A Fact Retrieval Account of the Acceleration Phenomenon

Abstract

Breznitz (J Educ Psychol 89:289–297, 1987a; Fluency in reading: syn- chronization of processes. Erlbaum, Mahwah, 2006) demonstrated that a fading manipulation, which continuously erases text based on the individual reading rate, results in improved reading performance. Several studies using this fading proce- dure showed that children as well as adults with different reading profi ciency levels and in different languages were able to increase their reading rate and reading com- prehension in a fading condition, characterizing the Acceleration Phenomenon. Considering the close interconnection of reading fl uency and reading comprehen- sion, a fact retrieval account for achievement enhancements induced by the fading manipulation is presented in this chapter. It is hypothesized, that if information can be processed at a high level of automaticity and available lexical entries can be accessed rapidly, reading performance can be improved by means of imposing a time limitation. Hence, the nature of the fading manipulation may induce a shift to faster and more elaborated strategies, such as direct fact retrieval, resulting in improved performance. Different empirical outcomes from the reading and the arithmetic domain are demonstrated and the generalizability of the Acceleration Phenomenon across academic domains is discussed.