Test for reading skills assessment in adults: LEXIMETR

One of the most famous trajectories of work in the Center for Language and Brain is the development of testing instruments used in clinical practice to evaluate different language skills. There are some instruments that are devoted to assessing reading skills in children. For instance, the new standardized test KARASIK was designed to evaluate reading in primary school students. However, screening for possible reading difficulties can be done in adults as well, since there are adult people with dyslexia and other reading impairments.

Thus, we decided to create and to standardize a testing instrument assessing reading skills in adults – LEXIMETR. 

Test description

The LEXIMETR test is a linguistically balanced instrument, which involves two parallel texts: “The Landscape” (198 words) and “The Ship” (194 words). These texts have a relatively similar level of linguistic complexity, both texts include sentences of varying syntactic complexity.

The texts are presented in Russian, in sufficient formatting style. Participants can read the text and answer the following questions based on the content of the given text. Thus, the LEXIMETR test can be used to assess reading fluency, reading accuracy and reading comprehension. The second text can be used for a retest later.

LEXIMETR app

This test was designed in two versions – the paper one and the digital one. The digital version is mainly automatized and has its own benefits: it is able to gather demographic information on the participants, it can record the reading audios and the answers to the comprehension questions. Moreover, using the app practitioners can check the audios of reading in the app itself, choose the words that were read correctly, and the indicators for reading fluency and reading accuracy will be measured automatically.

Benefits for practice

The app version of the LEXIMETR test allows practitioners to put less time, effort and tools in reading assessment. This instrument has a user-friendly interface, which facilitates its exploitation with less experience and training.