A study of writing mechanisms in Spanish primary education children / Estudio de los mecanismos de escritura en niños españoles de Educación Primaria

Several studies performed on deep orthography systems reveal variables that influence writing latencies that occur over the course of learning. In transparent orthographies such as Spanish there are very few studies on writing that measure latencies and duration. The aim of this present study was to take a more in-depth look at knowledge of the writing mechanisms used by Spanish children in primary education, by studying the errors, latencies and duration of the writing of words. To do this, sixty children performed a copying task and a dictation task with regular words of different frequency and length. The obtained results show changes in the writing mechanisms used by the children as they became more expert, as indicated by the greater effect of word length in the first years of primary. This word length effect is a more determining factor with regard to the number of letters in words than for the number of syllables. These results hold important implications for the teaching of writing in Spanish.     

Spelling Errors Impede Recognition of Correctly Spelled Word Forms

ABSTRACT

Spelling errors are typically thought of as an effect of a word’s weak orthographic representation in an individual mind. What if existence of spelling errors is a partial cause of effortful orthographic learning and word recognition? We selected words that had homophonic substandard spelling variants of varying frequency (e.g., innocent and inocent occur in 69% and 31% of occurrences of the word, respectively). Conventional spellings were presented for recognition either in context (Experiment 1, eye-tracking sentence reading) or in isolation (Experiment 2, lexical decision). Words elicited longer fixation durations and lexical decision latencies if there was more uncertainty (higher entropy) regarding which spelling is a preferred one. The inhibitory effect of frequency was not modulated by spelling or other reading skill. This finding is in line with theories of learning that predict spelling errors to weaken associations between conventional spellings and the word’s meaning.     

Adolescent Weak Decoders Writing in a Shallow Orthography: Process and Product

It has been hypothesized that students with dyslexia struggle with writing because of a word-level focus that reduces attention to higher level textual features (structure, theme development). This may result from difficulties with spelling and/or difficulties with reading. Twenty-six Norwegian upper secondary students (M = 16.9 years) with weak decoding skills and 26 age-matched controls composed expository texts by keyboard under two conditions: normally and with letters masked to prevent them reading what they were writing. Weak decoders made more spelling errors and produced poorer quality text. Their inter-key-press latencies were substantially longer preword, at word end, and within word. These findings provide some support for the word-level focus hypothesis, although we found that weak decoders were slightly less likely to engage in word-level editing. Preventing reading did not affect differences between weak decoders and controls, indicating that their reduced fluency was associated with production rather than reading difficulties.     

The effect of the number of syllables on handwriting production

Four experiments examined whether motor programming in handwriting production can be modulated by the syllable structure of the word to be written. This study manipulated the number of syllables. The items, words and pseudo-words, had 2, 3 or 4 syllables. French adults copied them three times. We measured the latencies between the visual presentation and the first production (L1), the first and second production (L2), and the second and third production (L3). The results show an effect of the number of syllables in L1 for pseudo-words but not for words and on L2 and L3 for all the items (Experiments 1 and 2). Experiment 3 ruled out an interpretation of the latencies for pseudo-words in terms of reading time with a delayed copying task. Experiment 4 replicated the previous results and assessed the effect of varying the temporal interval between the second and third trials. The results of the four experiments confirm the role of the syllable in word writing. The number of syllables of a word modulates the time course of handwriting production.

The Brain Might Read That Way

Research on how the brain implements reading has produced results of remarkable consistency, especially on the functional anatomy of single word reading. We examine the general features of this emerging knowledge and draw attention to the extent to which it converges with results from other methods of reading science in several areas: reading acquisition, reading disability, and the basic cognitive processes of reading. We also add perspectives not otherwise represented in this special issue by pointing to the promise of research in text processing and discussing the research on word reading across writing systems. The word reading network identified in alphabetic research does have a universal basis, but it also shows some accommodation to the writing system.     

Use of context in the word recognition process by adults with a significant history of reading difficulties

We examined whether university students who report a significant history of reading difficulties (RD; n = 24) differed from university students with no history of reading difficulties (NRD; n = 31) in how sentence context affects word recognition. Experiment 1 found no differences in how congruent sentence primes or syntactic manipulations of the sentence primes affected the performance of the two groups. However, only the RD group displayed a significant inhibition effect when the target word was preceded by an incongruent sentence prime. Experiment 2 found that the groups differed in how meaning frequency of the target word and context strength of the sentence prime affected word recognition latencies. The results suggest that the RD participants’ performance is context-sensitive and better explained by interactive models of language processing than by modular models.     

Children's reading profiles on exiting the Reading Recovery programme: do they predict sustained progress?

The aim of this study was to identify reading profiles, which predict the literacy progress of Reading Recovery graduates. Reading Recovery is an intensive remediation for children after the first year of school. Children were assessed at exit from the programme and at 3‐month, 6‐month and 12‐month follow‐up points. Text Reading Level made unique contributions to word reading, spelling and writing at all time points and was consistently the best predictor of word reading. Phonological processing also made unique contributions to word reading and spelling. Reading comprehension was found to be the best predictor of National Curriculum sublevels for reading and writing, 12 months later. These findings indicate that levelled texts, as employed in Reading Recovery, provide a good indication of progress in word reading, spelling and writing after the programme has been discontinued, but also present a case for assessing other reading skills (e.g., phonological processing and reading comprehension) in order to help predict sustained progress in literacy.     

