Training reading comprehension in adequate decoders/poor comprehenders: Verbal versus visual strategies

Third through fifth grade adequate decoders who were poor comprehenders were trained for 10 weeks in either the verbally based reciprocal teaching (RT) program (n = 22) or the visually based visualizing/verbalizing (V/V) program (n = 23), or they were assigned to an untreated control group (n = 14). Training reading comprehension strategies in small groups enhanced comprehension as the experimental groups made significant gains on 11 measures, whereas the untreated control group made only 1 significant gain. Between experimental group comparisons (yielding effect sizes > .32) favored the RT group on several measures that depend on explicit, factual material, while the V/V group was favored on several visually mediated measures. Regarding which experimental condition was statistically optimal, the RT group made only 1 significantly greater gain than the V/V group on answering text-explicit open-ended questions.