Valutazione delle competenze di lettura e comprensione in età adulta: il parametro dell’efficacia di lettura

The assessment of reading skills (speed, accuracy and comprehension) has always been a topic of great interest in clinical, pedagogical and educationalsettings (Cornoldi & Carretti, 2016; Montesano, Valenti & Cornoldi, 2020).Current diagnostic assessment, in accordance with the Consensus Document andthe Guidelines issued by the Italian Health Authorities, includes theadministration of tests that consider the parameters of speed and accuracyseparately from those of comprehension. This modality seems to be veryeffective in diagnosis, yet not totally appropriate in the educational field, whereit is very important to consider these abilities jointly. Competent readers can balance reading speed and comprehension needs, adapting their readingstrategies to the nature of the texts and the aims of reading (Santulli & Scagnelli,2019). Starting from these considerations, the authors propose to consider aparameter used in Anglo-Saxon testing (and already experimented during theSuper Reading course): Reading Effectiveness (RE). RE allows the jointassessment of reading speed in silent mode and reading comprehension, and isparticularly useful when testing young adults (Cole, 2009; Cooper, 2009a,2009b). Previous research conducted on this parameter has highlighted its addedvalue in measuring reading proficiency in young adults. Though the Authorsrecognize the importance of measuring decoding (speed and accuracy) andcomprehension abilities separately in a clinical context, they believe that RE canbe an interesting measure in the academic context. Specifically, RE has theadvantage of allowing an ecological and integrated measurement of silentreading speed and comprehension. However, it has a limitation: in the formulaadopted to calculate its value, the time variable has a greater weight than thecomprehension variable (Scagnelli, Della Beffa & Santulli, 2019). As a matterof fact, while there is no limit to reading time, the maximum level ofcomprehension is 100 per cent (Scagnelli, Della Beffa & Santulli, 2019),determining a ceiling effect. Therefore, the Authors aimed to verify how REchanges when modifying the way the tests are administered, namely putting alimit to reading time. The research hypothesis is that there are no differences inRE when the protocol of administration is modified. Should this hypothesis beconfirmed, the effectiveness of RE would be further supported, as this parameterwould preserve its robustness in assessing reading abilities. Reading tests were thus administered in two different ways, in order torebalance the weight of the time variable: the tests were administered in onecase without providing a time limit, in the second case with a time limit. Theresults obtained with a population of 73 college students confirm the usefulnessof the reading effectiveness parameter, as an ecological and reliable mode ofassessment in the educational context