LITERACY AND ELDERS: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW

Little research has been done on the literacy needs and interests of elders. Consequently, many programs of literacy training for elders are based upon inadequate and inaccurate information. The authors review recent literature about literacy and the aged and offer some suggestions for future investigations. They maintain that there is a need for empirical research into the perceptions of reading and writing held by the elderly themselves. Specifically, this research should: (1) assess the reading/writing needs and interests of the elderly; and (2) examine what effect societal expectations of the elderly have on their reading/writing behavior and interests.     

The ABC’s of Chinese: maternal mediation of Pinyin for Chinese children’s early literacy skills

In the present study, maternal Pinyin mediation and its relations with young Chinese children??s word reading and word writing development were explored. At time 1, 43 Mainland Chinese children and their mothers were videotaped on a task in which children were asked to write 12 words in Pinyin (a phonological coding system used in Mainland China as an aid to reading Chinese characters) with help from their mothers. The videotapes were later coded on a scale (adapted from Aram & Levin, 2001) of mothers?? writing facilitation techniques. Scores on this scale of maternal mediation of Pinyin uniquely explained children??s reading of Chinese words, but not writing of Chinese words, after statistically controlling for maternal education and age, and children??s non-verbal IQ, age, and phonological awareness. At time 2, 22 of the children from time 1 were further tested on Chinese word reading and word reading task 1?year later. After controlling for children??s age and non-verbal IQ, maternal Pinyin mediation uniquely explained 6% of the variance in children??s word writing and 7% of the variance in children??s word reading performance at time 2. Results underscore the potential importance of the maternal scaffolding role for reading acquisition both theoretically and practically in a domain not previously explored (i.e., use of a common coding system (Pinyin) for learning to read, rather than word reading itself).     

Rapid naming in relation to reading and writing in Korean (Hangul), Chinese (Hanja) and English among Korean children: a 1‐year longitudinal study

The relation of rapid automatised naming (RAN) to word recognition may depend on the phonological regularity of the orthography. This study examined differential contributions of RAN to reading and writing in Korean alphabetic Hangul, logographic Hanja (Chinese) and English as a second language among 73 fifth graders in Korea across 1 year. RAN was differentially associated between reading and writing in Hangul and English. After statistically controlling for age, gender, morphological awareness, vocabulary and phonological awareness, RAN was uniquely predictive of Hangul word writing but not Hangul word recognition, and it uniquely accounted for English word recognition but not English word writing. Meanwhile, RAN explained both reading and writing in Hanja. Findings were discussed in terms of their orthography characteristics and different levels of proficiency.     

Orthography to Phonology and Meaning: Comparisons Across and within Writing Systems

According to the Universal Writing System Constraint, all writing systems encode language, and thus reflect basic properties of the linguistic system they encode. According to a second universal, the Universal Phonological Principle, the activation of word pronunciations occurs for skilled readers across all writing systems. We review recent research that illustrates the implications of these two universal principles both across and within writing systems. Within the family of alphabetic systems, differences between Korean and English arise in the languages, rather than the orthographies, while the reverse appears to be true for German and English differences. Across writing systems, new Event Related Potentials (ERP) experiments show the robustness of phonology across Chinese and English systems and chart the time course of word reading in Chinese and English for Chinese bilinguals and for English speakers learning Chinese. The ERP results show differences between Chinese and English for both groups and suggest that the time course of word processes and the brain areas identified as sources for the ERP components differ both as a result of writing system and the skill of the reader. We propose the System Accommodation Hypothesis, that reading processes and the neural structures that support them accommodate to specific visual and structural features of a new writing system.The research reported in this paper was made possible by National Science Foundation award BN0113243 to the first author.     

When Is Reading Also Writing: Sources of Individual Differences on the New Reading Performance Assessments

This research examined component processes that contribute to performance on one of the new, standards-based reading tests that have become a staple in many states. Participants were 60 Grade 4 students randomly sampled from 7 classrooms in a rural school district. The particular test we studied employed a mixture of traditional (multiple-choice) and performance assessment approaches (constructed-response items that required written responses). Our findings indicated that multiple-choice and constructed-response items enlisted different cognitive skills. Writing ability emerged as an important source of individual differences in explaining overall reading ability, but its influence was limited to performance on constructed-response items. After controlling for word identification and listening, writing ability accounted for no variance in multiple-choice reading scores. By contrast, writing ability accounted for unique variance in reading ability, even after controlling for word identification and listening skill, and explained more variance in constructed-response reading scores than did either word identification or listening skill. In addition, performance on the multiple-choice reading measure along with writing ability accounted for nearly all of the reliable variance in performance on the constructed-response reading measure.