Beyond phonological skills: broader language skills contribute to the development of reading

This paper reports a study that followed the development of reading skills in 72 children from the age of 8.5 to 13 years. Each child was administered tests of reading, oral language, phonological skills and nonverbal ability at time 1 and their performance on tests of reading comprehension, word recognition, nonword decoding and exception word reading was assessed at time 2. In addition to phonological skills, three measures of non‐phonological oral language tapping vocabulary knowledge and listening comprehension were unique concurrent predictors of both reading comprehension and word recognition at time 1. Importantly, all three measures of oral language skill also contributed unique variance to individual differences in reading comprehension, word recognition and exception word reading four and a half years later, even when the autoregressive effects of early reading skill were controlled. Moreover, the extent to which a child's word recognition departed from the level predicted from their decoding ability correlated with their oral language skills. These findings suggest that children's oral language proficiency, as well as their phonological skills, influences the course of reading development.     

Cognitive predictors of word reading in Sinhala

We examined whether akshara knowledge, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and RAN predict variability in word and nonword reading skills in Grade 1–4 children (N?=?200) learning to read Sinhala. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that akshara knowledge had the strongest unique association with both word and nonword reading accuracy across grades. Akshara knowledge and RAN predicted word and nonword reading fluency. The impact of phonological memory and syllable awareness on reading was mostly mediated by akshara knowledge, and phoneme awareness was not uniquely associated with word reading skills in any grade. These results suggest that there are multiple cognitive correlates of accurate and fluent word reading in Sinhala, and akshara knowledge is the most important predictor of learning to read words. The findings have implications for the literacy acquisition, development, and instruction in alphasyllabaries.

     

Paths to reading comprehension in at-risk second-grade readers

Two studies of second graders at risk for reading disability, which were guided by levels of language and functional reading system theory, focused on reading comprehension in this population. In Study 1 (n = 96), confirmatory factor analysis of five comprehension measures loaded on one factor in both fall and spring of second grade. Phonological decoding predicted accuracy of real-word reading; automatic letter naming predicted rate of real-word reading; accuracy and rate of both real-word reading (more so than decoding of pseudowords) and text reading predicted reading comprehension; and Verbal IQ also predicted reading comprehension. In Study 2 (n = 98), the treatment group (before/after school clubs receiving an integrated instructional approach that was supplementary to the general reading program) improved significantly more in phonological decoding and state standards for reading fluency than the control group (general reading program that had some code instruction but emphasized comprehension). The rate of phonological decoding explained 60.3% of real-word reading. Both treatment and control children improved significantly in reading comprehension, but controlling for pretreatment individual differences in oral vocabulary or in phonological decoding eliminated this effect. Taken together, the results of the two studies support two paths to reading comprehension: one from vocabulary and verbal reasoning, and one from written language that has multiple links between subskills: (a) alphabetic principle --> phonological decoding, (b) automatic phonological decoding --> accurate real-word reading, (c) automatic letter coding ---> automatic word reading, and (d) automatic word reading --> fluent text reading. Instructional implications of both paths and the links within the written language are discussed.     

A not-so-simple view of reading: how oral vocabulary and visual-word recognition complicate the story

The present study sought to clarify the relations amongst serial decoding, irregular word recognition, listening comprehension, facets of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension in two cohorts of children differing in reading level. In the process, the components of the simple view of reading were evaluated. Students in grades 1 (n = 67) and 6 (n = 56) were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, decoding, irregular word recognition, listening comprehension, oral vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Even when all other measures were controlled, vocabulary was found to explain reading comprehension in grade 6 but not grade 1. Vocabulary also predicted decoding in grade 6 and irregular word recognition in both grades. These results are interpreted as supporting a not-so-simple view of the constructs underlying reading comprehension that acknowledges complex connections between print skills and oral language.     

Individual and group sensitivity to remedial reading program design: examining reading gains across three middle school reading projects

The purpose of this project was to examine group- and individual-level responses by struggling adolescents readers (6th–8th grades; N = 155) to three different modalities of the same reading program, Reading Achievement Multi-Component Program. The three modalities differ in the combination of reading components (phonological decoding, spelling, fluency, comprehension) that are taught and their organization. Latent change scores were used to examine changes in phonological decoding, fluency, and comprehension for each modality at the group level. In addition, individual students were classified as gainers versus non-gainers (a reading level increase of a year or more vs. less than 1 year) so that characteristics of gainers and differential sensitivity to instructional modality could be investigated. Findings from both group and individual analyses indicated that reading outcomes were related to modalities of reading instruction. Furthermore, differences in reading gains were seen between students who began treatment with higher reading scores than those with lower reading scores; dependent on modality of treatment. Results, examining group and individual analyses similarities and differences, and the effect the different modalities have on reading outcomes for older struggling readers will be discussed.     

