Sequential Implicit Learning Ability Predicts Growth in Reading Skills in Typical Readers and Children with Dyslexia

ABSTRACT

This study investigated in a longitudinal design how 74 Dutch children with dyslexia and 39 typically developing peers differed in sequential versus spatial implicit learning and overnight consolidation, and it examined whether implicit learning related to (pseudo)word reading development in Grades 5 and 6. The results showed that sequential, but not spatial, learning predicted growth in reading skills in children with and without dyslexia. Sequential implicit learning was also related to growth in pseudoword reading skills during an intervention in children with dyslexia, retrospectively. Furthermore, children with dyslexia had longer reaction times in general but did not differ from typical readers in how well or how quickly they learned either on an implicit learning task or in their overnight consolidation.     

Reading Difficulty Characteristics in Dyslexic and Hearing-impaired Students

This study examines reading difficulty characteristics in Hebrew in three reading-impaired populations. Two are groups of dyslexics: 100 readers with impaired auditory perception and 100 readers with impaired visual perception. The third group comprises 61 readers with deep/severe hearing impairment. All were elementary schools students in the second to sixth grades. The subjects were tested with a conventional Hebrew reading test. It examined types of reading errors (e.g. changes of phonetic structure or word content), self-correction in reading, reading speed, sequential/holistic reading, the effect of reading texts with and without the Hebrew diacritical vowel signs ('punctuation'), and the effect of meaningful or meaningless text material on the amount of reading errors. The literature describes distinctions between various kinds of reading disability related to auditory impairment and visual perception, and the definition of dyslexia as being one category or including sub-groups. Our research hypothesis was that similar characteristics of reading difficulties would be found amongst auditory perception-impaired students and hearing-impaired students, and that they would differ from those of students with impaired visual perception. Our findings support this hypothesis. Many of the sub-tests revealed similarity in the reading difficulties between the hearing impaired students and those with impaired auditory perception versus the visually impaired. An unexpected finding revealed that fourth grade students in all the groups were a special sub-group in each group. These findings suggest, in accordance with a major research approach, that dyslexia should be defined in terms of dyslexia sub-groups rather than as a single category.     

Reading and the Neurocognitive Bases of Statistical Learning

ABSTRACT

The processes underlying word reading are shaped by statistical properties of the writing system. According to some theoretical perspectives, reading acquisition should be understood as an exercise in statistical learning (SL). SL involves the extraction of organizing principles from a set of inputs. Several lines of research provide convergent evidence supporting the connection between SL and reading acquisition. An obstacle to fully appreciating the theoretical and educational implications of these findings is that SL is itself not well understood. In this article, we review the current literature on SL with a particular focus on organizing this literature by grounding it in theories of learning and memory more generally. This approach can clarify the nature of SL and provide a framework for understanding its role in reading, reading acquisition, and reading disorders.     

Statistical Learning,Letter Reversals,and Reading

Reversal errors play a prominent role in theories of reading disability. We examined reversal errors in the writing of letters by 5- to 6-year-old children. Of the 130 children, 92 had a history of difficulty in producing speech sounds, a risk factor for reading problems. Children were more likely to reverse letter forms that face left, such as <d> and <J>, than forms that face right, such as <b> and <C>. We propose that this asymmetry reflects statistical learning: Children implicitly learn that the right-facing pattern is more typical of Latin letters. The degree of asymmetry that a child showed was not related to the child’s reading skill at Time 2, 2¾ years later. Although children who went on to become poorer readers made more errors in the letter writing task than children who went on to become better readers, they were no more likely to make reversal errors.     

Statistical and Cooperative Learning in Reading: An Artificial Orthography Learning Study

This article reports two experiments in which the artificial orthography paradigm was used to investigate the mechanisms underlying learning to read. In each experiment, participants were taught the meanings and pronunications of words written in an unfamiliar orthography, and the statistical structure of the mapping between written and spoken forms (O-P) was manipulated independently of the mapping between written forms and their meanings (O-S). Our results support three main conclusions. First, the statistical structure of O-P and O-S mappings determined how easily each of those mappings was learned, suggesting that the learning of both mappings engages a common statistical learning mechanism. Second, learning to read is a cooperative process, in that learning in any particular component of the reading system is influenced by knowledge stored in the rest of the system. Finally, knowledge of sublexical regularities can be acquired as the result of exposure to words embodying those regularities.     

