English as a foreign language spelling: comparisons between good and poor spellers

This study examined English as a foreign language (EFL) spelling development amongst 233 fifth‐grade, eighth‐grade and 10th‐grade Hebrew first‐language speakers to examine effects of English orthographic exposure on spelling. Good and poor speller differences were examined regarding the acquisition of novel phonemes (/æ/, /Λ/ and //) and orthographic conventions (/ð/, /θ/, // and silent ‘e’). Hebrew measures included standardised spelling and orthographic and phonological tasks. Experimental English measures included real‐word and pseudoword spellings, orthographic tasks and standardised spellings. Results showed significant differences in spelling accuracy between good and poor spellers at all grades. Spelling accuracy for most conventions did not improve after the eighth grade. Spellings of consonantal clusters, initial h and /ð/ differed between good and poor spellers in the fifth grade only. Hebrew spelling was one of the strongest predictors of EFL real‐word and pseudoword spellings in both fifth and eighth grades. Implications for teaching practice are discussed.     

Relationships among rapid digit naming, phonological processing, motor automaticity, and speech perception in poor, average, and good readers and spellers

In this article, we explore the relationship between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and other cognitive processes among below-average, average, and above-average readers and spellers. Nonsense word reading, phonological awareness, RAN, automaticity of balance, speech perception, and verbal short-term and working memory were measured. Factor analysis revealed a 3-component structure. The first component included phonological processing tasks, RAN, and motor balance. The second component included verbal short-term and working memory tasks. Speech perception loaded strongly as a third component, associated negatively with RAN. The phonological processing tests correlated most strongly with reading ability and uniquely discriminated average from below- and above-average readers in terms of word reading, reading comprehension, and spelling. On word reading, comprehension, and spelling, RAN discriminated only the below-average group from the average performers. Verbal memory, as assessed by word list recall, additionally discriminated the below-average group from the average group on spelling performance. Motor balance and speech perception did not discriminate average from above- or below-average performers. In regression analyses, phonological processing measures predicted word reading and comprehension, and both phonological processing and RAN predicted spelling.     

Orthographic processing and visual sequential memory in unexpectedly poor spellers

Does unexpectedly poor spelling in adults result from inferior visual sequential memory? In one experiment, unexpectedly poor spellers performed significantly worse than better spellers in the immediate reproduction of sequences of visual symbols, but in a second experiment, the effect was not replicated. Poor spellers were also no worse at the immediate recognition of symbol sequences. Overall, the results indicate that inferior visual memory is not characteristic of unexpectedly poor spellers. However, they do have less efficient orthographic processing skill: they were significantly slower and more error prone than better spellers at classifying both regularly and strangely spelt words, as well as at detecting letter transpositions in long words. They can thus be considered as subtly worse word readers than better spellers. While the findings question the notion of unexpectedly poor spelling in relation to normal adults, they provide confirmation of the intimate relationship between reading and spelling processes.     

Phonological and lexical reading in Italian children with dyslexia

In this study we explore the development of phonological and lexical reading in dyslexic children. We tested a group of 14 Italian children who have been diagnosed with dyslexia and whose reading age is end of grade 1. We compared this group with a group of 70 typically developing children who have been tested for reading at the end of grade 1. For each dyslexic child we also selected a participant who was attending the same grade, was close in age, and showed typical reading development when tested with a narrative passage reading task (Cornoldi, Colpo, & Gruppo MT, 1981) for correctness and reading speed. Children in this group are “same grade controls.” We used a reading task consisting of 40 three syllables words. A qualitative and quantitative method of coding children’s naming allowed us to distinguish several components of their reading performance: the grapheme and word recognition, the size of orthographic units involved in the aloud orthography–phonology conversion, the reading process used to recognize words. The comparison of the dyslexic group with the reading age and the same grade control groups reveals different trends of delayed reading processes. Considering dyslexic children’s chronological age, lexical reading is greatly delayed. Considering dyslexic children’s reading age, the type of reading process that is more deeply delayed is phonological reading. The rate of fragmented phonological reading (i.e., a type of syllabized phonological reading) is much higher in dyslexic children compared to the reading age group, suggesting that some factors undermine the possibility of internalizing the orthography–phonology conversion and the blending processes.     

