Reading in Arabic orthography: The effect of vowels and context on reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers

This study investigated the effect of Arabic vowels and Arabic context on reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers reading narrative stories and newspaper articles. Central to this study is the belief that reading theory today should consider additional variables, especially when explaining the reading process in Arabic orthography among poor and skilled readers. This orthography has not been studied: reading theory today is the sum of conclusions from studies conducted in Latin orthography. The subjects were 109 tenth-grade native Arabic speakers, 39 of them poor readers and 70 skilled readers. Subjects had to read Arabic narrative stories and newspaper articles. There were four reading conditions for each text type: vowelized text, unvowelized text, vowelized word naming, and unvowelized word naming. The results showed that vowels and contexts were important variables to facilitate word recognition in poor and skilled readers in Arabic orthography. A new Arabic reading model for skilled readers is suggested.     

Sublexical and lexical processing of the English orthography among native speakers of Chinese and Korean

Comparisons of the effects of typical and atypical typeface on reading performance among readers of different linguistic backgrounds may yield new insights into the psychology of word recognition. A total of 143 adults (i.e., 50 Chinese, 55 Koreans, 38 native English speakers) participated in the study that involved two computer-based naming tests. The tests presented words with letters that varied in size and shape in Experiment 1 and words containing scrambled letters in Experiment 2. Results from Experiment 1 showed that the interference effect of size and shape on word naming accuracy and latency was robust for all readers. Likewise, results from Experiment 2 showed a broad interference effect of scrambled letters on word naming; however, scrambled letters appeared less disruptive to word naming among Chinese readers compared to their Korean and native English speaking counterparts. Taken together, Chinese speakers were less efficient in recognizing atypical words at the sublexical level, but more efficient at the lexical level.     

Accuracy and Fluency in List and Context Reading of Skilled and RD Groups: Absolute and Relative Performance Levels

The purpose of this study was to examine (1) the performance levels and the magnitude of performance difference between students with reading disabilities (RD) and skilled readers when reading a typical classroom text; (2) the hypothesis that students with RD have specific difficulty using context in such a way that reading fluency is affected; and (3) whether RD subtypes may be differentiated according to performance on contextual and context‐free reading tasks. Two groups of fourth graders (85 skilled readers and 24 students with RD) completed a standardized test of reading comprehension, read aloud a folktale, and read aloud the folktale's words in a randomly sequenced list. Performance was scored as correct rate and percentage correct. Based on the number of words per idea unit in the passage, we also estimated the rate at which reader groups encountered and processed text ideas. Compared to the RD group, skilled readers read three times more correct words per minute in context, and showed higher accuracy and rates on all measures. Both context and isolated word‐reading rates were highly sensitive to impairment. We found no evidence for RD subtypes based on these measures. Results illustrate differences in reading levels between the two groups, the temporal advantage skilled readers have in linking text ideas, how word reading differs as a function of task format and performance dimension, and how limited word‐identification skills (not comprehension) produce contextual reading difficulties for students with RD.     

Exploring the eye‐movement patterns as Chinese children read texts: a developmental perspective

This study was to investigate Chinese children's eye patterns while reading different text genres from a developmental perspective. Eye movements were recorded while children in the second through sixth grades read two expository texts and two narrative texts. Across passages, overall word frequency was not significantly different between the two genres. Results showed that all children had longer fixation durations for low‐frequency words. They also had longer fixation durations on content words. These results indicate that children adopted a word‐based processing strategy like skilled readers do. However, only older children's rereading times were affected by genre. Overall, eye‐movement patterns of older children reported in this study are in accordance with those of skilled Chinese readers, but younger children are more likely to be responsive to word characteristics than text level when reading a Chinese text.     

Pronouncing new words aloud during the silent reading of text enhances fifth graders?? memory for vocabulary words and their spellings

An experiment with random assignment examined the effectiveness of a strategy to learn unfamiliar English vocabulary words during text reading. Lower socioeconomic status, language minority fifth graders (M?=?10?years, 7?months; n?=?62) silently read eight passages each focused on an unknown multi-syllabic word that was underlined, embedded in a meaningful context, defined, depicted, and repeated three times. Students were grouped by word reading ability, matched into pairs, and randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the strategy condition, students orally pronounced the underlined words during silent reading. In the control condition, students penciled a check if they had seen the underlined words before but did not say the words aloud. Results of ANOVAs showed that the oral strategy enhanced vocabulary learning (ps?<?.01), with poorer readers showing bigger effect sizes than better readers in remembering pronunciation-meaning associations and spellings of the words. In a second experiment, 32 fifth graders from the same school described the strategies they use when encountering unfamiliar words in context. Better readers reported more word-level strategies whereas poorer readers reported more text-based strategies. Our explanation is that application of the word-level strategy of decoding new words aloud strengthened connections between spellings, pronunciations, and meanings in memory compared to silent reading of new words, particularly among poor readers who were less skilled and less likely to use this strategy unless instructed to do so.     

