Eye Survey

TESTS FOR ALL JUNIORS PART OF PLAN TO IMPROVE READING SKILL

FURTHER STEPS in the College's three-year-old program to improve the reading skill of the student body will be taken throughout the current semester by means of free eye examinations for some 300 members of the junior class who have not already undergone complete ocular tests at the Dartmouth Eye Institute.

Possible relationships between reading ability, visual efficiency, and scholastic achievement are questions which Prof. Robert M. Bear of the Psychology Department and staff members of the Eye Institute hope to answer through their survey. If complete eye examinations were demanded of all entering students, would there be less failures in college? Would students be able to accomplish more in courses requiring much reading? If special remedial sections were provided for the purpose of improving speed and comprehension in reading, would students profit more from their stay at college?

CLASSES TEACH SPEEDED READING

Through the remedial side of the program conducted by Professor Bear since the Class of 1940 entered college much has already been accomplished in speeding up the reading ability of individual students and in improving their grasp of the ideas in the words they read. Each year some 200 students, most of them freshmen, participate in the half-semester reading groups which meet voluntarily twice a week for a total of 10 to 12 hour periods. Last year 206 men participated, 175 of whom were freshmen and 31 upperclassmen. Of the total, approximately one-half did the work entirely on their own initiative, one-fourth had their low reading ability brought to their attention with the request that they participate, and the remaining one-fourth had attendance suggested to them because of scholastic difficulty in reading courses of the curriculum.

At the outset of the program in 1936 there arose the question of the possible relation of visual defects to reading disability, so the Dartmouth Eye Institute joined in the studies being made. The Institute was not only willing to cooperate in a program considered highly important by the College, but it also wished to further its investigations of certain conditions in the physiology of the eye and the relationships of such conditions to reading disability and academic failure, as well as to evaluate certain of its clinical practices. Henry A. Imus, Research Fellow in Physiological Optics, has been mainly responsible for this research side of the Dartmouth visual survey, which has now become one of the important projects of the Eye Institute. Dr. J. W. M. Rothney of Harvard University was invited to act as coordinator of the entire project.

Each of the 636 members of the entering class of 1936, the Class of 1940, was given a visual examination which included an investigation of refraction, tests of the balance of ocular muscles, and a survey test of aniseikonia, the defect discovered by the Dartmouth Eye Institute in which the ocular images of the two eyes are of unequal size and shape. These examinations disclosed that g per cent of the Class of 1940 had severe defects and another 27 per cent moderate defects or defectively corrective glasses, while 36 per cent had no defects or were using the proper correction and 28 per cent had only mild defects or slightly improper corrections. Complete eye examinations were given to same 200 members of the Class of 1940 following these early tests, and under the program to be carried out this semester and perhaps during part of next year, it is planned to give a complete examination to all the other members of the Class of 1940.

Although the Institute's findings showed no definite relationship between ocular defects and reading disability, 58 of the 76 students to whom glasses were given re- ported that they were helped in their reading ability and college work.

As part of the complete test given at the Dartmouth Eye Institute the eye-movements of the reader are photographed by the Ophthalm-O-Graph. This is a binocular camera which has a movable film on which is recorded the coordinated movements of the eyes during the act of reading. From the film records it is possible to obtain, by counting, the number of fixations or pauses in reading a line of print and the number of regressions or backward glances. Since the film is moved by means of a constant speed motor, it is also possible to determine the rate of reading in words per minute. In diagnosis of reading ability, however, the eye-movement camera has not been found completely reliable.

In the remedial sections conducted by Professor Bear the speed of reading is computed by having the student warm up with several pages and then read for three minutes, reading for the principal ideas rather than word by word. His rate is computed and recorded on his individual graph, and the class average for the day is also computed and recorded on a graph. Test questions are available for the student who wishes to check himself on how well he grasped the thought. Instruction in the mechanics of reading includes information about the behavior of eyes and voice, and attention is also given to note-taking and vocabulary development.

Evaluation of the remedial programs through retesting in the Class of 1940 showed that when the remedial and untrained groups were compared, the former was found to score 7.8 higher in comprehension, 7.9 points higher in rate, and 37.7 more words read per minute. During the period between the original tests and retesting there were 26 per cent more of the remedial group who gained in number of words read per minute and 26 per cent fewer who lost in the speed of reading. It was also shown that understanding of the words did not suffer as a result of increased speed. On the negative side, the remedial program has shown that increased speed in reading does not always guarantee gain in comprehension in reading or improvement in college grades, just as the Eye Institute tests have shown that the correction of ocular defects does not always guarantee immediate improvement in reading or in academic work.

HEADS READING PROGRAM Prof. Robert M. Bear of the Psychology department, who for three years has directedremedial efforts to improve the readingspeed and skill of Dartmouth students.