Phonological awareness,speech development,and letter knowledge in preschool children

Phonological awareness has been shown to be one of the most reliable predictors and associates of reading ability. In an attempt to better understand its development, we have examined the interrelations of speech skills and letter knowledge to the phonological awareness and early reading skills of 99 preschool children. We found that phoneme awareness, but not rhyme awareness, correlated with early reading measures. We further found that phoneme manipulation was closely associated with letter knowledge and with letter sound knowledge, in particular, where rhyme awareness was closely linked with speech perception and vocabulary. Phoneme judgment fell in between. The overall pattern of results is consistent with phonological representation as an important factor in the complex relationship between preschool children’s phonological awareness, their emerging knowledge of the orthography, and their developing speech skills. However, where rhyme awareness is a concomitant of speech and vocabulary development, phoneme awareness more clearly associates with the products of literacy experience.     

Visual‐attentional span and lexical ­decision in skilled adult readers

The goal of the study was to examine the association between visual‐attentional span and lexical decision in skilled adult readers. In the span tasks, an array of letters was presented briefly and recognition or production of a single cued letter (partial span) or production of all letters (whole span) was required. Independently of letter recognition and phoneme awareness, width of partial recognition span predicted substantial variance only in detection of letter misorderings in words, while partial span efficiency made small contributions to decisions on regular words and pseudowords, but not strange words. With a production format and the inclusion of short‐term phonological memory, neither partial‐span nor whole‐span measures contributed positive independent variance to word and nonword decisions. The results provide meagre support for the idea that skilled adult readers with a wide visual‐attentional span might process words more effectively than those with a narrow span during lexical decision.     

How poor readers and spellers use interactive speech in a computerized spelling program

The ‘Spello’ program was designed to use interactive speech feedback on a talking-computer system to improve children's spelling and phonological skills. In two versions of the program, the synthesizer pronounced the word to be spelled and the student tried to type in the word correctly. Both versions of the program showed the students which letters were correct in their spelling attempts. One version pronounced only the target word, as often as the child requested. The other version also provided intermediate speech feedback for children's spelling attempts, so they could hear how their own attempts sounded, and compare them to the target word. Twenty-eight children aged seven to fourteen studied 16 words they had misspelled on pretests and 16 words of related word structure. For children ten years or older, training with intermediate speech feedback led to greater benefits in phonological coding skills than training with word-only feedback, reflected in the ability to read nonsense words related in structure to the trained words. Intermediate speech feedback also led to a marginally significant advantage in spelling the trained words. When the groups switched conditions, however, there was no difference in their tested skills after a second week of training.     

Phonological involvement in the processing of Japanese at the lexical and sentence levels

The present study examined whether Japanesereaders activate phonological information whenreading kanji compound words and sentences andif so, how they do it. Experiment 1 usedtwo-kanji compound words in a lexical decisiontask to study phonological processing at thelexical level. When nonwords werepseudo-homophones (/roR hi/ in placeof the real word /roR hi/), reactiontimes were longer and more errors occurred thanwith nonwords in the control group(/saku hi/). Experiment 2required participants to detect misspellings(i.e., incorrect kanji combinations) oftwo-kanji compound stimuli embedded insentences. In the detection task of misspelledkanji, no homophonic effect was apparent. Experiment 3 used a semantic decision task. Included in this task were semantically similarbut incorrect kanji compound words used asfillers in sentences (e.g.,meaning `The building you can see over there was facilitated by my friend' instead of designed) as well as the sentences used inExperiment 2. Results from Experiment 3indicated that participants could reject asentence as incorrect more quickly whenpseudo-homophones were embedded in thesentences rather than nonwords. These resultssuggest that readers activate phonologicalinformation of two-kanji compound words whenreading for comprehension but not for simpleproofreading.     

Phonological processing skills and deficits in adult dyslexics

This article presents 4 experiments aimed at defining the primary underlying phonological processing deficit(s) in adult dyslexia. 5 phonological processes, all involving spoken language, were studied: phoneme perception, phoneme awareness, lexical retrieval of phonology, articulatory speed, and phonetic coding in verbal short-term memory. 2 differently ascertained adult dyslexic groups, familial dyslexics (n = 15) and clinic dyslexics (n = 15), were the subjects in each experiment. These dyslexic groups were chosen because deficits that persist until adulthood and that are found in differently ascertained dyslexic groups are more likely to be primary. Each dyslexic group was compared to 2 control groups, chronological age (CA) controls who were similar in age and sex, and younger reading age (RA) controls who were similar in reading age and sex. The main finding was a clear deficit in phoneme awareness in both dyslexic groups, with each dyslexic group performing significantly worse than both CA and RA controls. Moreover, performance on the 2 phoneme awareness tasks together uniquely accounted for substantial variance in nonword reading. The clinic but not the familial dyslexics appeared to have an additional deficit in verbal short-term memory. No clear deficits were found in either dyslexic group in phoneme perception, lexical retrieval, or articulatory speed.     

