMas-
ter et al., 2012). Struggling-, average-, and good fourth-grade
readers (n = 246) were randomly assigned to Causal, Gen-
eral, or “W” (who, what, where, when) Questioning condi-
tions. Again, questioning was embedded in narrative texts,
but this time the intervention was delivered in a classwide
peer-mediated format, three times per week for 20–30 min-
utes over 9 weeks. Overall, readers made statistically sig-
nificant improvements from pre- to posttest on story recall
(ps < .001 to .04), but there was no reliable main effect of
question type, and no interaction between question type and
struggling, average, or good comprehender status.
Further analyses revealed a more nuanced picture of
the possible effects of the different questioning approaches.
We conducted post hoc analyses to determine whether sub-
group status moderated struggling readers’ response to the
different questioning approaches. These analyses revealed
an interaction between question type and subgroup: Elab-
orators outperformed Paraphrasers in the Causal condition
(d = .86), Paraphrasers outperformed Elaborators in the Gen-
eral condition (d = 1.46), and Paraphrasers in the General
condition outperformed Paraphrasers in the Causal condition
(d = 1.52). In other words, struggling readers’ response to
the different questioning approaches appeared to vary de-
pending on subgroup status (see McMaster et al., 2012, for
a complete description of these results).
The differential response by the two subgroups provides
an example of an interaction between reader characteristics
and instructional contexts. Specifically, the effects of dif-
ferent questioning approaches may depend on the way strug-
gling readers process text. Recall that, during the think-aloud
tasks, Elaborators tended to rely on background knowledge
to explain what they were reading (but not always in ways that
supported comprehension), whereas Paraphrasers tended to
simply reiterate the last sentence they read. Perhaps causal
questioning, which requires the reader to make specific text-
based connections, helps Elaborators focus on important in-
formation within the text. In contrast, general questioning,
which prompts the reader to make any text-based connection,
may help Paraphrasers think about the text beyond the current
sentence. This interpretation suggests that cognitive charac-
teristics of struggling readers have instructional relevance.
However, the findings must be interpreted cautiously, given
that analyses were conducted post hoc and subgroups were
not randomly assigned to questioning condition. Replication
of these findings is necessary.
22 MCMASTER, ESPIN, AND VAN DEN BROEK: MAKING CONNECTIONS
Most recently, we have examined ways to provide a
more intensive intervention, using the Causal and General
questioning approaches in a small-group format. In a recent
investigation (McMaster et al., unpublished data), we iden-
tified fourth-graders struggling with comprehension, placed
them in groups of three to five students, and assigned groups
randomly to Causal or General questioning. Tutors provided
30 minutes of instruction, three times per week for 18 ses-
sions, consisting of (1) previewing a story and preteaching
key vocabulary, and (2) reading the story with Causal or
General questions embedded.
In contrast to the previous findings, there were no reli-
able main effects of question type on students’ text recalls or
oral reading fluency, although an effect size of d = .88 for
the proportion of gist story units recalled favored the causal
questioning approach (McMaster et al., unpublished data).
Further, there were no reliable interactions between ques-
tioning approach and reader subgroups. Failure to replicate
the earlier findings may have been due, at least in part, to
changes in the structure of the intervention. In the previous
study, the intervention was structured as a classwide, peer-
mediated approach, in which stronger readers were paired
with weaker readers to conduct the reading and questioning
activities, whereas the current intervention was conducted in
small groups with adult tutors. This change in structure was
part of an effort to intensify the intervention for struggling
readers (by providing an adult tutor), while maintaining the
feasibility of the intervention (by delivering instruction in
small groups rather than one-to-one).
The use of small groups inevitably led to combinations
of Paraphrasers and Elaborators within each group, which
likely changed the dynamic of the intervention. For example,
students likely heard a range of paraphrasing and elaborative
responses to questions from their peers, as well as the cor-
responding feedback from the tutor, which could have had
an impact on the way they processed the text. These changes
in structure ultimately prevented a true replication of the
previous study. In addition, it was impossible to randomly
assign Paraphrasers and Elaborators to condition, given lo-
gistical constraints in schools. Thus, a true experimental test
of the instructional relevance of the subgroups remains to be
conducted.
SUMMARY AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Findings from this work support the following conclu-
sions: First, the nature of struggling comprehenders’ diffi-
culties may be revealed through the processes in which they
engage during reading (Rapp et al., 2007). Specifically, think-
aloud methods consistently reveal two subgroups of strug-
gling comprehenders: one characterized by frequent para-
phrasing and text repetition, and the other by heavy reliance
on elaborative inferences. Second, subgroup membership ap-
pears to be relatively stable when either narrative or informa-
tional texts are used to identify them; yet, for a small number
of students, subgroup classification appears to vary based on
text type. Third, subgroups of struggling comprehenders may
have instructional relevance, in that questioning approaches
may be differentially effective for the two groups. However,
further research is needed to better understand the instruc-
tional conditions under which questioning approaches are
most beneficial, and whether the effects of instruction are
moderated by reader characteristics, including subgroup sta-
tus. Research is also needed to determine the developmental
nature of the subgroups (e.g., do younger and older strug-
gling readers fit similar profiles and respond to intervention
in similar ways?). Preliminary research has revealed similar
subgroups in 7th and 9th grades (van den Broek et al., 2005),
but requires replication.
These questions remain central to our current work, given
our interest in finding ways to meet the individual needs
of struggling comprehenders. Complicating this issue is a
practical matter: Teachers have emphasized that small-group
intervention is more feasible than one-to-one intervention in
schools (McMaster et al., unpublished data). Yet, as indi-
cated above, small groups will likely comprise readers who
struggle with comprehension in different ways with different
types of texts. Thus, it is important to find ways to be respon-
sive both to the group as a whole and to individual students.
Using the causal questioning framework, our understanding
of the way Paraphrasers and Elaborators process text, and
extensive observations of how readers respond to question-
ing during intervention, we are exploring ways to provide
systematic corrective feedback that is both responsive to in-
dividual readers and engages the entire group.
Another remaining question is whether causal question-
ing, which has shown promise when used with stories, can be
applied to other types of text. In fourth grade, current stan-
dards indicate that students should be able to read and under-
stand a wide variety of challenging informational texts (e.g.,
history/social studies, science, and technical texts). Texts that
have a narrative structure, such as historical or biographical
texts, are most likely to align well with a causal question-
ing approach. Thus, we are currently examining whether
causal questioning shows promise with biographical texts as
well as with stories, and whether readers’ responsiveness to
intervention using stories versus biographical texts varies by
subgroup status.
If subgroups identified through think-aloud methods have
instructional relevance, another important goal will be to
find a more feasible way to identify them. Think-aloud pro-
tocols require intensive training and time to code reliably, and
are not practical for educators to score in a timely manner
in schools. Researchers could examine whether a less fine-
grained coding approach would yield similar results. Further
research may shed light on other characteristics that distin-
guish the two subgroups, which may lead to more practical
identification approaches.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
Whereas many questions remain as to how to best promote
struggling readers’ generation of coherent representations of
different types of texts, the following implications of this
work are relevant to practice. First, we have observed that
many students who struggle with comprehension are able
to make connections needed to generate coherent representa-
tions of text, but often require support to do so. Second, not all

