Proverb Comprehension as a Function of Reading ...

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Proverb Comprehension as a Function of Reading Proficiency in Preadolescents Marilyn A. Nippold Melissa M. Allen Dixon I. Kirsch University of Oregon, Eugene

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uring childhood and adolescence, the understanding of figurative expressions such as proverbs (e.g., the rolling stone gathers no moss) and idioms (e.g., turn back the clock, bring home the bacon) steadily improves as young people gain greater exposure to those sayings in spoken and written contexts at school and in a variety of situations beyond the classroom (Nippold, 1998). Growth in figurative understanding is especially rapid during preadolescence (ages 9–12 years), when students are making the transition from late childhood to early adolescence (Gorham, 1956; Holden, 1978; Lodge & Leach, 1975; Nippold, Allen, & Kirsch, 2000; Nippold & Haq, 1996; Nippold, Hegel, Uhden, & Bustamante, 1998; Nippold, Martin, & Erskine, 1988; Nippold & Rudzinski,

ABSTRACT: Purpose: Proverb comprehension through reading was examined in 42 preadolescents (mean age = 12:2 [years:months]) attending a rural public middle school. The study was designed to learn about individual differences with respect to reading, word knowledge, and analogical reasoning skills. Method: The 42 students were assigned to subgroups of proficient and less proficient readers based on their scores on a school-administered achievement test. Reading tasks were presented to examine their comprehension of unfamiliar concrete (e.g., every bird must hatch its own eggs) and abstract (e.g., gratitude is a heavy burden) proverbs, and their knowledge of nouns contained in the expressions. A nonverbal analogical reasoning task also was administered. Results: Proverb comprehension was found to be associated with reading proficiency, word knowledge, and analogical reasoning. Although all students were considered by their school to be typical achievers, they demonstrated wide individual differences in their ability to interpret unfamiliar

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1993; Nippold & Taylor, 1995; Nippold, Taylor, & Baker, 1996; Prinz, 1983; Resnick, 1982; Watts, 1944). For example, Nippold et al. (1998) presented a proverb comprehension task to groups of preadolescents (age 12); young, middle, and older adolescents (ages 14, 16, and 18, respectively); and young adults (age 25). Mean accuracy scores obtained by the five groups, respectively, were 51%, 71%, 73%, 81%, and 93%. When comparing adjacent age groups, the greatest improvement occurred between preadolescence and early adolescence. More gradual improvements occurred during adolescence through adulthood. Preadolescents also show wide individual differences in their understanding of figurative expressions (Gorham, 1956; Nippold et al., 1988, 1996, 1998, 2000; Nippold &

concrete and abstract proverbs. Proficient readers outperformed less proficient readers on comprehension of both types of proverbs, knowledge of abstract nouns contained in proverbs, and analogical reasoning. They did not differ, however, on knowledge of concrete nouns, with both subgroups having mastered those words. Educational Implications: The results support the view that reading is an important language modality in older children, significantly related to their understanding of words and figurative expressions. Implications for instruction in proverb comprehension as part of a language arts curriculum are offered for speech-language pathologists working collaboratively with classroom teachers. These guidelines reflect the view that multiple factors (i.e., reading, word knowledge, analogical reasoning) promote proverb comprehension in youth. KEY WORDS: preadolescents, proverbs, figurative language, instruction