Differences between good and poor child writers on fMRI contrasts for writing newly taught and highly practiced letter forms

During fMRI imaging, 12 good and 8 poor writers aged 11 wrote a newly taught pseudoletter and a highly practiced letter. Both letters were formed from the same components, but the pseudoletter had a novel configuration not corresponding to a written English letter form. On the first fMRI contrast between the newly taught pseudoletter and highly practiced letter, based on a group map, good and poor writers significantly activated many common regions; but the poor writers showed spatially more extensive brain activation than did the good writers. The additional regions of significant activation may reflect inefficiency in learning a new letter form. For the second contrast between the highly practiced and newly taught letters, individual brain activation analyses, based on exact clusters, showed that good and poor writers differed significantly in activation only in left fusiform. This individual fusiform activation correlated significantly with behavioral measures of automatic letter writing and expressive orthographic coding. Multiple regression in which both individual fusiform activation and individual orthographic coding were entered explained significant variance in written composition. Results are discussed in reference to the role of the orthographic loop, from internal letter form to external letter writing by hand, in writing letters and composing. The overall results are consistent with prior brain and behavioral studies of writing.     

Syllable frequency in lexical decision and naming of English words

The importance of phonological syllables in recognition and pronunciation of visual words has been demonstrated in languages with a high degree of spelling-sound correspondence. In Spanish, multisyllabic words with frequent first syllables are named more quickly than those with less frequent first syllables, but receive slower lexical decisions. The latter effect is attributed to lexical competition from other words beginning with the same syllable. We examined syllable frequency effects on naming and lexical decision for 3029 visually presented words in English, a language with a high degree of irregularity in spelling/sound relationships, and in which phonological syllables are less clearly marked in printed words. The results showed facilitative effects of syllable frequency in both tasks, and these were stronger when syllables were defined orthographically than phonologically. The results suggest that activation of lexical candidates based on a syllabic code does not occur rapidly enough to interfere with lexical decision in English.     

Phonological and lexical encoding processes in beginning readers: Effects of age and word characteristics

The aim of this study was two-fold. First to find out whether the prelexical phonological route develops prior to the visual route or whether the direct visual route develops first in the process of learning to read Greek. Second, to see whether the subjects' chronological age deviation affects decisively the overall reading accuracy and the processes employed in word reading. For this an investigation was conducted involving two age groups of Primary-one class children regarded as normal readers and differing between them by 10 months. The subjects were tested in three word (and nonword) reading tasks in which psycholinguistic properties of words (such as grammatical class, imagery level, semantic content, regularity and frequency) had been manipulated. The main findings were: first that reading accuracy was not significantly affected by the main psycholinguistic properties of words. Second, that the chronological age factor is unlikely to influence decisively and consistently reading acquisition in the long term. Third, that Primary-one children although tending to use mainly phonological information in reading, nevertheless seem to have started making the transition towards the use of the direct visual route as well.Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. C. D. Porpodas, Section of Psychology, Department of Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Patras, 26110 Patras, Greece.     

The influence of lexical and sublexical variables in normal and poor Spanish readers

The main aim of our study was to find out the effect of several lexical and sublexical variables (lexical category, lexical frequency, syllabic structure, and word length) in the acquisition of reading in a transparent language such as Spanish. The second goal of our study was the comparison of the effect of these variables in normal and poor Spanish readers. One hundred and forty children (aged between 6 and 12), twenty of whom were poor readers, were tested using a reading test of 306 items in which we balanced all the variables. The dependent variable was the percentage of correct responses in a decontextualized word reading test. Our results showed that all the above mentioned variables produced a significant effect on the number of errors made by the children. This pattern of results suggests no difference between the processes involved in the reading acquisition of Spanish and those implicated in deep orthographies such as English. Our results also showed no qualitative differences between normal and poor readers. The four variables studied showed the same behaviour in their effect on reading performance for both normal and poor readers, indicating that poor readers also use both the lexical and the phonological route. Our data suggest the universality of the dual route model, independent of the transparency or opaqueness of the different alphabetical languages.     

Gender and practical skill performance in science

The performance of 18 boys and 18 girls on four problem-solving tasks set in science contexts was compared. The tasks were administered in a one-to-one testing situation and assessments were made by direct observation, questioning, and by using written records. The tasks were valid and reliable, and the samples of boys and girls were matched for ability and curriculum background. Past studies have identified gender differences in performance on science tasks; however, this study found little evidence to support these findings. Few significant differences in performance were found. No gender differences were detected in observation, reporting, or planning skills, and there was no differential performance on the use of scientific language. Girls performed less well in relation to self-reliance, and performance differences on the interpretation skill approached significance with boys' performance superior.     

