Correlates of orthographic learning in third‐grade children's silent reading

This study examined word identification, phonological recoding efficiency, familiar word reading efficiency, orthographic choice for familiar words and serial naming speed as potential correlates of orthographic learning following silent reading in third‐grade children. Children silently read a series of short stories, each containing six repetitions of a different target non‐word. They subsequently read target non‐words faster than homophones and preferred target non‐words to homophones in an orthographic choice task, indicating that they had formed functional orthographic representations of the target non‐words through phonologically recoding them during silent story reading. Target non‐word orthographic choice was correlated with all measures bar non‐symbol naming speed. The association between phonological recoding efficiency and orthographic learning lends support to the hypothesis that self‐teaching occurs through phonological recoding even in silent reading. Our findings were not generally consistent with the view that serial naming speed assesses orthographic learning aptitude.     

Transfer of reading-related cognitive skills in learning to read Chinese (L1) and English (L2) among Chinese elementary school children

This study investigated transfer of reading-related cognitive skills between learning to read Chinese (L1) and English (L2) among Chinese children in Hong Kong. Fifty-three Grade 2 students were tested on word reading, phonological, orthographic and rapid naming skills in Chinese (L1) and English (L2). The major findings were: (a) significant correlations between Chinese and English measures in phonological awareness and rapid naming, but not in orthographic skills; (b) significant unique contribution of Chinese and English rapid naming skills and English rhyme awareness for predicting Chinese word reading after controlling for all the Chinese and English cognitive measures; (c) significant unique contribution of English phonological skills and Chinese orthographic skills (a negative one) for predicting English word reading after controlling for all the English and Chinese cognitive measures; and (d) significant unique contribution of Chinese rhyme awareness for predicting English phonemic awareness. These findings provide initial evidence that developing reading-related cognitive skills in English may have facilitative effects on Chinese word reading development. They also suggest that Chinese orthographic skills or tactics may not be helpful for learning to read English words among ESL learners; and that Chinese rhyme awareness facilitates the development of English phonemic awareness which is an essential skill predicting ESL learning.     

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.

     

The role of vowel signs in Hebrew: Beyond word recognition

After third grade of elementary school, native Hebrew speakers in Israel gradually become expert in reading two kinds of writing systems: the one they start with that contains signs for every phoneme of the spoken language, and another, to which they are steadily introduced, beginning with the second grade, which omits most vowels, together with few consonantal distinctions. Earlier studies indicate that single voweled words are read faster than unvoweled words, particularly in a naming task. This study examined another possible contribution of vowel signs in reading Hebrew: Its effect on memory and comprehension. It was assumed that if subvocalization facilitates memory of words while reading, and if vowel signs facilitate phonological processing, as is perhaps the case in naming tasks, then vowelization may intensify the processing of the articulatory loop and this should improve memory and comprehension. Our first two experiments assessed the contribution of vowel signs to the memory of word lists in either recognition memory or word recall tasks. The third experiment examined the contribution of vowel signs to the reading of connected texts. We found that vowel signs speeded up recognition memory of words in third graders, and improved the recall of words printed in the context of mixed lists in sixth graders. We also found that vowelization improved memory and comprehension of some prose texts.     

Spelling predictors; investigating the role of phonological ability and rapid naming in a large cross-sectional British study

This study aimed to identify predictors of single word spelling performance in children using a novel test containing regular words, irregular words and pseudowords. We assessed reading ability, letter-sound knowledge, phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatised naming (RAN) in children aged 4–12 years (N = 641). Mixed model analyses with hierarchical nested data were conducted with Year_group (Yr R to Yr 6) included as a factor, PA and RAN as predictors, and reading and letter-sound knowledge as covariates. For irregular word spelling, PA and RAN were significant predictors, but the associations were dependent upon the year the children attended. Interestingly, for regular words and pseudowords PA was not significantly related. For pseudowords, only RAN was a significant predictor and only in Yr 2. We argue that a better understanding of spelling development can be achieved using tools that distinguish between regular and irregular words and pseudowords, as different processes seem to be associated with the different types of letter string across the variable levels of spelling experience.     

