Reading Comprehension for Nonfiction Versus Fiction Books

The Accelerated Reader software, according to this study, offers computerized comprehension quizzes of real books individually chosen by children, giving children (and teachers, librarians, and parents) feedback on performance. Children can also express preferences for books they enjoy. Quizzes taken by 150,220 children in 967 schools are reported. Considering highly preferred books, children were reading very difficult books with a high degree of success. Non-fiction books were not read or understood as carefully as fiction books. Implications for future research and practice are outlined as well.

Topping, K. J. (2014). Fiction and non-fiction reading and comprehension in preferred books. Reading Psychology, 36(4), 350-387. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2013.865692

Common Core Reading and Writing Status

Nationally, teachers in grades 4-10 have shifted practices dramatically on vocabulary and assigning nonfiction, but they've struggled with some of the other shifts in those standards—most notably the tenet of having students of all reading abilities to grapple with grade-level texts. Most teachers now teach new words in the context of reading and conversation.Teachers continue to choose reading-level, not grade-level, texts. Evidence-based reading is common, but writing lags. Fiction reading is on the decline. To help ELA teachers, the report recommends organizing lessons around "text sets," or groups of texts on a theme or topic that are scaffolded in difficulty for students and help build background knowledge.
Griffith, D., & Duffett, A. (2018). Reading and writing instruction in America's schools. Washington, DC: T. B. Fordham Institute. https://edexcellence.net/publications/reading-and-writing-instruction-in-americas-schools

Role-play helps boots persistence

Young students who pretend to be fictional characters associated with persistence, such as Batman, Dora the Explorer or Bob the Builder, may stay more focused during repetitive tasks than peers who do not pretend, according to a study in child development.
White, R. (2016).  The Batman effect: Improving perseverance in young children.  Child Development (Dec.). DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12695

Research on the value of fictoin

Mar and Rain (2015) reported on four different studies in which university students were asked how much fiction and nonfiction they read and also took an author recognition test for fiction and nonfiction reading material.  Results were similar for both measures: The amount of fiction read was a consistent (but modest) predictor of various measures of verbal ability, including a test of synonyms (vocabulary) and reading comprehension.

The amount of nonfiction read was a consistently weaker predictor of verbal ability.

 

Mar, R. and Rain, M. 2015.  Narrative fiction and expository nonfiction differentially predict verbal ability. Scientific Studies of Reading 19: 419-433

 

Krashen, S. 2015. The great fiction/nonfiction Debate (with the title Fact or Fiction: The Plot Thickens). Language Magazine, November.

http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=124655

Fiction/nonfiction debate

There is strong pressure for American schools to de-emphasize fiction and focus more on nonfiction, because of the belief that nonfiction provides more "academic" language. But studies suggest that fiction may be the bridge between everyday conversational language and academic language. Self-selected reading, which is largely fiction, provides us with the literacy development and background knowledge that makes demanding texts more comprehensible.  Studies also show that fiction exposes readers to other views of the world and increases the ability to deal with uncertainty, which is crucial for problem-solving. 

Krashen, S. 2015. The Great Fiction/Nonfiction Debate. (Published as: Fact or fiction? The plot thickens.) Language Magazine, 15(3): 22-27.  Available at: http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=124655 and

http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles.php?cat=2.

Reading benefits research

Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies. Yet little research has investigated what fosters this skill, which is known as Theory of Mind (ToM), in adults. The researchers conducted five experiments showing that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective ToM (experiments 1 to 5) and cognitive ToM (experiments 4 and 5) compared with reading nonfiction (experiments 1), popular fiction (experiments 2 to 5), or nothing at all (experiments 2 and 5). Specifically, these results show that reading literary fiction temporarily enhances ToM. More broadly, they suggest that ToM may be influenced by engagement with works of art.
Kidd, D., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science 18 October 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6156 pp. 377-380  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/377.short

There is also an interesting Press Release about this research from the New School in New York City:
http://www.newschool.edu/pressroom/pressreleases/2013/CastanoKidd.htm

The article and the press release both refer to ToM Theory of Mind.  Here is a brief description of what this term actually means:  http://www.howstuffworks.com/theory-of-mind.htm 

Another older piece of research:
Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds.  Authors:  Raymond A. Mar,  Keith Oatley,  Jacob Hirsh,  Jennifer dela Paz,  Jordan B. Peterson. published by the University of Toronto in 2006. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009265660500053X