Contributions of phonological processing skills to reading skills in Arabic speaking children

This cross-sectional study investigated contributions of phonological awareness (Elision and blending), rapid naming (object, color, letter, and digit), and phonological memory (nonword repetition and Digit Span) to basic decoding and fluency skills in Arabic. Participants were 237 Arabic speaking children from Grades K-3. Dependent measures included word decoding, oral passage reading fluency, nonword reading fluency, and retell fluency. Within-grade analyses indicated that phonological awareness accounted for more variance than rapid naming regardless of the nature of the outcome measure and grade. Rapid naming’s capacity to predict variance, while less than that of phonological awareness, tended to rise steadily and was highest in Grade 3. Phonological memory, as measured by this study’s tasks, showed almost no relationship to reading performance. The findings are discussed with respect to changing the requirements of Arabic reading in Grades K-3 and suggestions are made for future research.     

Predicting individual differences in reading comprehension: a twin study

We examined the Simple View of reading from a behavioral genetic perspective. Two aspects of word decoding (phonological decoding and word recognition), two aspects of oral language skill (listening comprehension and vocabulary), and reading comprehension were assessed in a twin sample at age 9. Using latent factor models, we found that overlap among phonological decoding, word recognition, listening comprehension, vocabulary, and reading comprehension was primarily due to genetic influences. Shared environmental influences accounted for associations among word recognition, listening comprehension, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Independent of phonological decoding and word recognition, there was a separate genetic link between listening comprehension, vocabulary, and reading comprehension and a specific shared environmental link between vocabulary and reading comprehension. There were no residual genetic or environmental influences on reading comprehension. The findings provide evidence for a genetic basis to the “Simple View” of reading.     

Phonological recoding,orthographic decoding,and comprehension skills during reading acquisition

To become skillful readers, children have to acquire the ability to translate printed words letter by letter into phonemic representations (phonological recoding) and the ability to recognize the written word forms holistically (orthographical decoding). Whereas phonological recoding is the key for learning to read and useful for recognizing unknown or low-frequent words, orthographical decoding is often more efficient and takes less time, thus facilitating reading processes on the sentence and text level. Several studies with English-speaking children provided evidence for the relevance of the two routes but the question whether and to what extent both word recognition skills contribute to reading comprehension in young German readers requires further clarification. Based on data from a cross-sectional study with German primary school children we investigated whether and to what extent both types of word recognition skills are associated with sentence (N = 666) and text comprehension skills (N = 149) and how these relationships develop from Grade 2 to 4. The results indicate that both phonological recoding skills and orthographical decoding skills are important for reading comprehension skills. Their relative weight does not change across grade levels.     

Individual differences in cognitive skills related to reading ability in the deaf

Deaf subjects who represented a wide range of reading abilities were tested on a number of factors including reliance on phonological recoding as well as several metacognitive abilities. The sample consisted of 19 high school students who were prelingually and profoundly deaf. Subjects were given a set of paper and pencil tests that included an assessment of phonological recoding ability as well as the measures designed by Baker (1984) to assess metacognitive skills in reading. Results indicated that deaf subjects demonstrated a significant degree of reliance on phonological recoding, but that individual differences in reliance on phonological recoding showed no relationship to reading skill (r = .02). Individual differences on the metacognition measures, however, showed a strong relationship to reading ability (r = .65, p less than .01). The implications for remedial instruction for deaf students are discussed.     

Persistence of phonological processing deficits in college students with dyslexia who have age-appropriate reading skills

This study investigated the phonological processing skills of university students with dyslexia. Fifty-nine students participated in this study: 28 with reading disabilities based on recent psychological assessments and a history of early and persistent reading problems; and 31 controls. The two groups did not differ on estimates of verbal and nonverbal abilities. The dyslexia group performed significantly less well on standardized measures of reading and spelling. However, the dyslexia group scores on these measures fell within the average range. The main dependent variables were subsumed under three areas of phonological processing: phonological awareness, phonological recoding in lexical access, and phonological recoding in working memory. The control group performed significantly better on all phonological processing measures, particularly those measures involving accuracy and response times. Despite age-appropriate performances on standardized reading and spelling measures, phonological processing deficits persisted in the dyslexia group. These findings support the causal role of phonological awareness in the acquisition of reading skills and indicate that differences in phonological processing skills are still evident in a sample of university students with dyslexia compared a group matched on age and education.     

