1. Improving Native American children’s listening comprehension through concrete representations
Presenter: Shiao-Ling Tsai
Instructor: Dr. Pi-Ying Hsu
Date: March 30, 2009

2. Native American Children
American Indian

3. Citation Marley, C. S., Levin, R. J., & Glenberg, M. A.
(2007). Improving Native American children’s
listening comprehension through concrete
representations. Contemporary Educational
Psychology, 32, 3

4. Contents Introduction Method Results & Discussion Reflection I. II.
IV. 4

5. Introduction Humans make sense of their environment
through three modalities:
(Marley, C. S., Levin, R. J., & Glenberg, M. A., 2007)
action
imagery
language 5

6. Introduction Text-relevant motor activity enhance indexing
process, improve students’ ability to generate
visual images to represent the passage’s events,
and have positive cognitive consequences.
(Glenberg, Gutierrez, Levin, Japuntic, & Kaschak, 2004) 6

7. Purpose to determine whether recent findings
documenting the benefits of text-related motor
activity on young children’s memory for reading passages could be extended to the text
processing of Native American children 7

8. Method
Participants
45 Native American 3- through 7-grade students in southwestern United States
3 conditions
Free-study
Visual
Manipulate
15 students
15 students
15 students
Four 12-sentence stories
Toy objects
Materials
Period
Each strategy condition is for 35 minutes. 8

9. Procedure---Strategy 1
Free-study condition
Story 1
Story 2
Story 3
Story 4
listen to
the story
listen to
the story
close eyes
think about
what was
happening
in the story
free recall
think about
story events
think about
story events
cued-recall 9

10. Procedure---Strategy 2
Manipulate condition
Story 1
Story 2
Story 3
Story 4
manipulate toys or
close eyes
manipulate toys
manipulate toys
free recall
close eyes
make pictures
in head about
the story
think about
think about
cued-recall 10

11. Procedure---Strategy 3
Visual condition
Story 1
Story 2
Story 3
Story 4
see the toys
see the toys
see the toys
close eyes
close eyes
close eyes
close eyes
free recall
think about
make pictures
in head
think about
cued-recall 11

12. Results & Discussion
Students’ recall of orally presented text passages
was greatly enhanced by manipulate activity.
A comparable degree of facilitation was produced
by visual representation of story events.
Adjusted mean number of items recalled and cued recall percentages
Story 2
Story 3
Free
study
Visual
manipulate
Free recall
Propositions
5.46
8.92
7.97
5.55
8.34
Objects
9.49
16.88
13.84
9.77
13.97
14.45
Actions
6.60
10.81
8.93
6.49
10.64
10.82
Locations
2.74
4.37
4.26
3.04
4.09
4.24
Cued recall
53.0
77.2
86.2
53.8
78.8
87.0 12

13. Results & Discussion
Adjusted mean number of items recalled and cued recall percentages
Students were not able to produce their own visual
representations for story 4.
Story 4
Free
study
Visual
manipulate
Free recall
Propositions
5.21
3.33
4.30
Objects
9.15
5.97
8.21
Actions
6.21
4.27
5.79
Locations
2.05
1.37
2.07
Cued recall
41.2
38.9
40.9 13

14. Possible explanations
Students had inability to generate text-relevant
visual imagery.
Students did not fully understand the directions.
Students lose attention, interest, and effort. 14

15. Reflection ? ? Are three groups of students at the same level
Is it necessary to conduct the study with 4
stories ? ? 15

16. Thanks for your listening!