An Analysis of the Word Naming Errors of Normal Readers and Reading Disabled Children in Spanish

In the current research the performance of children with and without reading disabilities was compared on a single word naming task. An analysis was carried out of the frequency and form of naming errors produced by the groups when naming real words and nonwords in a transparent orthography such as Spanish. A sample of 132 (45 normal readers, 87 reading disabled) Spanish children aged 9–10 years were selected, and an experiment was carried out to investigate if students with reading disabilities would have particular difficulties in naming words under conditions that require extensive phonological computation. While the children were performing the naming task, we recorded what they read to subsequently analyse the form, as well as the frequency, of naming errors as a function of lexicality, word frequency, word length and positional frequency of syllables. Disabled readers made more errors in nonwords, low frequency words and long nonwords. The findings support the hypothesis that poor phonological skills are a characteristic of reading disabled children.     

Comparing the phonological and double deficit hypotheses for developmental dyslexia

This study tested the predictions of thephonological and double deficit hypotheses byexperimentally examining speech perception,phoneme awareness, lexical retrieval (serialand discrete), articulatory speed, and verbalSTM in school age child (N = 35) and adolescent(N = 36) dyslexics, and both chronological age(CA) and reading age (RA) controls. Theresults confirmed the findings of previousstudies of a deficit in phoneme awareness indevelopmental dyslexia. At both age levels,dyslexics performed significantly more poorlythan both their CA and RA controls. Althoughdeficits in the other processes investigated,particularly in rapid serial naming, were alsoapparent, they were not as clear-cut as thedeficit in phoneme awareness. In general,definite evidence of a deficit in rapid serialnaming was limited to the more severelyimpaired dyslexics. Furthermore, although rapidserial naming contributed independent variationto various literacy skills, its contributionwas modest relative to the contribution ofphoneme awareness, regardless of whether theliteracy skill relied more or less heavily onphonological or orthographic coding skills. Further analyses suggested that variation inrapid serial skill is particularly importantfor fluent reading of text, whereas phonemeawareness is particularly important for thedevelopment of the ability to read byphonologically recoding letters or groups ofletters in words into their phonological codes.This explains the relatively strongcontribution of phoneme awareness to readingand spelling ability in general. In sum, thephonological hypothesis offers a moreparsimonious account of the present resultsthan the double deficit hypothesis.     

Rebounding activation caused by lexical homophony in the processing of Japanese two-kanji compound words

The present study investigated the effects of lexical homophony on the processing of Japanese two-kanji compound words. Experiment 1 showed that participants took longer to perform lexical decisions for words with a high degree of lexical homophony than those with no homophony. Interestingly, the same inhibitory trend was found in the naming task of Experiment 2. Participants took longer to name words with a high degree of lexical homophony than those with no homophony. The consistency of an inhibitory effect through the two experiments suggests that during naming and lexical decisions for Japanese two-kanji compound words, an orthographic representation activates the phonological representation, which then leads to a rebounding activation of orthographic representations of homophonic forms.     

Phonological knowledge and naming ability in children with reading disability

Children who are poor readers have difficulty naming pictured objects. Their naming difficulty could be a result of inadequate representations of the phonology of words, inadequate processing of those representations, or both. In this study, third-grade good and poor readers were tested on object naming, and, in cases of naming failure, forced-choice recognition tasks were used to probe their knowledge of the phonology of the object names. The two reading groups showed no differences in their ability to select the initial phonemes or rhymes of object names they had not produced spontaneously. Moreover, initial phoneme prompts were helpful for both reading groups. The children differed, however, in their ability to produce words after being given rhyme information. The results indicated that, except in the ability to manipulate explicitly phonological information, the poor readers; performance was qualitatively similar to that of the good readers. It is suggested that training in phonological analysis may help poor readers overcome the deficiencies in establishing and processing phonological representations that lead to their quantitative deficit in object naming.     

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.     