Effects of mora deletion,nonword repetition,rapid naming,and visual search performance on beginning reading in Japanese

This study examined the extent to which mora deletion (phonological analysis), nonword repetition (phonological memory), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and visual search abilities predict reading in Japanese kindergartners and first graders. Analogous abilities have been identified as important predictors of reading skills in alphabetic languages like English. In contrast to English, which is based on grapheme-phoneme relationships, the primary components of Japanese orthography are two syllabaries—hiragana and katakana (collectively termed “kana”)—and a system of morphosyllabic symbols (kanji). Three RAN tasks (numbers, objects, syllabary symbols [hiragana]) were used with kindergartners, with an additional kanji RAN task included for first graders. Reading measures included accuracy and speed of passage reading for kindergartners and first graders, and reading comprehension for first graders. In kindergartners, hiragana RAN and number RAN were the only significant predictors of reading accuracy and speed. In first graders, kanji RAN and hiragana RAN predicted reading speed, whereas accuracy was predicted by mora deletion. Reading comprehension was predicted by kanji RAN, mora deletion, and nonword repetition. Although number RAN did not contribute unique variance to any reading measure, it correlated highly with kanji RAN. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

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.     

Reading ability and sensitivity to morphological relations

The morpho-phonological nature of English orthography is examined in this study of the relation between morphological sensitivity and decoding ability in the latter elementary grades. Children in grades three to six were required to distinguish derivationally-related word pairs (e.g., nature-natural) from foil pairs that are related in spelling but not in morphology (e.g., ear-earth). The materials included both transparently-related (i.e., the second word incorporated the pronunciation of the first, as in person-personal) and complexly-related word pairs (i.e., the second word involved some change in pronunciation, as in atom-atomic). Across two experiments, these items were presented in either oral or written form along with various tests of reading ability, intelligence and phonological awareness. The results indicate that children's recognition of derivational relationships improved with grade-level. As anticipated, there was also a significant association between sensitivity to derivational relatedness and decoding ability which remains significant even when the word pairs were orally presented and even when phonological awareness in taken into account. Both phonological awareness and sensitivity to morphological structure emerge as important factors in decoding skill in the later elementary grades.     

Phonological awareness and reading acquisition

Recent research has suggested the importance of oral language ability in learning to read. It was proposed that the young child's awareness of the phonology of his language would greatly influence early reading success. The results revealed a strong relationship between the first grader's reading performance and two measures of his phonological awareness, invented spelling and phoneme segmentation abilities. Development of phonological awareness was not related to the child's sex, intelligence, socioeconomic status, or chronological age within a 12-month span. A third measure of phonological awareness, auditory analysis skills, was found to have less predictive value. The results suggest that an understanding of phonological relationships above and beyond that required for ordinary speaking and listening enables the beginning reader of English to make contact with his alphabetic writing system at the phonemic level. Instruction at the appropriate age level should facilitate this understanding.     

Cognitive component of componential model of reading applied to different orthographies

Whether the simple view of reading (SVR) as incorporated in the componential model of reading (CMR) is applicable to other orthographies than English was explored in this study. Spanish, with transparent orthography and Chinese, with opaque orthography were selected because of their diverse characteristics. The first part reports a study of students from grades 2 and 3, whose home language and medium of instruction was Spanish, and were administered tests of decoding, listening, and reading comprehension. A comparison group of 49 children from Grade 2, 54 children from Grade 3, and 55 children from Grade 4, whose home language and instruction was English, were also administered tests of decoding, listening, and reading comprehension. Multiple regression analysis showed that approximately 60% of the variance in reading comprehension of Spanish participants and 50% of the variance in reading comprehension of English participants were explained by decoding and listening comprehension. Furthermore, the performance of third grade Spanish participants resembled that of fourth grade English-speaking participants. In the second study, 102 Chinese students from Grade 2 and 106 students from Grade 4 were administered tasks of Chinese character recognition, reading fluency, listening, and reading comprehension. Multiple regression analyses showed character recognition and listening comprehension accounted for 25% and 42% of the variance in Chinese reading comprehension at Grades 2 and 4 respectively. These results indicate that the simple view of reading is applicable to writing systems other than that of English.     

