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S0242 · bormuth_1966_readability_approach · registry identity

Readability, a New Approach

Bormuth · 1966
study independent3 occurrences across 1 book · load 3

Every occurrence, grouped by book and chapter, with the claim it was linked to support and (where the extraction regenerated one) the underlying warrant.

1977 · The Philosophy of Composition
Bormuth's 1966 study finding that relationships between language variables and difficulty are often non-linear (curvilinear).
related The primary goal of refining readability formulas is to achieve predictive validity using the simplest possible mathematical variables.
ch 3 · empirical_study · poc:ch3_E18
Bormuth's research showing that the relationship between reading difficulty and readability formula traits is inconstant.
related Standard readability formulas fail to address the central issues of learning to write readable prose.
ch 3 · empirical_study · poc:ch3_E20
Bormuth's findings that readability improvements are consistent across different skill levels of readers (fast vs slow, neophyte vs expert).
direct Relative readability is a stable property across different types of readers, including slow and fast readers or neophytes and experts.
ch 3 · empirical_study · poc:ch3_E22
Warrant (explicit): The cognitive mechanisms governing the ease of linguistic processing are uniform across different levels of prior knowledge and reading speed.
could fail ifDomain-specific vocabulary may create a 'bottleneck' for neophytes that does not exist for experts, making the relative difficulty of two texts dependent on the reader's background knowledge.

As they appeared before normalization/consolidation into this source identity.

  • Bormuth (1966)
  • J. R. Bormuth, 'New Developments in Readability Research,' 1967
  • J. R. Bormuth, 'Readability, a New Approach,' 1966