Empirical Evidence for Text and Reader Interaction in Fourth Grade Accelerated Students: Is Reading Literacy a Criterion for Academic Acceleration

the most important learning needs of students are reading and reading comprehension skills and it is expected that accelerated and gifted students will have an acceptable performance in these skills. In this study, reading comprehension of 3 participants group evaluated that including: 1) accelerated students (N=128, females 53 and males 75), 2) non-accelerated students with the same age but in different grade (N=122, females 50 and males 72) and 3) non-accelerated students in the same grade but different age (N=114, females 47 and males 67).participants were matched based on their general intelligence, gender, educational level and occupation of the parents and the social-economic status. Reading comprehension was assessed in two informational and literary domains by two stories, the Ant and the Giraffes, from the International Study on PIRLS Literacy (2001, 2006). The data were analyzed using a mixed-design analysis of variance model. The results indicated that reading and reading comprehension performances were not significantly different between the three groups. There was no sex difference in reading and reading comprehension performances. The implications of the findings for educational policymakers, planners, and users were discussed.