The relation between reading ability and morphological skills: Evidence from derivational suffixes

The English orthography represents both phonemes and morphemes, implying that sensitivity to each of these units could play a role in the acquisition of decoding skills. This study offers some new evidence about sensitivity to morphemes and the decoding skills of American children in grades three to six. It focuses on knowledge of derivational suffixes, which is examined with sentence completion and sentence acceptability tasks that manipulate the suffixes in real words (e.g., electric, electricity) and nonsense derived forms (e.g., froodly, froodness). Both written and spoken materials are considered over the course of two experiments in which the children also received various reading tests, as well as tests of phonological awareness, vocabulary and intelligence. The results indicate that knowledge of derivational suffixes increases with grade level, along with decoding ability and phoneme awareness. Path analyses further reveal that, although there is a consistent correlation between performance on the derivational suffix materials and phoneme awareness and decoding ability, performance on the derivational suffix materials makes an independent and increasing contribution to decoding ability throughout the higher elementary grades.     

Longitudinal predictors of reading and spelling across languages varying in orthographic consistency

We examined the longitudinal predictors of nonword decoding, reading fluency, and spelling in three languages that vary in orthographic depth: Finnish, Greek, and English. Eighty-two English-speaking, 70 Greek, and 88 Finnish children were followed from the age of 5.5 years old until Grade 2. Prior to any reading instruction, they were administered measures of phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming speed. In Grade 2, they were administered measures of nonword decoding, text-reading fluency, and spelling. The results showed that the model for nonword decoding in Greek was similar to that of Finnish (both have consistent grapheme-to-phoneme mappings) while the model for spelling in Greek was similar to that of English (both have some inconsistent phoneme-to-grapheme mappings). In addition, the models for nonword decoding and spelling in Finnish were similar, because Finnish is consistent in both directions. Letter knowledge dominated the prediction in each language. The predictable role of orthographic consistency on literacy acquisition is discussed.     

The relation between phonological memory skills and reading ability in greek-speaking children: Can training of phonological memory contribute to reading development?

This study was designed to examine whether there is a relationship between phonological memory and reading ability in Greek-speaking children aged between 6 and 9 years. An additional aim of the study was to investigate whether training of phonological memory during preschool years enhances reading achievement during early school years. In Experiment I, the phonological memory ability of 136 first graders, 134 second graders and 132 from each of the third and fourth grades was assessed with a nonword repetition test. A reading test was also used to evaluate the reading skills of the above subjects. The results revealed strong links between reading performance and nonword repetition scores. 120 kindergarten children randomly assigned to a control and an experimental group participated in Experiment 2. Training that involved practice in the repetition of nonwords was used as a means of promoting the phonological memory of the children in the experimental group over the course of one year in school. Subjects’ reading ability was tested during the last month of their first year in the primary school. The findings showed that the performance of the trained subjects in the reading test was superior to that of the control subjects. Such evidence underlines the importance of teaching children of preschool years phonological strategies in order to boost their reading skills during early school years.     

Beginning reading intervention as inoculation or insulin: first-grade reading performance of strong responders to kindergarten intervention

This study examined the first-grade reading progress of children who participated in an intensive beginning reading intervention in kindergarten. Specifically, the study investigated whether kindergarten intervention could prevent first-grade reading difficulties, or produce an "inoculation" effect, for some children under certain instructional conditions. Participants included children at risk for developing reading difficulties who received a 7-month beginning reading intervention in kindergarten. In October of first grade, 59 children who had achieved criterion levels on measures of phonological awareness and alphabetic knowledge were randomly assigned to one of two types of first-grade reading instruction: (a) code-based classroom instruction and a supplemental maintenance intervention, or (b) only code-based classroom instruction. February posttest measures assessed oral reading fluency, word reading, nonword reading, and comprehension. Between-group analyses indicated that instructional groups did not differ on any posttest measure. The students' absolute levels of achievement were compared to national and local normative samples. These results indicated that between 75% and 100% of students in both conditions attained posttest levels and demonstrated growth comparable to their average-achieving peers. These results support the hypothesis that strong responders to kindergarten intervention can experience an inoculation effect through the middle of first grade with research-validated classroom reading instruction.