Development of orthographic knowledge in German‐speaking children: a 2‐year longitudinal study

There is growing evidence that children develop orthographic knowledge from the very beginning of literacy acquisition. This study investigated the development of German‐speaking children's orthographic knowledge with a nonword choice task. One nonword in each pair contained a frequent consonant doublet (zommul) and the other nonword contained an infrequent doublet (zobbul). Children (N = 54) performed at chance level in kindergarten but chose nonwords with frequent doublets significantly more often than expected by chance in first and second grade. Correlations between children's orthographic knowledge and their reading and spelling skills were not found. The results indicate that knowledge of frequent double consonants is evident in German‐speaking children from first grade onwards, but it is not related to their reading and spelling performance. This finding is consistent with the view that children in transparent orthographies rely less on frequent letter patterns during reading and spelling compared to children in deep orthographies.     

The construction of literate understanding in a literature‐based classroom

This study investigated young children’s developing understanding of three essential features of book language (i.e. autonomy, conventionality, unique grammar) in two curricular genres (i.e. narrative and expository) in a literature‐based, multigrade (1st–3rd) classroom. Each of the 19 participants was asked to compose two written texts (story and report) at beginning, middle and end of the school year. All texts were coded for inclusion of a variety of genre‐specific discursive markers that index the three features of book language. Analyses showed that (a) the children demonstrated emergent understanding of autonomy, limited familiarity with conventionality and an embryonic sense of unique grammar, irrespective of genre; (b) they gained significantly more understanding of the three book‐language features in both curricular genres over the school year; (c) the development of this understanding is genre‐ and feature‐specific, unstable, complex and not consistently associated with children’s grade level. These findings were interpreted from both developmental and pedagogical perspectives. Limitations and directions for future research were also discussed.     

Spelling development in 6–11‐year‐old Greek‐speaking Cypriot children

The aim of the present study was to examine the spelling development of Greek‐speaking children in the early school grades. Although Greek orthography is regular for reading, it is much less transparent as far as spelling is concerned. Spelling development was investigated using a word spelling task designed to explore the effects of word length, familiarity and spelling regularity. One hundred and fifty normally developing primary school children living in Cyprus took part in the study. Results suggest that the children employed both phonological and lexical strategies in spelling Greek words. Results indicated that sub‐lexical procedures were more marked for younger children, whereas lexical processing was employed more widely by older children. The findings are interpreted in terms of stage developmental models.     

Comparing cognitive performance in illiterate and literate children

While it is known that the process of becoming literate begins in early childhood and usually involves several years of schooling, research related to cognitive characteristics has been done mostly on illiterate adults, and information concerning illiterate children is therefore limited. The aim of the present study, involving 21 illiterate and 22 literate Mexican children aged 6 to 13, was to investigate the effects of literacy on neuropsychological characteristics during childhood. The children??s performance on 16 cognitive domains of the Evaluación Neuropsicológica Infantil (ENI, Child Neuropsychological Assessment) was examined in three mixed within- and between-groups profile analyses. The results suggest that the effect of literacy observed in adults is already evident in children in almost every task analysed. Moreover, the fact that an age effect was detected for the calculation abilities suggests that maths learning is school- and environment-dependent.     

Levels of phonological awareness in preliterate and literate Spanish-speaking children

Evidence of phonological awareness levels usually comes from English-speaking children. The evidence in Spanish is scarce. The present study examined the phonological awareness of syllables, onsets–rimes, and phonemes, extending the Treiman and Zukowski (1991) results to preliterate and literate Spanish-speaking children. The sample comprised preschoolers, kindergarteners and first-graders. Children found syllables easier than onset–rime units, and onset–rime units easier than phoneme units (Experiments 1 and 2). Preliterate children found ending units easier than beginning units. However, literate children were best at initial linguistic units, particularly initial syllables. Results on the phonological awareness task and on the masked priming lexical decision task support that the phonological awareness development is sensitive to the orthographic units used by children from the time they begin to read (Experiment 3). For all children, initial continuant consonants were easier than stop consonants.     

Early event‐related potentials differences in orthographic processing of native and non‐native Chinese readers

Efficient Chinese character reading requires rapid access to orthographic representations of radical form and position. This study identified the temporal sequence of radical form, radical position and lexicality processing in adult first language (L1) and intermediate second language (L2) Chinese readers. Event‐related potential responses in a one‐back repetition detection task were submitted to linear mixed‐effects models. Violation of radical position produced P100 effects that were left‐lateralized for L1 readers and right‐lateralized for L2 readers. When controlling for P100 activation, radical position produced a left‐lateralized effect at the N170 for L2 readers but no additional activities for L1 readers. Radical form effects were found at the N270 for L1 readers, where radical form violation produced larger N270. Results suggested that radical representations are position‐specific in initial orthographic processing for both groups. However, different temporal dynamics and topographic distributions suggested divergent radical processing for native versus non‐native readers from the beginning.     