Same Same,but Different: Word and Sentence Reading in German and English

The current study compared eye fixation patterns during word and sentence processing in a consistent and an inconsistent alphabetic orthography. German and English children as well as adults matched on word reading ability read matched sentences while their eye fixation behavior was recorded. Results indicated that German children read in a more small-unit plodder-like style with more diligent first-pass reading and less rereading. In contrast, English children read in a more large-unit explorer-like style with a greater tendency to skip words, and more regressions. It is important that these cross-linguistic processing differences largely persisted in the adult readers. Orthographic consistency thus influences both local word recognition and global sentence processing in developing and skilled readers.     

The relations among L1 (Spanish) literacy skills,L2 (English) language,L2 text reading fluency,and L2 reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking ELL first grade students

We investigated the relations of L2 (i.e., English) oral reading fluency, silent reading fluency, word reading automaticity, oral language skills, and L1 literacy skills (i.e., Spanish) to L2 reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking English language learners in the first grade (N = 150). An analysis was conducted for the entire sample as well as for skilled and less skilled word readers. Results showed that word reading automaticity was strongly related to oral and silent reading fluency, but oral language skill was not. This was the case not only for the entire sample but also for subsamples of skilled and less skilled word readers, which is a discrepant finding from a study with English-only children (Kim et al., 2011). With regard to the relations among L2 oral language, text reading fluency, word reading automaticity, reading comprehension, and L1 literacy skills, patterns of relations were similar for skilled versus less skilled word readers with oral reading fluency, but different with silent reading fluency. When oral and silent reading fluency were in the model simultaneously, oral reading fluency, but not silent reading fluency, was uniquely related to reading comprehension. Children's L1 literacy skill was not uniquely related to reading comprehension after accounting for other L2 language and literacy skills. These results are discussed in light of a developmental theory of text reading fluency.     

Prosody in skilled silent reading: evidence from eye movements

Recent eye movement experiments offer preliminary evidence that skilled readers activate word‐level prosodic information when silently reading sentences. This paper reviews the role of eye movements during reading as well as the preliminary evidence for prosodic processing. A new experiment examines whether prosodic processing differs for high and low frequency words. Readers' eye movements were monitored while reading target words presented in sentences preceded by parafoveal previews that either contained the exact initial syllable of the target (i.e. the congruent preview condition) or the initial syllable plus the next letter (i.e. the incongruent preview condition). Reading times on high frequency words did not differ in the congruent and incongruent preview conditions, but reading times on low frequency words were faster in the congruent condition. The implications of the present result and previous studies are discussed in terms of phonological hub theory, which is a production‐based theory of word recognition during skilled silent reading.     

Differences between skilled and less‐skilled young readers in the retrieval of semantic,phonological, and shape information

This study aimed to determine whether the reading skills of third‐grade schoolchildren are associated with their preferences for semantic, phonological, and shape competitors (images or printed words) after being exposed to a spoken critical word. Two groups of children participated: skilled readers and less‐skilled readers. Through a language‐mediated visual search, children's fixations on the three competitors and a distractor were measured. When looking at images, both groups of readers preferred to look at the semantic competitor. When reading words, both groups showed a preference for the phonological competitor, but only skilled readers were sensitive to semantic information. These results suggest that early reading skills influence access to different types of representations in response to hearing a word, and they confirm the existence of a cascaded activation of information retrieval in childhood.     

The effects of inter-letter spacing in visual-word recognition: Evidence with young normal readers and developmental dyslexics

Recent research has demonstrated that slight increases of inter-letter spacing have a positive impact on skilled readers' recognition of visually presented words. In the present study, we examined whether this effect generalises to young normal readers and readers with developmental dyslexia, and whether increased inter-letter spacing affects the reading times and comprehension of a short text. To that end, we conducted a series of lexical decision and continuous reading experiments in which words were presented with the default settings or with a small increase in inter-letter spacing. Increased spacing produced shorter word identification times not only with adult skilled readers (Experiment 1), but also with young normal readers (Grade 2 and Grade 4 children; Experiment 2) and, even to a larger degree, with readers with dyslexia (Experiments 3 and 4). These experiments suggest that slight increases in inter-letter spacing would improve the readability of texts aimed at children, especially those with dyslexia.     

Reading Difficulties in Adult Deaf Readers of French: Phonological Codes,Not Guilty!