struggling readers experience comprehension difficulties in
the same ways, and these differences may have instructional
implications. Teachers should be aware of possible differ-
ences and be responsive to the needs of individual students.
To address these two issues, teachers can provide support
by explicitly directing students to attend to important, highly
connected parts of the text they are reading, and by providing
explicit feedback that is responsive to individual students’
ways of processing text. We have conceptualized such sup-
port as a causal questioning approach that includes:
1 Brief preteaching of vocabulary and concepts that are
critical to understanding the text.
2 Questions embedded in text that prompt the reader to
make connections to the most important parts of what
they have read so far, and explicit modeling of how
to look back at the text to make good connections.
We use very specific “Why” or “How” questions;
for example, “Why did Sammy decide to earn some
money?”
3 Explicit feedback that is responsive to individual stu-
dents. For example, a student who tends to para-
phrase might say, “Because he needed some money,”
to which the teacher might respond, “You’re on the
right track, but why did Sammy need some money?”
Or, a student who tends to elaborate might say, “Be-
cause he wanted to be really, really rich and then he’d
be really, really happy,” to which the teacher might
respond, “That may be true, but what does the text say
about why Sammy decided to earn some money?”
Our goal is to continue development and evaluation of
this intervention approach in order to provide guidance to
educators who seek to support struggling comprehenders.
CONCLUSION
The work described in this article illustrates the importance
of connecting cognitive theory to reading intervention. Cog-
nitive theory provides insights and methods to examine the
ways that struggling readers process text and the extent to
which they are able to create a coherent mental representation
of the text. Drawing on these insights, we have undertaken
a program of research to systematically identify these pro-
cesses and determine how reader characteristics interact with
text properties and instructional contexts, with the ultimate
goal of identifying conditions under which struggling com-
prehenders are likely to benefit from intervention. It is our
hope that findings of this work may contribute to knowledge
of how to improve outcomes for struggling readers, includ-
ing those with LD. Further, because instructional application
provides a strong test of cognitive models of reading compre-
hension, our hope is that findings from intervention research
will serve to inform and refine cognitive theory.
Acknowledgments
The research reported here was supported by the Institute of
Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through
LEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH 23
grants R305G040021 and R324A110046 to the University
of Minnesota. The opinions expressed are those of the au-
thors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S.
Department of Education.
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About the Authors

Kristen L. McMaster, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Special Education in the Department of Educational Psychology,
University of Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. in special education from Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include
(1) promoting teachers’ use of data-based instruction and (2) developing individualized interventions for students for whom
generally effective instruction is not sufficient.

Christine Espin, Ph.D. (University of Minnesota), is a Professor at Leiden University in the department of Education and
Child Studies, Special Education. Her research focuses on the development of progress-monitoring systems in reading, written
expression, language learning, and content-area learning for secondary students with learning disabilities, and on teachers’ use
of data for educational decision-making.

Paul van den Broek, Ph.D. (University of Chicago), is Director of the Brain and Education Laboratory at Leiden University
and holds faculty appointments in the Department of Education and Child Studies at Leiden University and the Center for
Cognitive Sciences at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the cognitive and neurological processes involved
in reading comprehension in children and adults, and on the development of instructional methods for proficient and struggling
readers.

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