Why the timing deficit hypothesis does not explain reading disability in adults

It has been proposed that the phonological coredeficit that is linked to reading failure hasas its underlying cause a deficit in temporalprocessing. In a multivariate investigationdesigned to examine the temporal processingdeficit hypothesis, thirty reading-disabled(RD) adults, thirty-two normally achievingadults and thirty-one normally achievingchildren (reading-level controls) wereadministered a comprehensive battery thatincluded a wide range of timing tasks, inaddition to reading and phonological measures. Although adults with RD displayed overallperformance that was below that of normallyachieving adults on most of the timing tasks,their performance was not differentiallyinfluenced by rate of stimulus presentation. Although the RD adults displayed the typicalpattern of impaired phonological awareness andpseudoword reading relative to reading-levelmatched children, the reading-disabled adultsoutperformed the children on the timing tasks. Finally, with the exception of continuousnaming, the timing tasks shared little variancewith phonological sensitivity and contributedlittle unique variance to word reading. Although these findings undermine the timingdeficit hypothesis, they do provide evidencefor the involvement of naming deficits inreading disability.     

IQ vs phonological recoding skill in explaining differences between poor readers and normal readers in word recognition: Evidence from a naming task

The aim of this study was to investigate whether differences inreading performance between poor readers and normal readers could bebetter explained by phonological recoding deficiences than IQ. A sampleof 132 Spanish children was classified into four groups according to IQ(<80; 81--90; 91--109; 110--140) and into two groups based on readingskills (poor readers vs normal readers). A word naming task was alsoadministered. We manipulated the word parameters (length, positionalsyllable frequency, and word frequency) and nonword parameters (lengthand positional syllable frequency) to find out whether students withreading disabilities would have more difficulties than normal readers innaming words under conditions that require extensive phonologicalcomputation. The results demonstrated that there were differencesbetween Spanish children who were normal readers and those who were poorreaders, independent of their IQs.     

The Effect of Morphemic Homophony on the Processing of Japanese Two-kanji Compound Words

Two experiments investigated the effect of kanji morphemic homophony on lexical decision and naming. Effects were examined from both the left-hand and right-hand positions of Japanese two-kanji compound words. The number of homophones affected the processing of compound words in the same way for both tasks. For left-hand kanji, fewer morphemic homophones led to faster lexical decision and whole-word naming. For right-hand kanji, the number of morphemic homophones did not affect either lexical decision or naming. This effect of homophonic density suggested that, when a kanji-compound word is to be processed, phonological information of its kanji constituents is automatically activated and reverberates back to generate a series of orthographic representations of kanji morphemic homophones, but not in a completely parallel fashion.     

Developmental dyslexia in an orthography of intermediate depth: the case of European Portuguese

Fifteen Portuguese children with dyslexia, aged 9–11 years, were compared with reading and chronological age controls with respect to five indicators related to the phonological deficit hypothesis: the effects of lexicality, regularity, and length, implicit and explicit phonological awareness, and rapid naming. The comparison between groups indicates that Portuguese children with dyslexia have a phonological impairment which is revealed by a developmental deficit in implicit phonological awareness and irregular word reading (where younger reading level controls performed better than dyslexics) and by a developmental delay in decoding ability and explicit phonological awareness (where dyslexics matched reading level controls). These results are discussed in relation to the idea that European Portuguese is written in an orthography of intermediate depth.     

The time course of semantic and phonological access in naming kanji and kana words

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the time course of semantic and phonological access in naming kanji and kana words. Japanese adults quickly named single words written in kanji and the same words written in kana in one session, and translated them into English in another session. In both experiments using nouns (Experiment 1) and verbs (Experiment 2), words were named faster in kana than in kanji but were translated faster in kanji than in kana. These findings were interpreted to suggest that kana words are closer to phonology while kanji words are closer to meaning. The optimum solutions obtained by the simplex method showed that semantic access takes place 10 to 19 msec earlier in kanji words than in kana words, whereas phonological access takes place 27 to 31 msec earlier in kana words than in kanji words. A possible difference between kanji nouns and verbs is briefly discussed in terms of phonological access time.     

Testing the double-deficit hypothesis in an adult sample

The double-deficit hypothesis of dyslexia posits that reading deficits are more severe in individuals with weaknesses in phonological awareness and rapid naming than in individuals with deficits in only one of these reading composite skills. In this study, the hypothesis was tested in an adult sample as a model of reading achievement. Participants were parents of children referred for evaluation of reading difficulties. Approximately half of all participants reported difficulty learning to read in childhood and a small subset demonstrated ongoing weaknesses in reading. Structural equation modeling results suggest that the double-deficit hypothesis is an accurate model for understanding adult reading achievement. Better reading achievement was associated with better phonological awareness and faster rapid automatized naming in adults. Posthoc analyses indicated that individuals with double deficits had significantly lower reading achievement than individuals with single deficits or no deficits.     

