Planning facilitation and reading comprehension: Instructional relevance of the pass theory

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether instruction designed to facilitate planning would have differential benefit on reading comprehension depending on the specific Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) cognitive characteristics of each child. A sample of 45 fourth-grade general education children was sorted into three groups based on each PASS scale profile from the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS). The groups did not differ by CAS Full Scale standard score, chronological age, gender, or pretest reading comprehension scores. After each child's pretest reading comprehension instructional level was determined, a cognitive strategy instruction intervention was conducted. The children completed a reading comprehension posttest at their respective instructional levels after the intervention. Results showed that children with a Planning weakness (n = 13) benefited substantially (effect size of 1.52) from the instruction designed to facilitate planning. Children with no weakness (n = 21; effect size = .52) or a Successive weakness (n = 11; effect size of .06) did not benefit as much. These results support previous research suggesting that PASS profiles are relevant to instruction.