In a study we conducted involving college students,
we employed an even more stringent test
of whether reading volume is a unique predictor
of verbal skill (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1992).
In this study we examined many of the same
variables as in our study of fourth- to sixth-grade
students. However, we decided to stack the
deck against reading volume by first removing
any contribution of reading ability and general
intelligence. By structuring the analyses in this
way, we did not mean to imply that reading volume
is not a determinant of reading comprehension
ability. Indeed, we argue that there are
grounds for believing that reading volume facilitates
growth in comprehension ability. However,
we wanted to construct the most conservative
analysis possible by deliberately allowing the
comprehension measure to steal some variance
that is rightfully attributed to the measure of