The transient role of explicit phonological recoding for reading acquisition

This study explores early stages of reading acquisition, specifically therelation of phoneme blending and letter recoding to individual differencesin word decoding. The hypothesis was that facility in letter recoding andaccuracy of phoneme blending are substantial components of word decodingin beginning readers but not for skilled reading and that reliance onphoneme-sized decoding of words would dissipate as reading proficiencyincreased. In four studies we examined the ability to recode letters, blendphonemes and decode words in four groups of Dutch children (early Grade1, N = 130, older Grade 1, N = 81, Grade 3, N = 54 and a group of children witha reading lag, N = 356). Phoneme blending was only related to the readingability of beginning Grade 1 children. By the end of Grade 1 ability to blendphonemes did not differentiate reading capacity, nor for older children inGrade 3 and reading disabled children. Letter recoding was related to worddecoding in all four studies, although the strength of that relation diddwindle as reading skill level increased. The results of the study appearconsistent with self teaching hypothesis and other theories that imply atransient role of explicit phonological recoding in word identification.     

How does phonological awareness relate to nonword reading skill amongst poor readers?

This study examined phonological awareness at the level of phonemes and rhyme and related this to nonword naming ability. Poor readers were compared with 11 year old chronological-age controls and 8 year old reading-age controls. The poor reader group was impaired for chronological age in all tasks, and impaired for reading age at nonword naming and phoneme deletion. The poor readers' rhyming skills, however, were commensurate with reading age. Individual variation was observed together with exceptions to the group findings; most poor readers performed within the range of the reading-age controls on the phonological tasks and in nonword naming. Dissociations in phonological skills were evident, including indications that intact awareness of rhyme may not be a prerequisite for the development of phoneme awareness. Furthermore, phoneme awareness correlated significantly with poor readers' word and nonword reading ability, whereas rhyming skill did not. Therefore, phoneme awareness may be more important than rhyming skill in understanding reading disorders.     

汉语儿童英语单词命名策略研究

运用定量研究的方法调查了汉语儿童英语单词命名中的策略使用情况。128名小学六年级的学生参加了此次实验。被试给混杂在规则和不规则单音节和双音节英语词汇表中的高频和低频词命名。不规则词语使读者倾向于使用词汇路径,而纯规则词语构成的词汇表却使目标词中的非词汇信息得到了更有效的运用。当词汇表主要由规则或不规则双音节填塞词构成时,词频效应就达到了。相对于单音节规则词语,当填塞词是单音节不规则词语时,频率效应显著增大。此研究结果拓展了之前的浅正字法研究,这表明作为第二语言学习者的汉语儿童在较深的正字法,即英语的单词命名中也能对音位和词汇信息灵活地加以运用。     

Phonological skill,lexical decision and letter report performance in good and poor adult spellers

Two groups of undergraduate students, matched for reading skill but differing in spelling ability, participated in three experiments with the aim of exploring the causes of differences in spelling skill in this population. In the first experiment participants were presented with a range of tasks to investigate the possibility that the poor spellers had poorer phonological abilities than the good spellers. No significant differences were observed. In Experiment 2, a lexical decision task was used. The words in the task differed in orthographic neighbourhood size (N) and frequency. Analysis of the latencies revealed effects of frequency and N, but the effect of spelling group was not significant and neither was the interaction with N. Analysis of the errors revealed that the poor spellers made significantly more errors than the good spellers. In Experiment 3 participants were asked to identify the letters in briefly presented words and non‐words. There was a significant effect of stimulus type in favour of words. Poor spellers made more errors in the task than the good spellers, although the difference was restricted to non‐words. Finally, an analysis of the errors made in spelling to dictation by the two groups was carried out. This revealed that the poor spellers were more likely than the good spellers to make errors that were not phonologically plausible and that differed markedly from the target. Overall, the results are interpreted in terms of a partial orthographic representations explanation of poor spelling in good readers.