A Comparison of Bayesian and Traditional Indices for Measuring Information Gain Sensitivity in a Cloze Test

Abstract

Standardized reading comprehension tests have been criticized for their inability to assess what a reader has gleaned from the passage during the reading process (Tuinman, 1973). Tuinman reported scores as high as 65 percent correct on multiple-choice comprehension tests which subjects answered without having had access to the passages on which the questions were based. Tuinman’s paper, among others, has caused reading researchers to focus on the distinction between comprehension and information gain (IG). In general, the concept of IG involves comparing the reader’s state of knowledge before and after reading the test passage. One method of assessing IG, suggested by Coleman and Miller (1967), is to obtain percent correct cloze scores before and after the subjects have had an opportunity to read the test passage in its original, unmutilated form; the difference between the posttest scores and the pretest scores is considered to be the IG score.