Deaf people often achieve low levels of reading skills. The hypothesis that the use of phonological codes is associated with good reading skills in deaf readers is not yet fully supported in the literature. We investigated skilled and less skilled adult deaf readers' use of orthographic and phonological codes in reading. Experiment 1 used a masked priming paradigm to investigate automatic use of these codes during visual word processing. Experiment 2 used a serial recall task to determine whether orthographic and phonological codes are used to maintain words in memory. Skilled hearing, skilled deaf, and less skilled deaf readers used orthographic codes during word recognition and recall, but only skilled hearing readers relied on phonological codes during these tasks. It is important to note that skilled and less skilled deaf readers performed similarly in both tasks, indicating that reading difficulties in deaf adults may not be linked to the activation of phonological codes during reading.     

Lexical stress assignment in Italian developmental dyslexia

Stress assignment to Italian polysyllabic words is unpredictable, because stress is neither marked nor predicted by rule. Stress assignment, especially to low frequency words, has been reported to be a function of stress dominance and stress neighbourhood. Two experiments investigate stress assignment in sixth-grade, skilled and dyslexic, readers. In Experiment 1, skilled readers were not affected by stress dominance. Dyslexic children, although affected by word frequency, made more stress regularisation errors on low frequency words. In Experiment 2, stress neighbourhood affected low frequency word reading irrespective of stress dominance for both skilled and dyslexic readers. Words with many stress friends were read more accurately than words with many stress enemies. It is concluded that, in assigning stress, typically developing and developmental dyslexic Italian readers are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language.     

Semantic effects on word naming in children with developmental dyslexia

Repetition priming was used to examine whether children with dyslexia bias a lexical–semantic pathway when reading words aloud. For the dyslexic group (n = 18, age 9.4–11.8 years), but not for age‐matched controls (n = 18, age 9.2–12.4 years), reaction times when naming pictures were faster after naming the corresponding word. A reading age‐matched control group (n = 24, age 6.8–8.9 years) showed similar priming effects to the children with dyslexia. The magnitude of repetition priming was greater for children with dyslexia with poor nonword reading and slower picture naming. Assuming repetition priming of picture naming is contingent on accessing lexical phonology via semantics, the results suggest less‐skilled normal and disordered readers show a stronger bias towards a lexical– semantic pathway during word reading than skilled readers, and the severity of the phonological representations deficit modulates the strength of that bias in children with dyslexia.     

The contribution of orthographic and phonological processes to word reading in young Norwegian readers

The dissociation between phonological and orthographic processes in word reading was investigated in a study involving 147 children in grade 3. The criterion measure was a timed word reading test. Two tasks assessed phonological skills and two tasks assessed orthographical skills. Orthographic ability accounted for variance in word reading even after phonological ability had been controlled. Poor readers differed from skilled readers in the way phonological and orthographic factors were balanced. The relationship between the two factors was fairly strong among poor readers, whereas the correlation was low for more skilled readers. Furthermore, phonological factors played a much stronger role in explaining the variance in word reading among poor readers, while on the other hand, orthographic factors were more powerful among skilled readers.     

How do beginners learn to read irregular words as sight words?

Learning irregular words involves mental marking of irregular letters in the spelling, a process not fully understood. In a within‐subjects experiment, we manipulated the type of scaffolding given to beginning readers to evoke mental marking. We pretested to sort 103 kindergarten and first‐grade participants into sequential decoders, who decode letter by letter, and hierarchical decoders, who recognise vowel patterns. In the control phase, children read irregular words in sentence contexts with minimal scaffolding. In the experimental phase, participants read additional irregular words in sentence contexts by ‘operating on the word’ to mark irregular letters. Results indicated that the experimental condition induced better untimed word reading, but it did not improve spelling or reading in a flash presentation. Hierarchical decoders were significantly more successful than sequential decoders in untimed word reading, spelling and reading in the flash presentation. These results suggest that learning hierarchical decoding predisposes readers to learn irregular words.     

Effects of word and morpheme familiarity on reading of derived words

The purpose of this study is to examine factors that influence students’ reading of derived words. Recent research suggests that the lexical quality of a derived word depends on the familiarity of the word, its morphemic constituents (i.e., base word and affixes), and the frequency with which the base word appears in other words (i.e., members of the same word family or family frequency). On the premise that better and more experienced readers have higher quality lexical representations, we explore the extent to which accuracy of reading derived words by 4th and 6th graders is related to measures of familiarity, including derived and base word frequencies, family size, average family frequency, and word length. The results of an exploratory factor analysis indicated that these measures formed two factors, one representing morphemic constitution and the second representing exposure to the word family; both factors accounted for significant variance in the students’ derived word reading. Comparisons of sets of derived words contrasted on familiarity properties showed that performance on derived words, overall, is better for 6th than 4th graders and for good than poor readers. On the measures of family frequency and family size, there were significant discrepancies between grade level and reading ability and frequency characteristics. These add support to the view that morphemic analysis and wide reading experience contribute to derived word reading.     

