Predicting word and pseudoword reading in Arabic-speaking children: the independent contributions of phonological and morphological awareness and visual attention

The present study explored whether phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA) and visual attention (VA) independently predict word and pseudoword reading accuracy in native Arabic-speaking children from grades 4 and 5. A total of 141 participants took part in the study, and were divided into two groups of readers with (n = 30) and without (n = 111) dyslexia. PA was measured with orally administered syllable manipulation and deletion tasks. The MA task targeted the dismantling of composite Arabic words into meaningful parts in oral modality. VA was assessed by objects and letters cancellation tasks. The results showed that the two groups differed significantly in all of the measures. The regression analysis output showed that VA emerged as a significant predictor of word and pseudoword reading beyond the predictive role of PA and MA. These results have implications for the understanding of the underlying factors of word and pseudoword reading development in Arabic.     

The interaction of vocabulary and short-term memory in predicting phonological awareness: a comparison of dyslexic and non-dyslexic children

Using data from a longitudinal comparative study of children at risk of dyslexia ( Snowling, Gallagher & Frith, 2003 ), this paper reports some replication of work by Gibbs (2004) . It was found that the development of phonological awareness might, for children between the ages of 6 and 8 years of age and not considered to be at risk of dyslexia, be facilitated by an interaction of memory span and lexical knowledge. This effect was not, however, found for children of the same age who were considered to be at risk of dyslexia. For these children an interaction, with contrasting implications, was found between the ages of 3 years 9 months and 6 years. Some theoretical and practical implications of these findings are outlined.     

How do phonological processing abilities contribute to early Chinese reading and mathematics?

Abstract

The present study examined phonological processing skills (phonological memory, phonological awareness, and rapid automatised naming, RAN) in relation to early Chinese reading and early Chinese mathematics for young children. Early Chinese reading was assessed with single character reading and multi-character word reading, and early mathematics was assessed with procedural arithmetic and arithmetic story problems. Among 86 Chinese kindergarteners, phonological processing skills explained 20% of the variance in character reading and 28% of the variance in word reading; they accounted for 8% of the variance in arithmetic and 11% of the variance in story problem performance. Specifically, findings further highlight the general importance of phonological awareness in early Chinese single character reading, word reading, simple arithmetic and story problems, and the specific role of RAN in single character reading and simple arithmetic.

• Highlights

• Phonological awareness and rapid automatised naming explained unique variance in Chinese single character reading and procedural arithmetic.

• Only phonological awareness significantly accounted for unique variance in Chinese word reading and arithmetic story problems.

• The associations of phonological awareness with procedural arithmetic and arithmetic story problem were maintained even beyond other variables.

     

Predictors of Chinese reading and literacy skills among Chinese school children: a 3-year longitudinal study

Abstract

This study aims to identify the predictors of Chinese reading and literacy skills among Chinese school children in Taiwan. Participants recruited in the study were 182 Grade 1 elementary school students. First, data were collected on these students’ literacy skills, which comprised morphological awareness, orthography processing, visual perception skills, phonological awareness, and rapid automatised naming. In Grade 2, data were collected from these students on their word decoding skills, which comprised character recognition and reading fluency. Finally, in Grade 3, data were collected on the Chinese comprehension skills of the same students. A structural equation model examined the direct and indirect effects of students’ literacy skills at Grade 1 on their reading comprehension at Grade 3, with students’ word decoding at Grade 2 acting as a mediator. Results showed that reading comprehension of students at Grade 3 was predicted by their literacy skills at Grade 1.     

Distinctive patterns of relationship of phonological awareness and working memory with reading development

The purpose of this study was to assess the contributions of specific components of verbal and nonverbal working memory and of phonological awareness to the prediction of reading achievement. One hundred and three children from grades 1, 2, and 3 were administered a measure of phonological awareness, four measures of working memory, four measures of academic achievement, and a measure of verbal intelligence. Separate multiple regression analyses controlling for the effects of age, sex and verbal intelligence showed that tests of verbal memory and of direct recall significantly predicted reading and spelling achievement whereas tests of backward recall significantly predicted only pseudoword identification. Phonological awareness was also found to relate significantly to reading and spelling achievement even when working memory was partialled out. Thus, phonological awareness and measures of working memory predicted specific and significant amounts of variance in reading and spelling achievement. Further, none of these measures were specifically related to arithmetic achievement. The specific roles of phonological awareness and working memory in reading development are examined in the discussion.     