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Haq, 1996; Nippold & Taylor, 1995; Resnick, 1982). For example, in the Nippold et al. (1998) study described above, the preadolescents showed the greatest amount of variance in performing the proverb comprehension task, with accuracy scores for this group ranging from 16% to 88%. These conditions suggest that it would be informative to examine preadolescents more closely. The findings could generate useful implications for teaching figurative language. This type of information is essential because youth with language impairments frequently have difficulty understanding proverbs and other types of figurative expressions (Abrahamsen & Sprouse, 1995; Ezell & Goldstein, 1991; Jones & Stone, 1989; Lee & Kamhi, 1990; Lutzer, 1988; Nippold & Fey, 1983; Secord & Wiig, 1993; Seidenberg & Bernstein, 1986; Towne & Entwisle, 1993). A recent national survey of speech-language pathologists, teachers, and special educators indicated that professionals desire more information on ways to instruct their students in this important area of language development (Ezell, 1997). This is consistent with conditions in schools today where students are expected to comprehend different types of figurative expressions, particularly as they advance through middle school and high school. Knowledge of figurative language is measured on formal tasks of academic achievement (e.g., Oregon Statewide Assessment [OSA, Oregon Department of Education, 1998]) and is part of the language arts curriculum. For example, proverbs occur in books that are read in English classes, often in the context of fables. Fables are short, entertaining stories that make a statement about human nature through animals or other beings that talk and act like people. Aesop’s fable, “The Dog and the Wolf,” occurs in a sixthgrade literature text (Madsen, Wood, & Connors, 1991) used in American public schools. In this story, the wolf expresses envy of the dog’s comfortable life with its master until spying a roughened area around the dog’s neck where a collar had been worn. To express the wolf’s sudden change of heart, it concludes with the proverb, better starve free than be a fat slave (p. 415). Comprehending this proverb requires, at a minimum, that students read and understand the story, make inferences based on subtle clues, grasp the perspectives of the characters, and appreciate the human longing for independence. The present study was designed to examine further a group of preadolescents who participated in a recent developmental study of proverb comprehension (Nippold et al., 2000). In that investigation, typically achieving students who were 12, 15, and 18 years of age (enrolled in Grades 6, 9–10, and 12, respectively) (n = 50 per group) were administered the Proverb Comprehension Task (PCT). This was a written multiple-choice task designed to compare the difficulty of unfamiliar concrete and abstract proverbs. Concrete proverbs (e.g., every bird must hatch its own eggs) contained nouns that referred to physical entities (e.g., bird, eggs); abstract proverbs (e.g., gratitude is a heavy burden) contained nouns that referred to psychological entities (e.g., gratitude, burden). The task included 10 proverbs of each type. A prior study (Nippold & Haq, 1996) had verified the concreteness or abstractness of the nouns. This was

accomplished by extracting the nouns from the proverbs and presenting them in random order to a group of 10 adults, requesting them to indicate if the word was concrete or abstract. Only proverbs whose nouns were judged by at least 90% of the adults to be concrete or abstract were included in the task. In that same study, it also had been verified that all proverbs in the task were unfamiliar. This was accomplished by asking 80 additional adults and adolescents to indicate how often they had heard or read each expression before, using a 5-point scale (1 = never; 2 = once; 3 = a few times; 4 = several times; 5 = many times). Only proverbs that had a mean familiarity rating of less than two were included on the PCT. Unfamiliar proverbs were presented in order to examine the ability of young people to interpret the expressions actively as opposed to recalling their meanings from past learning experiences. On the PCT, each proverb was presented in a brief story context. The students read the stories and selected the best interpretation of the proverb from a set of four multiplechoice answers. Proverbs were presented in stories rather than in isolation because studies have shown that context is important for proverbs to be understood (Nippold et al., 1988; Resnick, 1982). A written task requiring students to read and understand passages, rather than an orally presented task, was employed to be consistent with the types of assessment procedures that are used commonly in contemporary middle school and high school classrooms. Also in the Nippold et al. (2000) study, students were administered the Word Knowledge Task (WKT). This was a written multiple-choice task that examined knowledge of the nouns contained in each proverb (20 concrete and 20 abstract nouns). It was of interest to determine if knowledge of these key words was related to comprehension of the corresponding proverb. Performance on the PCT improved with each successive age group, and accuracy scores of 56%, 70%, and 83%, respectively, were achieved by the 12-, 15-, and 18-yearolds. For each group of students, concrete proverbs were easier than abstract proverbs, concrete nouns were easier than abstract nouns, and knowledge of the nouns contained in the proverbs was important for comprehending the expressions, particularly for abstract proverbs. In the Nippold et al. (2000) study, the 12-year-olds showed the greatest amount of variance in comprehending the proverbs, with accuracy scores ranging from 15% to 95% on the PCT. The present study was designed to learn more about the variance and individual differences in this group of preadolescents, with the expectation that the findings would offer useful implications for teaching proverbs to middle school students. As mentioned above, performance on the PCT was closely associated with knowledge of the nouns contained in the proverbs for all three age groups, including the preadolescents. Therefore, performance on the WKT should explain some of the individual differences in proverb comprehension. Past research had also shown that performance on reading-based tasks of figurative understanding was associated with measures of reading proficiency in youth (Nippold et al., 1998; Nippold & Martin, 1989; Seidenberg & Bernstein, 1988). This suggests that it would be useful to examine the

