Note on reading acquisition: an extension of laboratory principles.
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In Experiment 1, the performance of young retarded readers on speech-segmentation tasks was compared with the performance of normal subjects matched for chronological age (CA) and with subjects matched for reading age (RA). Retarded readers were poorer than both control groups in consonant deletion, while there was no difference between the groups on a rhyme-judgement task and a syllabic-vowel-reproduction task. In Experiment 2, another group of reading retarded children was compared with CA and RA controls on the classification of pseudo-words, either by common phoneme or by overall phonetic similarity. The retarded readers made fewer classifications based on common phoneme than both control groups, while there was no difference between the groups in classifications based on overall phonetic similarity. In Experiment 3, adult developmental dyslexics were compared with normal adults in the tasks of Experiments 1 and 2. The dyslexics made fewer classifications based on a common phoneme than the normals, while no difference was found in classifications based on overall phonetic similarity.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the power of early measures of phonological skills (phonemic awareness, rapid naming, short-term memory) in predicting later reading skills at various points of time. About 70 children were followed from the end of kindergarten to the middle of grade 2. Correlation analyses were performed as well as a linear growth curve analyses. In the traditional regression analysis, phonemic awareness in kindergarten explained about 27% of the variance in word reading six months later and about 9.5% of the variance at the end of grade 1. Even when prior level of reading skill was included in the predictive equation, a significant amount of variance was still explained by phonemic awareness. The other predictor variables did not explain any variance in word reading, and phonemic awareness did not predict any variance in reading skills in grade 2. When using sentence reading as the dependent variable, phonemic awareness explained about 16% of unique variance after six months, and about 13% of the variance in the middle of grade 2. Similarly, when employing growth curve analysis, phonemic awareness was the only phonological factor that accounted for significant variance in the word reading slope, explaining about 25% of its variance, whereas naming and short-term memory did not explain any unique variance. The lack of predictive power of phonemic awareness on the sentence b-slope is assumed to be caused by unreliable sentence scores in kindergarten.
Measures of Chinese character/English word recognition, phonological awareness, speeded naming, visual-spatial skill, and processing speed were administered to 190 kindergarten students in Hong Kong and 128 kindergarten and grade 1 students in the United States. Across groups, the strongest predictor of reading itself was phonological awareness; visual processing did not predict reading. For both groups, speed of processing strongly predicted speeded naming, visual processing, and phonological awareness. Despite diversities of culture, language, and orthography to be learned, models of early reading development were remarkably similar across cultures and first and second language orthographies.
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A child with a small, residual "localized" perinatally acquired left hemisphere temporal tip lesion is described. He presents with pure and severe dyslexia and average to high-average cognitive skills, which are usually in the low-average range in patients with developmental dyslexia. A highly circumscribed deficit of rote auditory verbal memory was the only deficit other than the dyslexia; his verbal semantic memory and visuospatial memory were intact. Two previously reported cases present a similar functional profile and lesion locus. This profile indicates that there may exist, at birth, a localized neural network dedicated to "reading acquisition" and that the layout of this network may differ from the systems identified as defective in developmental dyslexia, as well as in cases of acquired dyslexia in adults.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a peer-mediated instructional approach on the teaching of phonological skills and reading comprehension for middle school (sixth- to eighth-grade) students with reading disabilities. All students (n = 38) were identified as having learning disabilities and reading at the third-grade level or below. One group was taught using a peer-mediated phonological skill program, Linguistics Skills Training (LST), and a peer-mediated reading comprehension program, Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS). The contrast group was taught in the more traditional whole-class format using a widely implemented remedial reading program. The results showed significant differences between conditions, with students receiving the LST/PALS instruction outperforming the contrast group on Letter-Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension using the Woodcock-Johnson Test of Achievement-III. Furthermore, large effect sizes for growth were found on Letter-Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension for the LST/PALS treatment group. No differences were found between conditions for reading fluency. Findings are discussed in regard to instruction delivery format (peer tutoring vs. whole class) with respect to best practices for middle school students with reading disabilities.
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Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded at the left and right temporal and parietal sites during a word-naming task in 61 children ranging in age from 5.1 to 6.2 years. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on the average ERP waveforms. Analyses of the factor scores revealed that the P240, N380, and SW components were asymmetrically distributed over the hemispheres. Fast reading acquisition was associated with smaller N380 and larger SW activity than slow reading acquisition. Multiple regression analyses indicated that only right hemispheric ERP components were significantly associated with rate of reading acquisition. These findings are discussed in terms of right hemispheric involvement in early reading acquisition.
Although much has been published in the literature concerning literacy in children with language impairments, little is known concerning the process that the individual language-impaired child must go through to become a proficient reader. One reason for this may lie within the focus and rigor dictated by the methodologies typically used in literacy-related studies. This paper addresses some of the limitations of the available literacy literature among language-impaired populations and discusses how recent advances in qualitative research hold potential for significant methodological and clinical contributions to our understanding of literacy, specifically reading. A case study is presented demonstrating the usefulness of this methodological approach to describing the process of reading acquisition in a language-impaired child.
