An evaluation of the discrepancy definition of dyslexia.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children with dyslexia, that is, children whose reading levels were significantly lower than would be predicted by their IQ scores, constituted a distinctive group when compared with poor readers, that is, children whose reading scores were consistent with their IQ scores. The performance of children with dyslexia, poor readers, and normally achieving readers was compared on a variety of reading, spelling, phonological processing, language, and memory tasks. Although the children with dyslexia had significantly higher IQ scores than the poor readers, these two groups did not differ in their performance on reading, spelling, phonological processing, or most of the language and memory tasks. In all cases, the performance of both reading disabled groups was significantly below that of nondisabled readers. The findings were similar whether absolute difference or regression scores were used. Reading disabled children, whether or not their reading is significantly below the level predicted by their IQ scores, experience significant problems in phonological processing, short-term and working memory, and syntactic awareness. On the basis of these data, there does not seem to be a need to differentiate between individuals with dyslexia and poor readers. Both of these groups are reading disabled and have deficits in phonological processing, verbal memory, and syntactic awareness.     

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.     

Children's memory for phonemically confusable and nonconfusable letters: changes with age and reading ability

This experiment focused on differences that occur with age and reading skill in the use of phonemic codes in short-term retention tasks where stimuli were presented visually. In 1 condition, individuals recalled 6-letter strings composed of rhyming and nonrhyming letters after a 15-sec delay under conditions that permitted phonemic coding and rehearsal. 2 other conditions were designed to suppress (a) rehearsal of certain types of phonemic codes in the delay interval and (b) both phonemic coding at stimulus presentation and rehearsal. Subjects were grade 2 average readers matched in reading skill with grade 4 disabled readers, grade 4 average matched with grade 6 disabled, and grade 6 average matched with grade 4 superior readers. Average readers showed a decrease in errors with age in all 3 conditions, although performance was always better in the nonsuppression condition. In the latter, memory for nonrhyming letters was always better than memory for rhyming letters. Differential use of phonemic codes by good and poor readers in grades 4 and 6 was less than that found in previous research with younger children. Finally, by comparing the performances of grade 2 average with grade 4 disabled readers and grade 4 average with grade 6 disabled readers, the developmental lag hypothesis of reading disability was examined. Problems with testing the hypothesis are discussed.     

The contribution of phonological processing skills to reading comprehension in grades one and three.

Abstract

During the last decade, the importance of the relationship between phonological processing skills to reading performance has been highlighted. The aim of this study was to examine differences between above average and below average readers (determined by a reading comprehension test) on phonological processing skills at grade one and at grade three. There were 35 grade one, and 34 grade three students from two primary schools. Data from phonemic awareness and phonological awareness tests were subjected to t‐tests. The below average readers in both grade one and three had fewer phonological processing skills than the above average readers. The importance of students’ cognitive functioning to reading comprehension appeared more important at the grade one level than at the grade three level. The study indicated that below average readers, particularly at grade one, would benefit from explicit teaching in both phonemic and phonological awareness skills.     

初一英语语音意识、句法意识、工作记忆与英语阅读的关系

通过使用音素定位、句法更正、句子尾词记忆.单词阅读、句子理解和短文理解任务探查了初一学生英语语音意识,句法意识和工作记忆与单词阅读、句子阅读和短文阅读等不同层次阅读的关系,以及阅读水平高低不同学生在元语言意识的差异.结果发现,英语阅读水平高低两组学生在英语语音意识、句法意识和工作记忆方面有显著差异.回归分析发现,英语句法意识对不同层次阅读都具有最显著的预测作用,但英语语音意识只对短文阅读理解有显著预测作用,工作记忆对不同层次阅读的预测都不显著,表明英语句法意识是初一学生英语阅读的重要预测变量.     

Phonological processing, language comprehension, and reading ability

Previous research has indicated a relationship between reading ability and the integrity of certain phonological processing skills--skills that operate on the sound structure of language. This study shows how the deficient phonological processing skills of poor beginning readers can impair their comprehension of spoken phrases and sentences that are disambiguated by prosodic cues (i.e., pitch, stress, and pause). Following a brief summary of the available research literature, two new experiments are reported to illustrate that poor readers do not interpret certain sentences as accurately as good readers do, because they are less able to hold phonological material temporarily in working memory. Further insight into the basis of these differences between good and poor readers is provided by two additional pieces of evidence: The differences between good and poor readers are analogous to those between older and younger children readers, and the performance of poor readers tends to resemble that of younger children reading at their same level (i.e., reading-ability-matched controls). Apparently, good and poor readers tend to differ in the rate at which they develop phonological processing skills.     

