To read or not to read

There is a widely held belief that reading (story)books makes us smarter and helps promote success in life. Does scientific evidence support this notion? The three meta-analyses in this thesis comprise 146 studies between 1988 and 2010 (N=10,308 participants) that addressed the role of book reading in language and reading development from infancy to early adulthood. Chapter 2 shows that reading routines that are part of children’s and students’ leisure-time activities offer substantial advantages for the development of language, reading, and spelling proficiency and academic success. The finding that leisure-time reading becomes increasingly more important across education seems natural: Because more skilled readers are more likely to enjoy books, they will choose to read more frequently which, in turn, will improve knowledge of word forms and semantics and enhance vocabulary size and text comprehension abilities. It appears from intervention studies comprising 2-6 year old children that it makes sense to invest in improvement of the quality of adult-child book sharing. Training parents or preschool and kindergarten teachers intensively in interactive reading techniques (e.g., dialogic reading programs) appears to be a promising venue to expand pre-conventional readers’ oral language (see chapters 3 and 4) as well as knowledge about the basics of reading (see chapter 4).LEI Universiteit LeidenGedragsveranderingen bij leerlingen en hun lerare

International perspectives on understanding and improving teachers’ data-based instruction and decision making: introduction to the special series

Education and Child Studie

Reading pictures for story comprehension requires mental imagery skills

  We examined the role of mental imagery skills on story comprehension in 150 fifth graders (10- to 12-year-olds), when reading a narrative book chapter with alternating words and pictures (i.e., text blocks were alternated by one- or two-page picture spreads). A parallel group design was used, in which we compared our experimental book version, in which pictures were used to replace parts of the corresponding text, to two control versions, i.e., a text-only version and a version with the full story text and all pictures. Analyses showed an interaction between mental imagery and book version: children with higher mental imagery skills outperformed children with lower mental imagery skills on story comprehension after reading the experimental narrative. This was not the case for both control conditions. This suggests that children’s mental imagery skills significantly contributed to the mental representation of the story that they created, by successfully integrating information from both words and pictures. The results emphasize the importance of mental imagery skills for explaining individual variability in reading development. Implications for educational practice are that we should find effective ways to instruct children how to "read" pictures and how to develop and use their mental imagery skills. This will probably contribute to their mental models and therefore their story comprehension. Development Psychopathology in context: clinical setting

Design principles for professionalizing primary school teachers on promoting reading motivation

Development Psychopathology in context: clinical setting

Pre-service teachers' reader profiles: stability and change throughout teacher education

1900120NEducation and Child Studie

Immediate postoperative high-sensitivity troponin T concentrations and long-term patient-reported

BACKGROUND: Myocardial injury after noncardiac surgery is associated with mortality and major adverse postoperative cardiovascular events. The effect of postoperative troponin concentrations on patient-reported health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is unknown. OBJECTIVE: The study examined the association between immediate postoperative troponin concentrations and self-reported HRQoL 1 year after surgery. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Single-centre tertiary care hospital in the Netherlands between July 2012 and 2015. PATIENTS: Patients aged at least 60 years undergoing moderate and major noncardiac surgery.None. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: HRQoL total score was assessed with the EuroQol five-dimensional questionnaire. Tobit regression analysis was used to determine the association between postoperative troponin concentrations and 1-year HRQoL. Peak high-sensitivity troponin T values were divided into four categories: less than 14, 14 to 49, 50 to 149 and at least 150 ng l. RESULTS: A total of 3085 patients with troponin measurements were included. 2634 (85.4%) patients were alive at 1-year follow-up of whom 1297 (49.2%) returned a completed questionnaire. The median score for HRQoL was 0.82 (0.85, 0.81, 0.77 and 0.71 per increasing troponin category). Multivariable analysis revealed betas of -0.06 [95% confidence interval (CI) -0.09 to -0.02], -0.11 (95% CI -0.18 to -0.04) and -0.18 (95% CI -0.29 to -0.07) for troponin levels of 14 to 49, 50 to 149 and at least 150 ng l when compared with values less than 14 ng l. Other independent predictors for lower HRQoL were chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, female sex, peripheral arterial disease and increasing age. CONCLUSION: Higher levels of postoperative troponin measured immediately after surgery were independently associated with lower self-reported HRQoL total score at 1-year follow-up

Postoperative troponin release is associated with major adverse cardiovascular events in the first year after noncardiac surgery

_Introduction:_ Troponin elevations after intermediate-to-high risk noncardiac surgery are common and can predict mortality. However, the prognostic value for early and late major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) is less well investigated. The authors evaluated the relationship between postoperative troponin release and MACE in the first year after noncardiac surgery. _Methods:_ This observational cohort registry comprised data of patients aged ≥60 years undergoing intermediateto-high risk noncardiac surgery between July 2012 and 2015, at the Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotter