Leisure time reading and orthographic processes in word recognition among Norwegian third- and fourth-grade students

Third- and fourth-grade Norwegian children completed a battery of tasks that measured indicators of orthographic and phonological processing skill, leisure time reading, home literacy environment, and nonverbal intelligence. Using latent variable structural equation modeling, it was found that home literacy environment influenced leisure time reading, and that leisure time reading contributed to orthographic processing skill beyond the prediction provided by phonological processing skill. Home literacy environment influenced orthographic processing skill indirectly by its influence on leisure time reading. In addition, some children with poor phonological skill and good orthographic skill were found to score high on a leisure time reading measure. Even though Norwegian has much more regular orthography than English, these results are consistent with previous findings in the United States linking variance in orthographic processing skill to differences in leisure time reading. Thus, this study showed the robustness of orthographic skill independent of phonological processing even within the context of an orthographically regular language.     

Patterns of analogical reasoning among beginning readers

Despite compelling evidence that analogy skills are available to beginning readers, few studies have actually explored the possibility of identifying individual differences in young children's analogy skills in early reading. The present study examined individual differences in children's use of orthographic and phonological relations between words as they learn to read. Specifically, the study addressed whether general analogical reasoning, short‐term memory and domain‐specific reading skills explain 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds' reading analogies (n=51). The findings revealed an orthographic analogy effect accompanied by high levels of phonological priming. Single‐word reading and use of visual analogies predicted young children's orthographic and phonological analogies in the regression analyses. However, different findings emerged from exploring profiles based on individual differences in reasoning skill. Indeed, when individual differences in composite scores of orthographic and phonological analogy were examined, group membership was predicted by word reading and early phonological knowledge, rather than general analogical reasoning skills. The findings highlight the usefulness of exploring individual differences in children's analogy development in the early stages of learning to read.     

Sounds,letters and meanings: the independent influences of phonological,morphological and orthographic skills on early word reading accuracy

This study was designed to examine the independent contributions of phonological awareness, orthographic processing and morphological awareness on early word reading. English‐speaking children in Grades 1 and 3 completed measures of these three constructs, as well as standardised measures of real and pseudoword reading and of vocabulary. Each of the three reading‐related variables made an independent contribution to both real and pseudoword reading. Independent contributions of phonological awareness (7–17%) were consistently larger than those of orthographic processing (5–10%) or of morphological awareness (1–2%). In terms of differences between the grades, there was particular evidence of an increase in greater contribution of orthographic processing to pseudoword reading at Grade 3 than at Grade 1. These findings are discussed in light of current models of reading development.     

Orthographic and Phonological Processes in Reading

Investigations of reading have focussed largely on two component processes, phonological processing and orthographic processing. However, a number of unresolved issues have hampered progress in the investigation of these abilities. Three such issues that formed the focus of the present study were (1) the extent to which tasks used to operationalise orthographic processing measure the same construct, (2) the extent to which tasks from a range of phonological processing domains measure the same construct, and (3) the degree to which orthographic processing tasks reflect orthographic processes independent of extraneous phonological operations, and conversely, phonological processing tasks measure phonological processes independent of orthographic processes. To address these questions, a variety of tasks used to evaluate orthographic processing (orthographic verification, homophone verification, nonlexical choice, irregular word reading, irregular word spelling), phonological processing (phoneme deletion, phonological choice, nonword reading, nonword spelling) and related domains (e.g., word identification, IQ) were administered to 177 children from Grades 3, 4 and 5. Factor analysis conducted using accuracy data revealed that orthographic processing tasks congregate along a single factor, while phonological processing tasks congregate along another, separate factor, viewed as evidence for the construct validity of orthographic processing and phonological processing, respectively. When response-time data were analysed, these same tasks did not differentiate on the basis of their orthographic and phonological demands, but rather in terms of their more general task demands. Additionally, results reveal that some phonological processing and orthographic processing tasks measure their respective construct with a greater degree of purity than do others. It is recommended that these tasks be used in future research.     

Establishing word representations through reading and spelling: comparing degree of orthographic learning

Skilled reading involves rapid and automatic word recognition. Through a self‐teaching process, phonological decoding during reading is thought to establish the word‐specific representations in memory that support efficient word reading. Much is known about orthographic learning during reading; less is understood about this process during spelling. Here, we compared the degree of orthographic learning that occurs during reading and spelling. Forty‐eight children in Grade 2 practised reading or spelling nonwords within stories. Orthographic learning was measured using spelling recognition, spelling production and word naming tasks. Both readers and spellers showed evidence of orthographic learning; however, spellers outperformed readers on all tasks. Overall, results suggest that spelling sets up a higher quality representation in memory and highlight the importance of spelling in the development of word reading efficiency.     

Reading fluency: The whole is more than the parts

This study examined the relative contributions of phonological awareness, orthographic pattern recognition, and rapid letter naming to fluent word and connected-text reading within a dyslexic sample of 123 children in second and third grades. Participants were assessed on a variety of fluency measures and reading subskills. Correlations and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were carried out to explore these relationships. The results demonstrate that phonological awareness, rapid letter naming, and orthographic pattern recognition contribute to word-reading skills. Furthermore, rapid naming, orthographic pattern recognition, and word reading fluency moderately predict different dimensions of connected-text reading (i.e., rate, accuracy, and comprehension) whereas phonological awareness contributes only to the comprehension dimension of connected-text reading. The findings support the multidimensional nature of fluency in which the whole is more than its parts.     

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.     

Children’s Orthographic Knowledge and Their Word Reading Skill: Testing Bidirectional Relations

Prominent models of word reading concur that the development of efficient word reading depends on the establishment of lexical orthographic representations in memory. In turn, word reading skills are conceptualised as supporting the development of these orthographic representations. As such, models of word reading development make clear predictions of bidirectional relations between lexical orthographic knowledge and word reading skill. We test these predictions in a longitudinal study of 112 English-speaking children in Grades 2 and 3. At two time points, we assessed lexical orthographic knowledge and three aspects of word reading skill: word reading accuracy, word reading efficiency, and phonological decoding. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we found that earlier word reading accuracy, word reading efficiency, and phonological decoding predicted gains in lexical orthographic knowledge. Contrary to theoretical predictions, lexical orthographic knowledge did not predict gains in any of our measured word reading skills.     

Aye,aye, aye,aye: orthography enhances rapid word reading in an exploratory study

Rapid Word Reading, a novel word‐reading efficiency measure, was used to determine if articulations or processing times associated with reading the word ‘aye’ were enhanced through the phonological or orthographic qualities contained in the preceding word. In the experiment, ‘aye’ followed either an identical ‘aye’, the homophones ‘I’ or ‘eye’ or high‐frequency (HF) unrelated English words. The words that preceded ‘aye’ were chosen to provide a graduated degree of phonological and orthographic information available to enhance the efficiency of recognising the following word. Semantically, phonologically, and orthographically independent high‐frequency words preceded ‘aye’ and served as a baseline measure of the articulation and processing times of ‘aye’. ‘I’ preceded ‘aye’ to provide enhanced recognition through phonological association alone. Phonological and partial orthographic associations were provided by ‘eye’ before ‘aye’, and complete phonological and orthographic associations were provided by ‘aye’ before ‘aye’. Repeated measures analysis showed that ‘aye’ was processed fastest when it followed an identical ‘aye’. The processing time enhancement for this condition was significantly faster than all other conditions. Additionally, the mean articulation duration of ‘aye’ was significantly slower when ‘aye’ followed an identical ‘aye’ than when it followed HF words. The findings documented the importance of separating phonological and orthographic information in English homophones.     