Behavioral Attention: A Longitudinal Study of Whether and How It Influences the Development of Word Reading and Reading Comprehension Among At-Risk Readers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which teacher ratings of behavioral attention predicted responsiveness to word reading instruction in first-grade and third-grade reading comprehension performance. Participants were 110 first-grade students identified as at risk for reading difficulties who received 20 weeks of intensive reading intervention in combination with classroom reading instruction. Path analysis indicated that teacher ratings of student attention significantly predicted students’ word reading growth in first grade even when they were competed against other relevant predictors (phonological awareness, nonword reading, sight word efficiency, vocabulary, listening comprehension, hyperactivity, nonverbal reasoning, and short-term memory). Also, student attention demonstrated a significant indirect effect on third-grade reading comprehension via word reading but not via listening comprehension. Results suggest that student attention (indexed by teacher ratings) is an important predictor of at-risk readers’ responsiveness to reading instruction in first grade and that first-grade reading growth mediates the relationship between students’ attention and their future level of reading comprehension. The importance of considering ways to manage and improve behavioral attention when implementing reading instruction is discussed.     

Tracing symbol naming speed's unique contributions to reading disabilities over time

The contributions of naming speed measured on both serial-list and various discrete-trial formats to several reading subskills were examined longitudinally to determine their impact independent of other reading-related skills on reading disabilities. Tests of symbol naming speed, phonological awareness, vocabulary, memory span and coding speed were given to 38 poor and average readers when they were in Grades 2, 3 and 4. Grade 4 poor readers were discriminated from moderately poor or good readers on serial-list and discrete-trial naming speed tests in all grades. In addition, phonological awareness and vocabulary, but not memory span or coding speed, discriminated groups. These variables in Grade 2 contributed unique variance to reading scores in Grade 4 in differing patterns. Hypotheses about the nature of the reading — naming speed relationship are discussed.     

Static and animated graphics in learning from interactive texts

Animating the graphics in electronic documents may increase readers’ willingness to study them but may impair or distort the processes of gist comprehension. Experiment 1 confirmed that, compared with static diagrams, animation increased readers willingness to study a range of graphic genres (maps, time-lines, drawings of unfamiliar objects). Total reading time was also increased but readers’ differential access of static and animated graphics confounded the interpretation of immediate and delayed retention tests. Experiment 2 contrasted the effects of accessing the graphics before or during reading. Scores on a quiz immediately after reading were significantly higher when the graphics were seen before rather than during reading, suggesting that readers found it difficult to integrate the graphics while still building the gist of the text. Scores on both an immediate and a delayed quiz were significantly higher when the graphics were static rather than animated. One pointer to the cause of the decrement with animated graphics was that the quiz performance of readers having animated graphics correlated with their scores on a picture memory test, whereas those of readers with static graphics did not. In contrast the delayed quiz scores of readers with static graphics showed a significant interaction with their performance on a digit memory task. Readers with high scores on digit memory benefited from accessing the graphics while reading, but readers with low scores on the digit test were impaired by such access during reading. This suggests that the cognitive skills needed for integrating text with animated graphics may differ from those needed for dealing with static graphics.     

A Reading-Level Design Study of Phonological Skills Underlying Fourth-Grade Children''s Word Reading Difficulties

A 3-group reading-level design was used to investigate phonological analysis, verbal working memory, and pseudoword reading performance in less skilled fourth-grade readers. Children were given phonological oddity tasks assessing their sensitivity to subsyllabic and phonemic units, together with standardized tests of verbal working memory and pseudoword reading. Less skilled fourth-grade readers performed lower than both chronological age and reading-level controls on the phonological oddity and pseudoword reading tests. Less skilled fourth-grade readers performed at the same level as skilled second-grade readers on a test of verbal working memory. Skilled fourth-grade readers scored higher than both other groups on this test. Correlational analyses were consistent with the view that phonological analysis skills contribute more strongly than verbal working memory skills to children's decoding abilities.     

Reading,syntactic, and working memory skills of bilingual Portuguese-English Canadian children

The purpose of the study was to examine the nature of language, memory, and reading skills of bilingual students and to determine the relationship between reading problems in English and reading problems in Portuguese. The study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 37 bilingual Portuguese-Canadian children, aged 9–12 years. English was their main instructional language and Portuguese was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program at school where they were taught to read and write Portuguese. The children were administered word and pseudoword reading, language, and working memory tasks in English and Portuguese. The majority of the children (67%) showed at least average proficiency in both languages. The children who had low reading scores in English also had significantly lower scores on the Portuguese tasks. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudoword reading, working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The Portuguese-Canadian children who were normally achieving readers did not differ from a comparison group of monolingual English speaking normally achieving readers except that the bilingual children had significantly lower scores on the English syntactic awareness task. The bilingual reading disabled children had similar scores to the monolingual reading disabled children on word reading and working memory but lower scores on the syntactic awareness task. However, the bilingual reading disabled children had significantlyhigher scores than the monolingual English speaking reading disabled children on the English pseudoword reading test and the English spelling task, perhaps reflecting a positive transfer from the more regular grapheme phoneme conversion rules of Portuguese. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of reading skills. In both English and Portuguese, reading difficulties appear to be strongly related to deficits in phonological processing.     

Adults with reading disabilities: converting a meta-analysis to practice

This article reviews the results of a meta-analysis of the experimental published literature that compares the academic, cognitive, and behavioral performance of adults with reading disabilities (RD) with average achieving adult readers. The meta-analysis shows that deficits independent of the classification measures emerged for adults with RD on measures of vocabulary, math, spelling, and specific cognitive process related to naming speed, phonological processing, and verbal memory. The results also showed that adults with high verbal IQs (scores > 100) but low word recognition standard scores (< 90) yielded greater deficits related to their average reading counterparts when compared to studies that included adults with RD with verbal IQ and reading scores in the same low range. Implications of the findings related to assessment and intervention are discussed.     

Automaticity, retrieval processes, and reading: a longitudinal study in average and impaired readers

In this longitudinal investigation, the development of word-retrieval speed and its relationship to reading was studied in 72 average and 11 severely impaired readers in the kindergarten to grade 2 period (5-8 years). Subjects received a battery of 3 reading measures and 4 continuous naming tests with varied stimulus requirements. Results indicated that the relationship of retrieval speed to reading is a function of development and the correspondence between higher- and lower-level processes in the specific retrieval and reading measures. As automaticity in retrieval developed in average readers, naming-speed/reading relationships moved from strong, general predictions to highly differentiated ones. The strongest correlations were between naming speed for graphological stimuli and lower-level reading tasks. Impaired readers performed slower than average readers on all naming measures across all years, particularly on graphological symbols. 3 dyslexic subgroups emerged: the largest was globally impaired across all naming rate and reading tasks; 2 smaller subgroups had early specific, retrieval-rate deficits and dissociated reading deficits.     

Reading ability and memory span: Long-term memory contributions to span for good and poor readers

A number of studies have shown that childrenwith reading difficulties perform poorly ontests of verbal memory span. The extent towhich differences in memory span for good andpoor readers can be explained by differences ina long-term memory component to span as well asby differences in short-term memory processeswas investigated in this study. Memory spanand rehearsal rate were measured for high andlow frequency words and nonwords. Althoughmemory span performance for high frequencywords was comparable for all reading abilitygroups, good readers had better memory spanperformance for low frequency words. This wasattributable to differences in both short-termand long-term memory contributions to spanperformance. Differences between readingability groups also emerged when memory spanfor nonwords was measured. In this case,differences between groups also appeared to bethe result of difficulties which poor readersencountered in learning newphonologically-based materials (i.e. nonwords). The nature of the inter-relationships betweenmemory span, reading and measures ofphonological awareness are discussed in thelight of these findings.     

A prospective study of the relationship between phonological,semantic and syntactic skills and specific reading disability

Although it is well established that a relationship exists between specific reading disability and spoken language difficulties, the nature of that relationship remains controversial. In the study reported here, the performance of poor readers was firstly compared with that of matched good readers on a series of spoken and written language tasks on three assessment trials 12 months apart, and secondly to that of younger average readers. Five experimental tasks were used to measure the readers' phonological processing skills, and three subtests from the CELF-R were selected to measure the students' syntactic and semantic skills. Reading accuracy and comprehension ability were assessed by the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability-Revised. The results showed that 8–10-year-old poor readers performed poorly in all three linguistic areas concurrently, and that these difficulties persisted. However, the important finding from this study was that while the good readers demonstrated no significant difference between their phonological processing skills and their semantic/syntactic skills, the poor readers' ability did differ according to skill area. The poor readers' phonological processing skills appeared to be particularly impaired, a finding which was further enhanced by results from the reading-match comparison. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of reading disability.     

Lexical and nonlexical routes: a comparison between normally achieving and poor readers.