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preadolescents’ performance on the PCT in relation to their scores on a school-administered test of reading proficiency. It also had been shown that the ability to reason by analogy was associated with proverb understanding in youth (Nippold et al., 1988; Resnick, 1982), constituting a third variable to consider in this study. Analogical reasoning was of particular interest because it offers a bridge between the linguistic context in which the proverb occurs and the words contained in the expression, representing the dynamic interplay between top-down and bottom-up processes proposed by Burgess and Chiarello (1996) in their theory of figurative language comprehension. Consider the proverb, the rolling stone gathers no moss, applied to a family that frequently moves and is therefore unable to establish lasting attachments. To understand this expression, one must realize how the family is being likened to a stone that does not stay in one place long enough to acquire a thick covering of moss. Rewritten as a formal analogy, it becomes: stone : moss :: family : attachments. This suggests that analogical reasoning may be relevant. In summary, past research has shown that proverb comprehension in youth is associated with knowledge of the nouns contained in the expressions, reading proficiency, and the ability to reason by analogy. However, no studies examined all three factors—word knowledge, reading proficiency, and analogical reasoning—in the same group of students. Hence, the present investigation was designed to do just that. Preadolescents were the focus because this is a stage when rapid growth occurs in proverb comprehension along with wide individual differences. These conditions provide a rich opportunity for learning how proverb comprehension develops and how it might be enhanced in students who have difficulty understanding these expressions.

METHOD Participants The participants were 42 of the 50 (84%) Grade 6 students who had participated in the Nippold et al. (2000) study. They included 24 boys and 18 girls who were attending a public middle school in a rural community of western Oregon that served families from lower-middle to low-income neighborhoods. The ethnic background of the school district is approximately 88% Caucasian, 6% Hispanic, and 6% other (e.g., American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, African American) or nondeclared. All students who participated in the study were native speakers of general American English. No formal testing of speech or language skills was conducted as part of this project. However, classroom teachers reported that no students had any known deficits in speech, language, learning, or cognition. No students were receiving special education services, and all were of the appropriate chronological age for their grade level. The group had a mean age of 12:2 (years:months) (range = 11:3–12:10). Students were drawn from two different classrooms. All students were asked to participate unless their parents, who had been informed in writing of the nature of the study, indicated on

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a signed consent form that they did not want their child to participate. Participation exceeded 90% in each classroom. Of the original 50 participants, these 42 students were selected for the present study because scaled scores on the Reading/Literature section of the OSA (Oregon Department of Education, 1998) were available from the school district. Scores were unavailable for the remaining eight students for a variety of reasons (e.g., student was new to the district, missed the testing day, etc.). Classroom teachers had administered the OSA to the students the previous academic year when they were enrolled in Grade 5. The OSA is required for public school students in Oregon as part of a statewide program to monitor their progress in meeting academic standards. On Reading/ Literature, the Grade 5 test requests students to read passages of fiction and nonfiction and to answer multiplechoice questions designed to measure (a) word knowledge; (b) literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension; (c) the ability to locate information (e.g., to use a table of contents); (d) recognition of various literary forms (e.g., short stories, plays, poems); and (e) the ability to analyze literary elements, such as plots, settings, and figurative expressions (e.g., metaphors, similes, personification). Reading/Literature scaled scores can range from 150 to 300. As a group, the 42 students earned a mean scaled score of 221 (SD = 10.12; range = 198–242), which placed them at the 53rd percentile for fifth-grade students enrolled in Oregon public schools during the 1997–1998 academic year (Oregon Department of Education, 1998). Individually, their performance ranged from the 3rd to the 97th percentile. Because the mean scaled score was nearly identical to the state average for Grade 5 that year (i.e., 220), the group was considered to be a representative sample. The performance of boys and girls did not differ on this test [t (40) = -0.36, p = .72]. To examine proverb comprehension as a function of reading proficiency, the students were assigned to subgroups based on their performance on Reading/Literature. Students who scored at the 50th percentile or higher were labeled the “proficient readers” (n = 24), and those who scored below the 50th percentile were labeled the “less proficient readers” (n = 18).

