Young Adult Literacy Problems: Prevalence and Treatment

描述（由申请人提供）：年轻人（18至25岁）的功能性文盲不仅消耗了国家的经济生产力；也有文件表明，它是获得适当保健的一个主要障碍，也是导致抑郁和自杀的一个主要独立风险因素。根据美国国立卫生研究院的申请，这项拟议的研究分为两个主要阶段(1)确定年轻人阅读能力差的普遍程度；(2)比较治疗方案的疗效。后者是通过一种设计来完成的，这种设计将允许在四个领域隔离有效的教学类型，这些领域已知对儿童阅读至关重要，并被怀疑对成人也是如此；(a)语音解码（读出单词）；(b)流畅性(即从字母代码自动“翻译”到声音代码并最终转换为含义；(c)词汇量；(d)文本理解。预计不同类型的教学对具有不同技能优势和劣势的人会有不同的效果。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Functional illiteracy in the young adult population (ages 18 to 25) is not only a drain on the nation's economic productivity; it is also documented as a major obstacle to adequate health care and a major independent risk factor for depression and suicide. The proposed research, responsive to an NIH request for applications, has two major phases (1) determine the prevalence of poor reading skills in the young adult population; and (2) compare treatment regimes for efficacy. The latter is accomplished by a design that will permit the isolation of effective types of instruction in four areas known to be crucial to reading in children, and suspected to be so in adults; (a) phonological decoding (sounding out words), (b) fluency (i.e., automatic "translation" from the letter code to the sound code and ultimately to the meaning; (c) vocabulary; and (d) text comprehension. It is expected that the different types of instruction will be differentially effective for persons with different skill profiles of strength and weakness.