Eye-movement patterns and reader characteristics of students with good and poor performance when reading scientific text with diagrams

This study investigated the cognitive processes and reader characteristics of sixth graders who had good and poor performance when reading scientific text with diagrams. We first measured the reading ability and reading self-efficacy of sixth-grade participants, and then recorded their eye movements while they were reading an illustrated scientific text and scored their answers to content-related questions. Finally, the participants evaluated the difficulty of the article, the attractiveness of the content and diagram, and their learning performance. The participants were then classified into groups based on how many correct responses they gave to questions related to reading. The results showed that readers with good performance had better character recognition ability and reading self-efficacy, were more attracted to the diagrams, and had higher self-evaluated learning levels than the readers with poor performance did. Eye-movement data indicated that readers with good performance spent significantly more reading time on the whole article, the text section, and the diagram section than the readers with poor performance did. Interestingly, readers with good performance had significantly longer mean fixation duration on the diagrams than readers with poor performance did; further, readers with good performance made more saccades between the text and the diagrams. Additionally, sequential analysis of eye movements showed that readers with good performance preferred to observe the diagram rather than the text after reading the title, but this tendency was not present in readers with poor performance. In sum, using eye-tracking technology and several reading tests and questionnaires, we found that various cognitive aspects (reading strategy, diagram utilization) and affective aspects (reading self-efficacy, article likeness, diagram attraction, and self-evaluation of learning) affected sixth graders’ reading performance in this study.     

Processing of visual and name codes in good and poor readers

Good and poor readers of three different ages (7, 9, and 11 years) were required to respond to stimuli which could be matched by physical similarity (e.g., A-A) or by name (e.g., A-a). It was argued that these two matches allow for the differentiation of two primary levels of processing required of a visual input. Both age and reading competence proved to be significant variables in relationship to the time required for the physical and name matches. The lack of a significant age or reading competence interaction with the type of match (physical or name) made the deficiency present in the name match difficult to interpret. However, data were discussed which indicate that poor readers are less efficient in anticipating the form required in the name match. This inability to reduce required visual processing through anticipation may reflect a general processing deficiency of the poor reader.     

Phonological and morphological processing in adult students with learning/reading disabilities

A target group of college students with learning/reading disabilities was compared with reading-level (RA) and chronological-age (CA) contrast groups on several phonological and morphological computerized information-processing tasks. Results confirm the importance of accurate and rapid processing of simple lexical items to the automatic level. The target students were less accurate and took longer reaction time, as compared with their CA controls, though not with the RA contrast group, in deciding if pseudohomophonics sounded like real words and if pairs of words with different rime conditions rhymed. The target students showed both quantitative and qualitative differences in processing morphological words and morphographic letter strings, in contrast to some earlier findings. The integration of phonological and morphological knowledge is emphasized in working with adult college students with learning/reading disabilities.     

Reading strategies of good and poor readers in word and phrase presentation

This paper reports two experiments which use a micro-computer driven self-paced reading task to examine the reading strategies of good and poor readers. Unlike previous work using this technique the children were able to regress to earlier parts of the texts by pressing the appropriate computer key. The main focus of the experiments is on the relationship between reading strategies, reading ability and the length of the textual units which are presented to the children. Reading ability is found to influence reading strategies differently according to whether text is presented in single words or in phrases. A similar result is found for the time taken to read the texts. The results are discussed in the light of current theories of text processing. However the main point of the paper is to illustrate the use of a potentially powerful diagnostic tool which will operate on computers currently available in schools.     

Pseudohomophone effects in 8 and 11 year old good and poor readers

Eight and 11 year old good and poor readers carried out a lexical decision task, in which the accuracy of responding to nonwords and pseudohomophonic nonwords was assessed. Nonwords such as‘loast', are meaningless but conform to the rules of English spelling. Pseudohomophones, such as‘poast', are a special category of nonword as they sound like real words. In this study, the two classes of nonwords were closely matched for visual similarity,‘poast’and‘loast', for example, differing only in the initial consonant. All the groups were more prone to misclassify pseudo-homophones as words than nonwords. Poor readers of average and below average IQ, and their reading age controls, performed very similarly. It was concluded that the poor readers were equally as able to generate phonological information from nonwords as their reading age controls, and that there was no evidence to suggest that the poor readers suffered primarily from a phonological dysfunction. Both the average and below average intelligence poor readers showed a pattern of performance indicative of a delay or an arrestment in reading development, rather than a deficit in generating and utilising phonological information.