Speech development patterns and phonological awareness in preschool children

To examine the association between speech production and early literacy skills, this study of 102 preschool children looked at phonological awareness in relation to whether children were delayed, typical, or advanced in their articulation of consonants. Using a developmental typology inspired by some of the literature on speech development (Kahn and Lewis, The Kahn-Lewis phonological analysis, 1986; Shriberg, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 36(1):105-140, 1993a), we found that failure to master the early-8 consonants and a greater prevalence of certain types of production errors were associated with deficient phonological awareness. We also found that children who made no consonant errors had advanced phonological awareness relative to other children in the sample. In all cases, both productive speech patterns and speech errors were more closely linked with rhyme awareness than with phoneme awareness. The association between speech production and rhyme awareness may provide some new directions for the early preschool assessment of risk for reading problems.     

The effect of text genre on parent use of joint book reading strategies to promote phonological awareness

This study compared the rates of different types of joint book reading behaviors of parents of preschool children with and without language impairments using two different text genres. Participants included 72 preschool children between the ages of 51 and 70 months. Fifty-five children were typically developing and 17 were diagnosed with language impairments. Parent–child dyads were videotaped during periods of joint book reading using two different types of text (one alphabet-rhyming and one narrative). Results indicated parents rarely used reading behaviors known to enhance their preschoolers’ phonological awareness. However, when used, there was a significant difference between the two types of texts. The alphabet book elicited a higher rate of phonological awareness and print concept behaviors, while the narrative book resulted in parents using more content behaviors. In addition, the parents of typically developing children used more phonological awareness behaviors than the parents of children with language impairments.     

The effects of morphological versus phonological awareness training in kindergarten on reading development

The aim of this study was toinvestigate the long-term effects of twodifferent training programs in kindergarten onreading development. One group received aprogram focusing on the phonological structureof words, while a second group received aprogram focusing on morphology. Both groupsalso had some print exposure focusing onphonological or morphological elementsrespectively. During their last pre-schoolyear, participants received training for 30minutes per week for a total of 17 weeks. Acontrol group received no intervention but wasregularly visited by the researcher and hadextensive print exposure. Both trained groupsshowed improvements in phonological,morphological and reading skills in comparisonto the Control Group. The effects of trainingvaried according to mother's educational level:Children of relatively highly educated mothersentered the pre-school training with betterdeveloped metalinguistic abilities thanchildren of less well educated mothers.Significant interactions between the groups andthe mother's educational level, for some of theschool reading measures, indicated thatdifferent training programs had differenteffects on different groups of children.Children of poorly educated mothers profitedthe most from metaphonological training whilechildren of highly educated mothers profitedthe most from metamorphological training.     

Clinical appraisal of spelling ability and its relationship to phonemic awareness (blending,segmenting, elision,and reversal), phonological memory,and reading in reading disabled,ADHD, and normal children

Seventy-eight 8-to-12-year-old children (34 ReadingDisabled; 31 Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disordered; and 13diagnosed normal controls) were given a battery oftests including cognitive, linguistic, academic,phonemic awareness, and memory tests. As part of theacademic battery an 8-point spelling rating scale wasdeveloped (Rating Scale) that resulted in threedifferent scores which reliably discriminated amongthe three groups. Relationships between phonemicawareness, phonological memory, reading and spellingwere explored. Zero-order and second-ordercorrelations were completed with indications thatphonemic awareness tasks (elision, blending, reversal,and segmenting) and phonological memory (WISC-IIIDigit Span) are significantly correlated with readingdecoding and spelling measures with slightly highercorrelations with the Rating Scale. Regressionanalyses resulted in a large proportion of thevariance on reading and spelling tasks accounted forby phonemic awareness (particularly elision andreversal) and phonological memory. The ReadingDisabled group was found to produce more errors thatwere phonetically inaccurate than the other twogroups. The demand of spelling ten ``error' wordsbeyond the RD students' achievement level appeared toelicit greater weaknesses in their phonologicalrecoding abilities than in those of the ADHD ornormally achieving students.     