Procedures All students completed a PCT, a WKT, and a Perceptual Analogies Task (PAT). The tasks were administered in large-group fashion by one of the investigators during regularly scheduled classes at school. Large-group testing, using written rather than orally presented tasks, was employed because these conditions are used commonly with middle school and high school students. Because the classes were held in 70-minute blocks, students completed all three tasks during a single block, but were given a short break between tasks. The tasks were administered in an ordered fashion, with half the students receiving the tasks in one sequence (i.e., WKT–PAT–PCT), and half receiving them in a different one (i.e., PCT–PAT–WKT). Students were instructed to work quietly and not to share answers with classmates. They were cooperative and appeared to be interested in the activities. All students

S CHOOLS • Vol. 32 • 90–100 • April 2001

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answered all questions on all three tasks; hence, there were no missing data. PCT. The PCT, used in the previous study (Nippold et al., 2000), contained 20 proverb problems in a written multiple-choice format, which the students read silently. Each proverb consisted of an independent clause of five to seven words that contained two nouns. Half of the proverbs were concrete in that their nouns referred to physical entities (e.g., every bird must hatch its own eggs); the other half were abstract in that their nouns referred to psychological entities (e.g., gratitude is a heavy burden). Each proverb was preceded by a story of three sentences. In the fourth and final sentence, the proverb was spoken by a character in the story. Students answered questions about the meaning of the proverb by selecting the best interpretation of it from four answer choices. The 20 problems were presented in random order. Examples of problems for each proverb type are shown in Appendix A. The task was written at the fifth grade reading level (Fry, 1968). In the previous study (Nippold et al., 2000), the PCT was subjected to a construct validity measure, which indicated that it was necessary to interpret the proverbs in order to perform acceptably on the task, as opposed to being able simply to read the stories and the answer choices. Had the validity measure not been performed, it would be impossible to know if the PCT were truly a measure of proverb comprehension or simply one of reading comprehension. In that same investigation, the test– retest reliability of the PCT was measured by administering it on two occasions (separated by 5 weeks) to a subgroup of the participants. The results indicated adequate test– retest reliability (r = .87, p < .0001) for purposes of group administration (Salvia & Ysseldyke, 1981). To introduce the PCT, the examiner presented two practice problems while the students followed along in their test booklets. The practice problems were written in the same style and format as the test problems. After presenting a practice problem, the examiner asked the class for the best answer. The examiner provided corrective feedback to the class for each practice problem. Before beginning the test problems, students were told that, if they experienced difficulty reading any words, they should raise their hand and the examiner would come to their desk and pronounce those words for them. Only a few students requested this assistance, and no words proved to be especially difficult. No other assistance was provided. WKT. The WKT, also used in the previous study (Nippold et al., 2000), was a written multiple-choice task that examined students’ understanding of the 20 concrete (e.g., bird, eggs) and 20 abstract (gratitude, burden) nouns contained in the PCT. For each problem, the key word was followed by a set of four possible definitions, one of which best described the word. All answer choices were written in the Aristotelian style—a formal definition that contains the category to which the word belongs and one or more key features of it. This type of definition was used because it is concise and informative. Appendix B contains examples of problems for both types of nouns. The 40 problems were presented in random order. As with the PCT, the test–retest reliability of the WKT was measured in the previous study

