Research on Analogical Processes and Reading

Developmental reading courses are typically designed to increase the reading proficiency of college students who are underprepared for collegelevel reading. Existing at U.S. higher education institutions since the beginning of the 20th century (Kingston, 2003), developmental reading has his­ torically been a core part of developmental educa­ tion offerings in twoand four-year colleges (Stahl &King, 2009). Reading difficulties have been judged to be “the most serious” developmental proficiency issue (Adelman, 2004, p. 87) for college students. With recent analyses of ACT college entrance test scores indicating that fewer than half of incoming college students nation-wide were prepared for the reading requirements of a typical first-year college course (ACT, 2013), developmental reading sup­ port at the postsecondary level is prevalent and an important part of a college education for a significant number of students. Research that allows for a fuller understanding of developmental reading processes, with implications for instruction, is important. This study investigates the role of analogical processing during the reading process for students who place into developmental reading courses. A n a lo g ic a l P ro c e s s e s In a general educational sense, one key process by which people make sense of new information is analogical. An analogical process involves the identification of partial similarities between different objects or situations to support further inferences and is used to explain new concepts, solve problems, and understand new areas and ideas (Gentner, & Colhoun, 2010; Gentner & Smith, 2012). For example, when abiology teacher relates the functions of a cell to the activities in a factory in order to introduce and explain the cell to students, this is an analogical process designed to use what is already familiar to illuminate and explain a new concept. A process of mapping similarities between a source (what is known) and a target (what is needed to be known) in order to better understand the target (Holyoak& Thagard, 1997), analogies are commonly used to make sense of new information in general. Scholars in cogni­ tive psychology have argued that many aspects of thinking are analogical in nature, with some concluding that analogical processes form a core aspect of human cognition (e.g., Hofstader, 2001; Kurtz, Miao, & Gentner, 2001). Supporting this view of the integral nature of analogy to cognition is its use by even very young children. Holyoak and Thagard (1995) report that infants are able to use basic analogical processes, and by the time children are 5 or 6 years old, they are able to use complex analogies for many purposes. In short, analogy appears to be a key element of human thinking. Reading is a sociocognitive process of making sense of information presented through text, and difficulties in reading can be intensified when the text involves unfamiliar content and new words J Because of the core nature of analogy in human learning, its role in a sociocognitive process like reading warrants exploration. This article inves­ tigates analogical processes in reading, at a basic word decoding level and at a higher, whole-text comprehension level. Research on Analogical Processes and Reading From a theoretical standpoint, analogy use in reading can be directly related to schema-theoretic explanations for reading comprehension. Hofstader (2001, p. 504) described any “triggering of prior mental categories by some kind of input—whether sensory or more abstract” as a process of analogy 2 JOURNAL o/DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION construction. Schemata are those “m ental catego­ ries”—as well as concepts and s tructu res—that help us m ake sense of the world. Schema theory notes that new inform ation is processed through interaction w ith old information, resulting in what is know n as comprehension (Anderson & Pearson, 1984). Specific to reading, this m eans that a reader’s ability to com prehend a text is directly related to the reader having the appropriate schem ata (see A nderson, 2013; Faris & Smeltzer, 1997). Reading involves a constant, albeit m any tim es implicit and nondeliberate, com parison o f the new inform a­ tion in the text to w hat the reader already knows about the topic o f the text in order to m ake sense ofw hat is being read. This is an analogical process. Because reading is no t a m onolithic entity, this article addresses analogical processing in reading in term s o f m ore th an a single m easure of reading. Specifically, a focus on decoding w ords and on m ore holistic com prehension o f whole texts are both included. Experienced Readers' Use of Analogy