Cross-language transfer of phonological and orthographic processing skills from Spanish L1 to English L2

Previous cross-language research has focused on L1 phonological processing and its relation to L2 reading. Less extensive is the research on the effect that L1 orthographic processing skill has on L2 reading and spelling. This study was designed to investigate how reading and spelling acquisition in English (L2) is influenced by phonological and orthographic processing skills in Spanish (L1) in 89 Spanish-English bilingual children in grades 2 and 3. Comparable measures in English and Spanish tapping phonological and orthographic processing were administered to the bilingual children. We found that cross-language phonological and orthographic transfer occurs from Spanish to English. Specifically, the Spanish phoneme deletion task contributed a significant amount of unique variance to English word reading and spelling, for both real words and pseudowords. The Spanish homophone choice task predicted English reading, but not spelling. Taken together, these results suggest that there are shared phonological and orthographic processes in bilingual reading; however, orthographic patterns may be language specific, thereby not likely to transfer to spelling performance.     

Phonological contribution during visual word recognition in child readers. An intermodal priming study in Grades 3 and 5

This study investigated the phonological contribution during visual word recognition in child readers as a function of general reading expertise (third and fifth grades) and specific word exposure (frequent and less‐frequent words). An intermodal priming in lexical decision task was performed. Auditory primes (identical and unrelated) were used in order to directly activate phonological codes independently of orthographic processing. Overall, the results revealed a widespread phonological priming effect in both grades. There was a significant interaction between grade, priming condition and frequency, revealing that the impact of frequency on identity priming differed between grades. In third grade, the results indicated that the priming effect was greater for less‐frequent than for frequent words. In fifth grade, priming effects were similar for both frequent and less‐frequent words. These findings indicate that print and speech processing systems are interconnected in young readers. Moreover, phonological codes play an important role in word recognition throughout reading development.     

Children's literacy environments and early word recognition subskills

First-grade children completed a battery of tasks that included standardized measures of word recognition and spelling, measures of phonological and orthographic processing skill, and a short indicator of exposure to print via home literacy experiences. Phonological and orthographic processing skill were separable components of variance in word recognition. Orthographic processing ability accounted for variance in word recognition ability even after the variance in three phonological processing measures had been partialed. Additionally, variance in orthographic processing ability not explained by phonological abilities was reliably linked to differences in print exposure. The print exposure measure was not, however, linked to the measures of phonological processing. This finding was unexpected but it is consistent with some previous research. The theoretical implications of this result are discussed.     

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.     

Retrieval, automaticity, vocabulary elaboration, orthography (RAVE-O): a comprehensive, fluency-based reading intervention program

The most important implication of the double-deficit hypothesis (Wolf & Bowers, in this issue) concerns a new emphasis on fluency and automaticity in intervention for children with developmental reading disabilities. The RAVE-O (Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary Elaboration, Orthography) program is an experimental, fluency-based approach to reading intervention that is designed to accompany a phonological analysis program. In an effort to address multiple possible sources of dysfluency in readers with disabilities, the program involves comprehensive emphases both on fluency in word attack, word identification, and comprehension and on automaticity in underlying componential processes (e.g., phonological, orthographic, semantic, and lexical retrieval skills). The goals, theoretical principles, and applied activities of the RAVE-O curriculum are described with particular stress on facilitating the development of rapid orthographic pattern recognition and on changing children's attitudes toward language.     

What is orthographic processing skill and how does it relate to word identification in reading?

The role of orthographic processing skill (OPS) in reading has aroused the interest of many developmental researchers. Despite observations by Vellutino that current measures of OPS primarily are indicators of reading (and spelling) achievement, OPS commonly is distinguished from both reading achievement and phonological skills. An analysis of the reading literature indicates that there is no theory in which OPS meaningfully plays a role as an independent skill or causal factor in reading acquisition. Rather, OPS indexes fluent word identification and spelling knowledge, and there is no evidence to refute the hypothesis that its development relies heavily on phonological processes. Results of correlational studies and reader group comparisons (a) cannot inform about on‐line processes and (b) may be parsimoniously explained in terms of phonological skills, reading experience, unmeasured language abilities and methodological factors, without implying that OPS is an aetiologically separable skill. Future research would profit from the investigation in experimental studies of the nature and development of orthographic representations.     

