Measuring Reading Comprehension of Content Area Texts Using an Assessment of Knowledge Organization.

The authors outline results of 3 studies conducted to examine the structure of disciplinary knowledge from reading measured through proximity data. In Study 1, 168 third-grade students were asked to read a science text and rate the relationships of keywords from the passage. From these ratings, comprehension scores were calculated that related well to a free-recall measure of science reading comprehension and differentiated poor and proficient readers. In Study 2, 176 third-grade students were given the proximity data measure on science text along with measures of prior knowledge, questioning, and text searching. In Study 3, 160 ninth-grade students were given the proximity data measure after reading a social studies text that varied on the presence of text signals and familiarity. The findings of this study extend the literature on the cognitive processing that contributes to higher order comprehension of information text among elementary and secondary students.