Purpose: Bioecological theory suggests that development, including reading development, occurs through interactions between individuals and proximal environmental contexts, though neighborhood characteristics are often... [ view full abstract ]
Purpose: Bioecological theory suggests that development, including reading development, occurs through interactions between individuals and proximal environmental contexts, though neighborhood characteristics are often underrepresented within studies of proximal processes on reading outcomes. The present study sought to further knowledge of the environmental influences on reading comprehension by proposing several hypothesized risk and protective aspects of the neighborhood environment and using a novel combination of techniques to explore their association with reading comprehension.
Methods: Participants were obtained from the longitudinal Florida Twin Project on Reading and included 2215 twin pairs (751 MZ, 1464 DZ). Reading comprehension data from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) standardized assessment and family-level SES were obtained for the 2013-2014 school year. Community-level SES was obtained from 2015 U.S. census data. Geocoding techniques were used to determine Euclidean distance between twin’s homes and several hypothesized positive and negative neighborhood features (i.e. parks, libraries, factories, shelters). Next, using a model which estimates the proportion of variance in reading predicted by a measured aspect of neighborhood quality, while simultaneously estimating A, C, and E, we examined whether distance to neighborhood characteristics accounted for a portion of the shared environmental influences on reading comprehension. Results & Discussion: Results indicated that of the proposed neighborhood features, distance to shelters was the sole predictor of reading comprehension after accounting for family- and community-level SES. Additionally, distance to shelters explained a small, yet significant proportion of shared environmental influences (.01), suggesting shelters may create environmental conditions such as disorder or chaos in the neighborhood which could have important consequences for children’s reading. Chaos in the nearby, external environment may influence children’s reading through noise, disruption and distraction, potentially influencing children’s ability to concentrate while reading or limiting the time children engage in reading at home.
Developmental Disorders (e.g. ADHD) , Other