Specific deficits in component reading and language skills: genetic and environmental influences

Phonological coding, measured by the oral reading of nonwords, and orthographic coding, measured by the discrimination of words from homophonic nonwords (e.g., rane, rain), were compared for pairs of older children with reading disabilities (RD) and younger nondisabled readers matched on word recognition. Phonological coding was substantially lower for most children with RD, indicating a unique developmental deficit in phonological coding rather than an equal developmental lag across all component reading skills. Data from identical and fraternal twins indicated that the phonological coding deficit of the children with RD was highly heritable and accounted for most of the heritable variance in their word recognition deficits. The deficits of the twins with RD in segmental language skills (rhyming and phoneme segmentation) were related to the heritable variance in their phonological coding deficits. Orthographic coding was not significantly heritable, and it accounted for much of the environmental variance in word recognition deficits. Implications of the results for the remediation of reading disability are discussed.     

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.     

Hemispheric division of labour in reading

We argue that the reading of words and text is fundamentally conditioned by the splitting of the fovea and the hemispheric division of the brain, and, furthermore, that the equitable division of labour between the hemispheres is a characteristic of normal visual word recognition. We report analyses of a representative corpus of the eye fixations of normal readers in the realistic reading of text where we compare hemispheric processing, quantified in terms of uncertainty about the orthographic, phonological and semantic representations of the words of the text. The analyses show that normal reading is accurately understood in terms of an equitable division of labour in the construction of the orthographic identity of the word and that, for English, a semantic division patterns closely with the orthographic division. We infer that impaired inter‐hemispheric co‐ordination of orthographic information may be best compensated for by a reliance on the inter‐hemispheric co‐ordination of semantic information, as in phonological dyslexia.     

Converging evidence for the concept of orthographic processing

Six different measures of orthographic processing (three different letter string choice tasks, two orthographic choice tasks, and a homophone choice task) were administered to thirty-nine children who had also been administered the word recognition subtest of the Metropolitan Achievement Test and a comprehensive battery of tasks assessing phonological processing skill (four measures of phonological sensitivity, nonword repetition, and pseudoword reading). The six orthographic tasks displayed moderate convergence – forming one reasonably coherent factor. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that a composite measure of orthographic processing skill predicted variance in word recognition after variance accounted for by the phonological processing measures had been partialed out. A measure of print exposure predictedvariance in orthographic processing after the variance in phonologicalprocessing had been partialed out.     

Understanding the relations between RAN letter subtest components and word reading in first-grade students

First-grade students (N = 221) were individually tested on a battery of cognitive and achievement measures of verbal fluency, visual attention, phonological awareness, orthographic recognition, rapid automatized naming (RAN) of letters and objects, and reading. All tests were subjected to postacquisition scoring, and all RAN measures were segregated into measures of articulation time, pause time, and consistency of the pause time. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that word reading was directly and significantly predicted by RAN letter naming and general RAN cognitive processing time of objects. Moreover, RAN letter reading constructs were significantly and directly predicted by the latent variables of phonological awareness, orthographic recognition, and general RAN object articulation and cognitive processing times. RAN letter naming constructs were also significantly and indirectly predicted by visual attention. The reading model was found to be consistent with a total mediation of the relation of phonological awareness and reading through RAN letter naming and supported the validity of the RAN letter naming subtest as a basic letter reading test. These findings supported the double-deficit hypothesis for letter reading. We suggest that phonological memory is a basic factor underlying general RAN cognitive processing time of objects and domain-specific information associated with phonemes and their graphic representations.