How psychology helps us to understand word reading

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an overview of evidence from psychological research, which enables us to understand the processes involved in word reading, how children develop word reading skills and how to teach them to read words successfully. Psychological models of reading in alphabetic orthographies propose two routes to word reading: an indirect route requiring mapping of letters and sounds using phonological processes and a direct route, mapping visual identities of words onto meaning using visual processes and memory. The dual route paves the way to an understanding of what children need to achieve to be able to read words. Evidence about how people read words successfully has led to the development of effective teaching programmes and of tests to identify deficits when word reading does not develop optimally.     

Levels of phonological representation in skilled reading and in learning to read

This paper refers to and discusses empiricalevidence supporting the general idea that bothskilled reading and learning to read capitalizeon underlying phonological representations.These representations must be specified interms of degree of abstractness, unitsrepresented and degree of conscious access tothese units. In skilled reading, pre-lexicalrepresentations, at different levels ofphonological structure, are unconsciously,mandatorily and automatically activated, inconnection with correspondent orthographicrepresentations. This process is distinct fromthe intentional and controlled phonologicaldecoding assumed by the classic dual-routemodel. Learning to read may be described as theprogression from conscious phonologicaldecoding, in which phoneme awareness plays acritical role, to the unconscious mapping oforthographic and phonological segments.Phonological dyslexia is related to someanomaly in speech perception capacities, makingit difficult both to develop efficientconscious segmentation abilities andgrapho-phonological decoding. It is suggestedthat this conscious speech segmentation deficitis caused by a lack of appropriate segmentationat the unconscious, perceptual level.     

Sensitivity to linguistic stress,phonological awareness and early reading ability in preschoolers

Recent research has found that sensitivity to linguistic stress is related to phonological awareness and reading development. This study investigated the roles of two types of linguistic stress sensitivity (lexical and metrical stress) in the phonological awareness and reading development of young children. Forty‐five kindergarten children were tested on a battery of tasks that examined linguistic stress sensitivity and early reading ability. Results indicated that lexical stress, but not metrical stress sensitivity, is significantly related to phonological awareness and early reading ability. However, lexical stress is not able to predict unique variance in early reading ability once phonological awareness is controlled for. The relationships of both lexical and metrical stress sensitivity with phonological awareness and early reading development are discussed.     

Persistence of phonological awareness deficits in older children with dyslexia

Three groups of children with dyslexia, with mean age 8, 13 and 17 years, together with three groups of normally achieving children matched for age and IQ with the dyslexic groups, undertook tests of sound categorization and phoneme deletion. The design allowed comparison not only across chronological age but also across reading age. The children with dyslexia performed significantly worse even than their reading age controls on both tasks. Indeed, overall performance of the 17 year old children with dyslexia was closest, but inferior, to that of the 8 year old controls. Since the sound categorization task was designed to minimize working memory load, the results extend previous findings on the phonological awareness deficits in dyslexia by dissociating the deficit from memory load and by showing that it persists at least into late adolescence.     

The role of different levels of phonological awareness in the development of reading and spelling in Greek

Phonological awareness is a strong predictor of children's progress in literacy acquisition. There are different ways of segmenting words into sound sequences – syllables, phonemes, onset-rime – and little is known about whether these different levels of segmentation vary in their contribution to reading and writing. Does one of them – for example, phoneme awareness – play the major role in learning to read and spell making the other phonological units irrelevant to the prediction of reading? Or do different levels of analysis make independent contributions to reading and spelling?

Our study investigated whether syllable and phoneme awareness make independent contributions to reading and spelling in Greek. Four measures were used: syllable awareness, phoneme awareness, reading and spelling. Analyses of variance showed that Greek speaking children found it easier to analyse words into syllables than phonemes, irrespective of the influence of task variables such as position of the phonological element, word length, and placement of stress in the word. Regression analyses showed that syllable and phoneme awareness make significant and independent contributions to learning written Greek. We conclude that phonological awareness is a multidimensional phenomenon and that the different dimensions contribute to reading and writing in Greek.