The use of phonological, orthographic, and contextual information during reading: a comparison of adults who are learning to read and skilled adult readers

The purpose of this study was to assess the role that phonological, orthographic, and contextual sources of information play in a group of adults who were learning to read compared to adult skilled readers. Participants read short paragraphs that contained a correct homophone, an incorrect homophone, or a spelling control. Target words were orthographically similar or dissimilar, and they appeared in context that predicted the target or was neutral with respect to the target. The pattern of data obtained for skilled readers was consistent with past work (Rayner et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 24(2), 476–497, 1998). Skilled readers showed no reading time differences between the correct homophone and the incorrect homophone, as long as the two were orthographically similar, but reading times on these words were faster than the spelling control condition. The pattern of data for the adults who were learning to read was different. These readers were actually better at noticing that an incorrect version of the homophone was present. Importantly, we did find consistent significant differences between the incorrect homophone condition and the spelling control condition. This suggests the adults who were learning to read use phonological codes during word recognition, but they do so less efficiently than skilled readers.     

Lexical and nonlexical processes in the skilled reading and spelling of Persian

The objective of the present study was to examine the contribution of lexical and nonlexical processes to skilled reading and spelling in Persian. Persian is a mixed orthography that allows one to study within one language characteristics typically found in shallow orthographies as well as those found in deeper orthographies. 61 senior high-school students (mean age = 17; 8, SD = 4 months) attending schools in Iran were tested on reading and spelling of words and nonwords. The word stimuli differed in terms of reading transparency (transparent when all phonemes have corresponding letters vs. opaque when short vowels were not marked with a letter) and spelling polygraphy (nonpolygraphic phonemes vs. polygraphic phonemes). The nonwords were transparent and nonpolygraphic. The reading results showed that both transparent and opaque words were read faster than nonwords, and that transparent words were read faster than opaque words. Moreover, both transparent and opaque words were affected by word frequency. These findings suggest that skilled readers of Persian relied on lexical processes to read words. In contrast, the spelling results failed to show a word-advantage effect suggesting that skilled spellers of Persian rely on nonlexical processes to spell words. Moreover, orthographic complexity also affected spelling. Specifically, nonpolygraphic words were spelled faster than polygraphic words for both transparent and opaque words. Taken together, the findings showed that skilled reading and spelling in Persian rely on different underlying processes.     

Eye movements reveal readers’ lexical quality and reading experience

Two experiments demonstrate that individual differences among normal adult readers, including lexical quality, are expressed in silent reading at the word level. In the first of two studies we identified major dimensions of variability among college readers and among words using factor analysis. We then examined the effects of these dimensions of variability on eye movements during paragraph reading. More experienced readers (who also were higher in reading speed) read words more quickly, especially less frequent words, while readers with higher lexical knowledge showed shorter early fixations, especially for more frequent words. These results suggest that individual differences in reading may reflect differences in the quality of lexical representations and in reading experience, which is a source of lexical quality. In a second study, we controlled the lexical knowledge readers obtained from new words through a training paradigm that varied exposure to a word’s orthographic, phonological, and meaning constituents. Training exposure to orthographic and phonological constituents affected first pass reading measures, and phonological and meaning training affected second pass measures. Incomplete knowledge of word components slowed first pass reading times, compared to both more complete knowledge and no knowledge. Training effects were mediated by individual differences, pointing to lexical quality and reading experience—which, combined reflect reading expertise—as important in word reading as part of text reading.     

Syllable-based reading improvement: Effects on word reading and reading comprehension in Grade 2

This study examined the effects of a syllable-based reading intervention for German second graders who demonstrated difficulties in the recognition of written words. The intervention focused on fostering word reading via syllable segmentation. The materials consisted of the 500 most frequent syllables typically read by 6- to 8-year-old children. The aims were to practice phonological recoding, consolidate orthographic representations of syllables, and routinize the access to these representations. Compared to children randomly assigned to a wait-list group, poor readers in the treatment condition showed significant improvements in standardized measures of phonological recoding, direct word recognition, and text-based reading comprehension after the 24-session intervention. Poor readers in the treatment condition also showed greater improvements in development of word recognition compared to children with efficient word recognition skills. The results provide evidence that a syllable-based reading intervention is a promising approach to increase struggling readers’ word recognition skills, which in turn will improve their reading comprehension.