OBJECTIVE: We investigated event-related potential (ERP) correlates of developmental changes in spoken word recognition during early school years. We focused on implicit processing of word onsets as this may change considerably due to vocabulary growth and reading acquisition. METHODS: Subjects were pre-schoolers (5-6 years), beginning readers (7-8 years) and adults. Two experiments examined phonological onset priming effects on ERP measures in an auditory lexical decision task. Primes were words (Expt. 1) or non-words (Expt. 2). RESULTS: ERPs elicited by words showed clear developmental changes in ERP latency and morphology, especially with regard to early negativities like the N1. Prominent priming effects were an enhanced N400 amplitude due to alliterating word primes in beginning readers, and typical phonological N400 reductions due to alliterating non-word primes in all groups. Priming further led to opposite early effects with word primes (N1/N(200) reduction) vs. non-word primes (P1/N1 enhancement) in all groups. CONCLUSIONS: These changes in ERP morphology and priming effects suggest that the lexical system undergoes substantial restructuring at the level of phonological processing and representation. In particular, our results indicate distinct processing of word onsets in beginning readers, confirming that vocabulary growth and the acquisition of reading may critically contribute to the formation of a fully segmental lexical system.
In order to evaluate the possible consequences of temporal lobe epilepsy on reading acquisition, we first compared the reading skills and phonological awareness abilities in a set of 13-year-old identical twins, one of whom is affected by temporal lobe epilepsy (LB). We then compared their performances to those of an age- and IQ-matched control group. Both siblings have an intellectual quotient above average as well as normal memory and linguistic abilities. Results showed that the reading age of LB (assessed by the Lefabvrais French reading test) was more than two years behind expectations whereas that of her sister was above average. Further, in contrast to her sister and healthy control subjects, LB exhibited specific deficits in elaborate metaphonological awareness abilities (non-word repetition, rhyme production, phonemic segmentation and syllabic inversion). These could be linked to temporal lobe dysfunction, thus confirming the important role of the temporal lobes in reading acquisition.
Tests are made of an aspect of the "knowledge sources" theoretical account of acquisition of reading in which, contrary to the developmental bypass hypothesis, it is postulated that sublexical relations between orthographic and phonological components are formed very early in learning by spontaneous induction from stored print word experience. Experiments 1 and 2, conducted with 5- and 6-year-old children, indicated as predicted that positional frequency of orthographic components in experienced print words influenced reading responses to unfamiliar pseudoword items. In Experiment 3 positional frequency of an orthographic component was manipulated in a training-transfer paradigm. Transfer to pseudoword reading was as predicted. The results could not be given alternative explanations by the developmental bypass hypothesis nor by accounts which predict exclusive use of onset and rime units at this early reading level.
In bilingual and multilingual settings one is constantly challenged by the difficulty of teasing apart phenomena associated with normal second language (L2) reading acquisition from authentic warning signs of reading failure. The bulk of this paper focuses on a critical discussion of a cluster of beliefs that pertain to the issues concerning the diagnosis of reading disability in multilingual and bilingual settings among school children. Findings from available research on reading acquisition among bilingual children and research focusing specifically on the assessment of English-as-a-second language (ESL) children who might be at risk for reading disability are used to evaluate the validity of these beliefs. While some beliefs are supported by research, others are not. In particular, the research suggests that reliable diagnosis of dyslexia among ESL children can be achieved by examining within-language differences on various indices of basic reading skills such as phonological processing, and by noting a significant gap between oral and reading comprehension.
A key challenge in reading acquisition is understanding how learners extract the complex probabilistic mappings between print, meaning, and sound. Statistical learning (SL) theory offers a mechanistic account of how such mappings are acquired, whether implicitly through exposure or explicitly through instruction. We conducted a randomized controlled-learning study in Chinese, a writing system characterized by multiple sub-lexical regularities linking orthography, semantics, and phonology. Ninety-five 2nd-3rd graders with or at risk for dyslexia were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an implicit-SL training group exposed to repeated lexical and sublexical orthography-semantics-phonology associations, an explicit-SL training group receiving the same input plus explicit instruction on the sublexical print-sound mapping, and a no-SL control group. Both SL groups outperformed controls on the characters they were trained on, as well as on untrained characters that required generalization. However, only the explicit group demonstrated abstraction of print-sound mapping to novel items. Neural network simulations further revealed distinct mechanisms supporting implicit and explicit SL, consistent with a dual-system account of reading acquisition. Together, these findings (1) clarify how implicit and explicit learning distinctly support the discovery of statistical structure in written language and (2) underscore the implicit-explicit dual learning mechanism underlying reading acquisition.