Effects of oral reading rate and inflection on intraverbal responding

Reading comprehension may be defined as a type of intraverbal responding. Only a few studies have reported the effects of the rate and inflection of oral reading performances on this class of intraverbals. In the present study the effects of four conditions; low reading rates (40 to 60 words per minute), with and without inflection, and high reading rates (150 to 200 words per minute), with and without inflection, were studied using six subjects. Two of the subjects were of high school age, reading below grade level, and four were typical third grade students, reading on grade level. The results indicated that the combination of high oral reading rate with inflection, a condition approximating conversational speech, increased both the accuracy and speed of intraverbal responding (comprehension), more than any other combination of variables. A second experiment was conducted which systematically replicated the findings across reading levels, reading passage content, settings, and subjects.