Transfer effects across contextual and linguistic boundaries: evidence from poor readers.

We report two experiments that are consistent with two hypotheses about poor, nonfluent readers: (1) fluency gains in text reading skill transfer across contextual and linguistic boundaries and (2) these fluency gains enable higher-order comprehension operations to function in the processing of text. We conclude that unlike the fluent reader, the nonfluent reader does not completely integrate the surface characteristics (words) of the text and the message of the text. Word-level representations remain free to support transfer across various processing episodes. Thus, a variety of reading experiences aimed at promoting word recognition fluency will provide benefits to the developing reader. Copyright 1998 Academic Press.