by administering it on two occasions (separated by 5 weeks) to a subgroup of the participants. Once again, the results indicated adequate test–retest reliability (r = .72, p < .002) for purposes of group administration (Salvia & Ysseldyke, 1981). Before beginning the test problems, students were given a practice problem to ensure that they understood the procedures. The practice problem was written in the same style and format as the test problems. The class was asked to answer the practice problem aloud, and the examiner confirmed the correct choice. Students were told that if they experienced difficulty reading any words, they should raise their hand and the examiner would come to their desk and pronounce those words for them. Only a few students requested this assistance, and no words proved to be especially difficult. No other assistance was provided. PAT. Each student was administered the Figure Analogies subtest from the nonverbal battery of the LorgeThorndike Intelligence Tests (Lorge & Thorndike, 1957), Level 5. The task consisted of 30 perceptual analogy problems of the form, A : B :: C : ___, where the items represented by the letters were complex geometric drawings. Each problem contained a missing fourth item (D). From a choice of five options, the student was asked to select the one that best completed the visual analogy. For example, one of the problems displayed a white square with a black dot in the center (A); a white square with two black dots, angled diagonally from the left corner (B); and a white square with three black dots, angled diagonally from the left corner (C). The correct choice (D) was a white square with four black dots, angled diagonally from the left corner. Foils included white squares with a variable number of black dots, angled in different directions. A nonverbal task of analogical reasoning, rather than a verbal one, was employed to avoid potentially confounding factors such as world knowledge and vocabulary level. Performance on nonverbal analogy tasks is predictive of verbal analogical reasoning (Lorge, Thorndike, & Hagen, 1966; Nippold & Sullivan, 1987). The technical manual for the Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Tests (Lorge & Thorndike, 1957) reported adequate construct validity for the nonverbal battery. For example, when administered at Grade 6, the test was strongly correlated with the California Mental Maturity (r = .82, p < .0001), Kuhlmann-Anderson (r = .77, p < .0001), and Otis (r = .74, p < .0001) nonverbal batteries (p. 13). The manual also reported adequate reliability for Level 5 of the Lorge-Thorndike, using alternate forms of the nonverbal battery (r = .85, p < .0001) (p. 7). These results are considered to be very acceptable for the purposes of reporting group data (Salvia & Ysseldyke, 1981). To introduce the task, the examiner presented two practice problems from the PAT and read the printed directions aloud as the students followed along in their test booklets. After each practice problem was presented, the class was asked to call out the best answer. The examiner confirmed that choice and explained why it was correct. Students were encouraged to ask any questions they had about the task. After they indicated that they understood the procedures, the examiner asked them to begin working

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on the task and to attempt all problems. No further assistance was provided.

used to measure the amount of shared variance between the factors. For concrete proverbs, the r2 values were .31 for reading, .00 for concrete nouns, .34 for abstract nouns, and .49 for analogies. For abstract proverbs, those values were .38 for reading, .03 for concrete nouns, .49 for abstract nouns, and .34 for analogies. Thus, the amount of shared variance was moderate (.30) to large (.50) in every case except for concrete proverbs and concrete nouns, which did not overlap. To learn more about individual differences in preadolescents’ proverb comprehension, the performance of the two subgroups of proficient and less proficient readers was examined, with their scores reported in Table 3. Six independent t tests (with Bonferroni corrections for multiple t tests; adjusted α = .01) yielded statistically significant adjusted effects for concrete proverbs [t (40) = 3.66, p = .0007], abstract proverbs [t (40) = 3.61, p = .0008], abstract nouns [t (40) = 4.10, p = .0002], analogies [t (40) = 3.19, p = .0027], and reading [t (40) = 9.18, p = .0001], but not for concrete nouns [t (40) = 1.84, p = .07]. To determine the magnitude of the differences between groups, and hence the generalizability of the results to the larger population, Cohen’s d effect size was computed. The results were as follows: concrete proverbs (d = 1.00), abstract proverbs (d = .99), abstract nouns (d = 1.09), analogies (d = .90), and reading (d = 1.64). Based on standards of behavioral research (Cohen, 1988), all effect sizes were large.

RESULTS Three independent t tests (with Bonferroni corrections for multiple t tests; adjusted α = .02) to compare the performance of boys and girls yielded no statistically significant adjusted differences on any tasks [PCT: t (40) = 1.52, p = .14; WKT: t (40) = 0.86, p = .40; PAT: t (40) = 0.48, p = .63]. Table 1 reports the performance of the entire group, with each type of proverb and noun shown separately. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were calculated between each of the variables, using the raw scores each student had obtained on each experimental measure and the scaled scores they had obtained on the Reading/Literature section of the OSA (Oregon Department of Education, 1998). As shown in Table 2, concrete proverbs were significantly correlated with abstract proverbs (r = .71, p < .0001), abstract nouns (r = .58, p < .0001), analogies (r = .70, p < .0001), and reading (r = .56, p < .0001), but not with concrete nouns (r = .04, p > .05). It also can be seen that abstract proverbs were significantly correlated with abstract nouns (r = .70, p < .0001), analogies (r = .58, p < .0001), and reading (r = .62, p < .0001); abstract nouns were significantly correlated with concrete nouns (r = .49, p < .001), analogies (r = .53, p < .001), and reading (r = .68, p