But if a text concerned a familiar topic, habitually poor readers ought to read like good readers. In one experiment, third graders — some identified by a reading test as good readers, some as poor — were asked to read a passage about soccer. Scores on this general knowledge test were highly associated with reading test scores. Don’t blame the internet, or smartphones, or fake news for Americans’ poor reading. Underlying all these changes must be a better understanding of how the mind comprehends what it reads.

Source: New York Times November 25, 2017 19:30 UTC