Very Early Language Deficits in Dyslexic Children

At 2 1/2 years of age, children who later developed reading disabilities were deficient in the length, syntactic complexity, and pronunciation accuracy of their spoken language, but not in lexical or speech discrimination skills. As 3-year-olds, these children began to show deficits in receptive vocabulary and object-naming abilities, and as 5-year-olds they exhibited weaknesses in object-naming, phonemic awareness, and letter-sound knowledge that have characterized kindergartners who became poor readers in other studies. These late preschool differences were related to subsequent reading status as well as to prior language skills, but early syntactic proficiency nevertheless accounted for some unique variance in grade 2 achievement when differences at age 5 were statistically controlled. The language deficits of dyslexic children were unrelated to maternal reading ability and were not observed in children from dyslexic families who became normal readers. The implications of the results for etiological issues are discussed.     

Verbal-imagery Learning Style and Reading Attainment in Eight-year-old Children

Eight-year-old children were given a test of verbal-imagery learning style and the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability. Both reading accuracy and comprehension were found to be significantly related to learning style. Reading accuracy was highest at the extreme verbalizer end and lowest at the imager end of the verbal-imagery continuum, with a plateau of average performance at the central positions. The pattern for comprehension was similar. The results were discussed in terms of the manner in which individuals represent information during learning.     

语音缺陷的生成类和评判类论析

从生成形态看，语音缺陷有“空间缺陷”、“强度缺陷”和“时间缺陷”之分，亦有“点缺陷”、“线缺陷”、“面缺陷”和“体缺陷”之别。从评判实践看，语音缺陷在分布、数量、性质、程度、形式、频率及测试的语音形式、测试的题项要求上存在同类别的内部差异。语音缺陷的生成类是评判类的基础，评判类是对生成类的发展应用。     

二语习得中语音系统与非语音系统的辩证对应关系

语音系统为语言第一性,非语音系统为语言的第二性。语义是语言单位的意义,是思维的直接所指,即语言所指,它包括语音层面的语言所指和文字层面的语言所指,语义可以单独和语音或者文字结合,也可以和语音、文字三者结合在一起。语法是一种先天的内在语言能力,需要后天语言环境的刺激派生出语言现实,包括了语音语言现实和文字语言现实。习得语言,学习者必须明确学习目标:侧重学习语音语言,侧重学习文字语言,或者两者都一样重要,综合语言是最终学习目标。不同的学习目标,其学习方法和教学方法是有区别的。     

Speech and Reading

Asked to contribute an article on reading and the disadvantaged pupil Michael Duane, ex-Headmaster of Risinghill, now lecturer at Garnett College of Education, writes: 'If the article appears to spend little time on the actual process of reading, it is because I believe our preoccupation with the techniques of teaching reading— i.t.a., Look and Say, etc .— to be totally misconceived and a diversion from what should be our real preoccupation, viz. the provision of lively and interesting experience for children and of talk arising out of that experience.'     

Sound Reading and Reading Sounds: The Case for Phonemic Awareness

The National Reading Panel (NRP) issued a Congressional mandated report to identify key skills and methods related to the development of successful reading skills. One of the first of identified skills is phonemic awareness. This column addresses this area of reading instruction and provides suggestions for literature to be shared with young readers and listeners that support phonemic awareness. Fifteen children’s books are reviewed and recommended.     

Spelling,Reading Abilities and Speech Perception in Deaf Children with a Cochlear Implant

ABSTRACT

This study aims to compare word spelling outcomes for French-speaking deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) with hearing children who matched for age, level of education and gender. A picture written naming task controlling for word frequency, word length, and phoneme-to-grapheme predictability was designed to analyze spelling productions. A generalized linear mixed model on the percentage of correct spelling revealed an effect of participant’s reading abilities, but no effect of hearing status. Word frequency and word length, but not phoneme-to-grapheme predictability, contributed to explaining the spelling variance. Deaf children with a CI made significantly less phonologically plausible errors and more phonologically unacceptable errors when compared to their hearing peers. Age at implantation and speech perception scores were related to deaf children’s errors. A good word spelling level can be achieved by deaf children with a CI, who nonetheless use less efficiently the phoneme-to-grapheme strategy than do hearing children.     