This study investigated qualitative differences in poor readers relative to normally achieving readers of the same reading level. Thirty-eight 9-year-old poor readers and forty 7- and 8-year-old reading-age-matched normally achieving readers from the United Kingdom were matched in phonemic processing and then given tests of memory span and visual discrimination of letter-like characters, were required to read different word types (regular, exception, and pseudoword), and were asked to complete a homophonic pseudoword test. The poor readers were worse at reading pseudowords compared to the controls, but this difference was unrelated to phonemic length of number of letters, or to the ease of producing analogies for the pseudowords. The results suggest that although there are no differences with reading-age controls in phonological processing, poor readers have worse grapheme-phoneme conversion skills and greater reluctance to relinquish the lexical route when appropriate. The results also showed that poor readers were slightly better at visual discrimination but had poorer memory spans.     

Short-term memory,phonological processing,and reading ability

Verbal short-term memory deficits are a common characteristic of children with reading problems and may markedly increase the difficulty of learning to read. Previous work suggests that the basis of the short-term memory deficit may involve limitations in phonetic coding. In the present paper, a series of experiments are reviewed which examined the role of phonological processes in short-term memory. First, a developmental study is described in which a significant relationship was found between phonetic processes and verbal memory span, but not between phonetic processes and nonverbal memory. Second, additional studies are reviewed which collectively found that children with reading problems are less accurate at phonetic encoding than are good readers, and that performance on phonetic processing corresponds with verbal memory span. No reading group differences were obtained on nonverbal perception or memory tasks. These findings suggest that both developmental and individual differences in verbal memory span are related to the efficiency of phonological processes. Practical implications of current cognitive research are discussed. The research was supported by NIH Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories.     

Reading ability and short-term memory: The role of phonological processing

The aim of the current study was to further explore the connection between verbal short-term recall and phonological processing for two purposes: (a) To investigate the basis of short-term memory deficits for children with reading disability, and (b) To further explore the origin of developmental verbal memory span increases.Using a variety of memory and phonological tasks, reading group comparisons were conducted testing third-grade good readers and poor readers, and developmental changes were studied with pre-kindergarten, first-grade and third-grade children. The main finding was that a strong relationship was observed between efficiency of phonological processes and capacity of verbal memory supporting the hypothesis that reducing phonological processing requirements in verbal short-term memory increases available resources for storage. No such relationship was found between phonological processing and nonverbal memory. This conclusion was supported by two findings: (a) The verbal short-term memory deficits in poor readers significantly correspond with less accurate phonological processing, and (b) Developmental increases in verbal STM are accompanied by more accurate and rapid execution of phonological tasks.     

Young readers' use of phonological information: phonological awareness, memory, and comprehension

In this study, we explored the relationship between beginning readers' phonological awareness and other aspects of phonological processing, specifically as manifested in short-term memory and comprehension tasks. The theoretical questions underlying the study were (a) what roles phonological processes play in children's beginning reading, from word identification through sentence comprehension, and (b) whether those roles are sufficiently related that potential difficulties at one level directly affect processing at other levels. Phonologically induced effects were observed for word-list memory and for sentence judgments for both novice readers (at the end of kindergarten) and relatively more experienced readers (end of Grades 1 and 2). For both age groups, correlational analyses revealed relationships among phonological awareness, phonological processing in list memory, and word reading. However, phonological processing in sentence comprehension was not related to other types of phonological processing. These results indicate that although phonology plays a role during comprehension, phonological processing may not be as limiting a factor in comprehension as in word reading.     

The effects of phonological transparency on reading derived words

The purpose of this study was to determine whether poor readers have more pronounced problems than average-reading peers reading derived words the base forms of which undergo a phonological shift when a suffix is added (i.e., shift relations as in “natural”), as compared to derived words whose forms are phonologically and orthographically transparent (i.e., stable relations, as in “cultural”). Two computer-based word recognition tasks (Naming and Lexical Decision) were administered to children with reading disability (RD), peers with average reading ability, and adults. Across tasks, there was an effect for transparency (i.e., better performance on stable than shift words) for both child groups and the adults. For the children, a significant interaction was found between group and word type. Specifically, on the naming task, there was an advantage for the stable words, and this was most noteworthy for the children with RD. On the lexical decision task, trade-offs of speed and accuracy were evident for the child reader groups. Performances on the nonwords showed the poor readers to be comparable to the average readers in distinguishing legal and illegal nonwords; further analyses suggested that poor readers carried out deeper processing of derived words than their average reading peers. Additional study is needed to explore the relation of orthographic and phonological processing on poor readers’ memory for and processing of derived words.