The self‐concepts and perceived competencies of gifted and non‐gifted students: a meta‐analysis

The current meta‐analysis compares the self‐concepts and perceived competencies of gifted and non‐gifted students. Using meta‐analytic methods to synthesise the results of 40 studies, we found that gifted students scored significantly higher than non‐gifted students on measures of academic and behavioural perceived competence, as well as global self‐concept. Gifted students scored significantly lower than non‐gifted students on measures of appearance and athletic perceived competence. Significant heterogeneity was found in the extent to which gifted and non‐gifted students' scores differed in the academic and global domains. Moderator variables such as participant grade level, method of gifted designation and publication year accounted for systematic differences in these domains. Gifted students' appearance and athletic perceived competencies may benefit from specific intervention, but their beliefs in other areas remain positive.     

Prediction of reading by Ga and Gc specific cognitive abilities for low‐SES white and hispanic English‐speaking children

Based on previous findings (McGrew, Flanagan, Keith, & Vanderwood, 1997) that auditory processing (Ga) predicts reading decoding, and crystallized intelligence (Gc) predicts reading comprehension beyond the prediction of reading by g(broad general intelligence), this study examined the cross‐ethnic predictive validity of Ga and Gc for reading achievement among low‐SES English‐speaking White and Hispanic students. Subtests of the Woodcock‐Johnson Psycho‐Educational Battery‐Revised (WJ‐R) cognitive subtests were used to measure Ga and Gc, and the WJ‐R achievement subtests were used to measure basic reading skills and reading comprehension. Results indicated that there are no differences between ethnic groups in the prediction of reading ability, and that phonetic coding and crystallized intelligence together are strong predictors of reading achievement. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The effects of musical training on the decoding skills of German‐speaking primary school children

This paper outlines the results of a long‐term study of 159 German‐speaking primary school children. The correlations between musical skills (perception and differentiation of rhythmical and tonal/melodic patterns) and decoding skills, and the effects of musical training on word‐level reading abilities were investigated. Cognitive skills and socioeconomic factors were controlled as covariates in all analysis. The experimental group received special musical training for 9 months. A comparison sample received alternative training (visual arts) for the same amount of time. Another comparison sample did not receive any additional classes during the study period. The results show that rhythmical abilities are correlated significantly positively with decoding skills (both reading accuracy and reading prosody). Tonal skills, however, were not correlated with reading skills. Additionally, the special musical training had a significant effect on reading accuracy in word reading, as analysis of covariance revealed. In this paper, implications for reading development are discussed.     

Emotion recognition and communication for reducing second‐language speaking anxiety in a web‐based one‐to‐one synchronous learning environment

e‐Learning is becoming an increasingly popular educational paradigm because of the rapid growth of the Internet. Recent studies have argued that affective modelling (ie, considering a learner's emotional or motivational state) should also be considered while designing learning activities. Many studies indicated that various learning emotions markedly impact learning outcomes. In the language education field, many studies have investigated anxiety associated with learning a second language, noting that anxiety has an adverse effect on the performance of those speaking English as a second language. Therefore, how to reduce anxiety associated with learning a second language to increase learning performance is an important research issue in the language education field. Accordingly, this study employed a sensor, signal processing, wireless communication, system‐on‐chip and machine‐learning techniques in developing an embedded human emotion recognition system based on human pulse signals for detecting three human emotions—nervousness, peace and joy—to help teachers reduce language‐learning anxiety of individual learners in a web‐based one‐to‐one synchronous learning environment. The accuracy rate of the proposed emotion recognition model evaluated by cross‐validation is as high as 79.7136% when filtering out human pulse signals that have bias. Moreover, this study applied the embedded emotion recognition system to assist instructor's teaching in a synchronous English conversation environment by immediately reporting variations in individual learner emotions to the teacher during learning. In this instructional experiment, the teacher can give appropriate learning assistance or guidance based on the emotion states of individual learners. Experimental results indicate that the proposed embedded human emotion recognition system is helpful in reducing language‐based anxiety, thus promoting instruction effectiveness in English conversation classes.     

Age of acquisition and imageability: a cross‐task comparison

Previous research has reported an imageability effect on visual word recognition. Words that are high in imageability are recognised more rapidly than are those lower in imageability. However, later researchers argued that imageability was confounded with age of acquisition. In the current research, these two factors were manipulated in a factorial design to assess their effect in a lexical decision task and a progressive demasking task. Across both tasks, there was a clear and robust effect of age of acquisition. In contrast, the imageability effect was only evident in the progressive demasking task. Both effects are explained within the connectionist framework in terms of network plasticity and semantic feedback activation.     

Inbreds and non‐inbreds among Russian academics: Short‐term similarity and long‐term differences in productivity

This paper studies the publication productivity of inbreds and non‐inbreds among Russian academics. Existing literature provides ambiguous results on the relationship between inbred status and productivity. This may be explained by the use of different indicators for measuring publication productivity. We use data, which include indicators of both current publication productivity (at a certain point of time) and cumulative productivity (throughout the career) to identify whether inbreds and non‐inbreds differ in their productivity. We did not find any difference in current publication productivity of inbreds and non‐inbreds. We found, however, a difference in their cumulative publication productivity: non‐inbreds are being more productive on an individual level throughout their careers. Although the conclusions are based on the Russian data, the analysis provides an explanation for existing contradictory results on the relationship between academic inbreeding and productivity in general.