Statistical Learning of Orthographic Regularities in Chinese Children With and Without Dyslexia

This study examined distributional statistical learning of positional, phonetic, and semantic regularities of an artificial orthography in Chinese children aged 8–10 years: 29 with dyslexia, 29 age-matched controls, and 30 reading-level matched controls. Despite having positional regularity learning performance comparable to the controls, the children with dyslexia were poorer at learning left-right structured characters than top-bottom structured characters in high- and low-consistency conditions. Moreover, they showed difficulties in mapping a given sound or meaning to a specific character compared with the typically developing controls. These findings suggest that children with dyslexia have deficits in some, though not all, aspects of statistical learning of character orthography, which may reflect their difficulties in coping with distractors and inconsistency of orthographic input.     

语音合成技术及应用

语音合成技术近年来发展迅速，对几种合成技术的原理及其派生的具有代表性的合成器的优缺点予以阐述，概述近年来语音合成的日益普及及应用。     

英语交际中的语音歧义

探讨英语交际中语音在连贯的语流中变化引起的语音歧义。     

Reading Disability in Chinese Children Learning English as an L2

To examine whether there are common or specific deficits of reading disability (RD) in first (L1) and second languages (L2), Chinese children (9–11 years, N = 76) with or without RD who learn English as an L2 were studied during a visual word rhyming judgment task. Evidence was found for common deficits in L1 and L2 in visuo-orthographic processes in left inferior temporal gyrus and left precuneus, as well as in phonological processes in left dorsal inferior frontal gyrus as children with RD showed less activation than controls in both languages. Furthermore, the visuo-orthographic deficit appears to be a RD effect, whereas the phonological deficit appears to be a reading/performance effect. Some weak evidence for language specific effects was also found.     

Private Speech of Learning Disabled and Normally Achieving Children in Classroom Academic and Laboratory Contexts

Learning disabled (LD) children are often targets for cognitive-behavioral interventions designed to train them in effective use of a self-directed speech. The purpose of this study was to determine if, indeed, these children display immature private speech in the naturalistic classroom setting. Comparisons were made of the private speech, motor accompaniment to task, and attention of LD and normally achieving classmates during academic seatwork. Setting effects were examined by comparing classroom data with observations during academic seatwork and puzzle solving in the laboratory. Finally, a subgroup of LD children symptomatic of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was compared with pure LD and normally achieving controls to determine if the presumed immature private speech is a function of a learning disability or externalizing behavior problems. Results indicated that LD children used more task-relevant private speech than controls, an effect that was especially pronounced for the LD/ADHD subgroup. Use of private speech was setting- and task-specific. Implications for intervention and future research methodology are discussed.     

Training Parents and Teachers in Remedial Reading Procedures for Children with Learning Difficulties

The mothers and classroom teachers of four 11‐12‐year‐old low progress readers were trained in tutoring procedures that involved delaying attention to child reading errors, providing cues to help correct errors and praising specific reading strategies and achievements. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used to evaluate the effects of tutor training in both home and school settings. Baseline measures showed that one class teacher delayed attention to child errors and two teachers provided appropriate prompts, while the parents showed no occurrence of the tutoring behaviours. Following training, both teachers and parents applied the specific tutoring behaviours and these behaviours were shown to persist across a three to five week maintenance period during which the experimenter reduced training and feedback to tutors and at three one‐month follow‐up assessments. Pre‐tests showed the children to have reading age levels three to five years behind an expected level for their chronological age. Post‐tests showed the children to have an average gain in reading level of 28 months (range 24‐48 months).     

阅读障碍儿童视觉长时记忆特点研究

本研究采用on-line的实验方法,以再认作为记忆任务,比较了阅读障碍儿童和正常儿童在间隔10分钟和一天时对简单材料和复杂材料的视觉长时记忆能力。结果表明:(1)在间隔10分钟时,无论是简单还是复杂的视觉材料,阅读障碍儿童与正常儿童再认能力都不存在显著差异。(2)当间隔一天时,阅读障碍儿童对简单材料的长时记忆能力不落后,而在复杂的视觉材料上,阅读障碍儿童的长时记忆成绩显著落后于正常儿童。     

The Role of Statistical Learning in Word Reading and Spelling Development: More Questions Than Answers

ABSTRACT

This special issue bundles a set of eight empirical studies and one review article that explore the role of statistical learning (SL) mechanisms (both domain-specific and domain-general) in supporting word reading and spelling development, and vice versa. In this introduction to the special issue, we worked to summarize the extent to which studies support our hypotheses relating SL to reading and spelling development while pointing out inconsistencies across studies that require us to refine and rethink our hypotheses.