The role of orthographic and phonological processing skills in the reading and spelling of monolingual Persian children

The main objective of the present study was to examine the contribution of phonological and orthographic skills to Persian reading and spelling. The Persian language is of interest because it has very consistent grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences, but somewhat inconsistent phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences. Reading, spelling, phonological, and orthographic skills were tested in a sample of 109 monolingual Persian students (mean age = 8;1, SD = 4 mo) attending Grade 2 in Iran. The results showed that although monolingual Persian children relied both on phonological and orthographic skills, phonological skills were a strong predictor for both reading and spelling. Another objective of the study was to compare children’s spelling performance in terms of phoneme-to-grapheme (PG) consistencies. As expected, children spelled PG-consistent words more accurately than PG-inconsistent words. Moreover, they relied more on orthographic skills for spelling PG-inconsistent words than for spelling PG-consistent words. The results are discussed in terms of the differential effect of orthographic consistency on reading and spelling.     

Children’s orthographic representations in English and Greek

Two experiments were conducted to compare the development of orthographic representations in children learning to read English and Greek. Nonsense words that either shared both orthography and phonology at the level of the rhyme with real words (comic-bomic), phonology only (comic-bommick), or neither (dilotaff) were created for each orthography. Experiment 1 compared children’s reading of bisyllabic and trisyllabic nonsense words likebomic vs.bommick, taffodil vs.tafoddyl, and found a significant facilitatory effect of orthographic rhyme familiarity for English only. Experiment 2 compared children’s reading of trisyllabic nonsense words that either shared rhyme phonology with real words (tafoddyl) or did not (dilotaff). Significant facilitation in reading accuracy was found for shared rhyme phonology in English, with a significant speed advantage in Greek. These results are interpreted in terms of the level of phonology that is represented in the orthographic recognition units being developed by children who are learning to read more and less transparent orthographies.     

The case for frequency sensitivity in orthographic learning

This paper positions the importance of frequency sensitivity in the development of orthographic knowledge throughout childhood and promotes learning to spell as a vehicle which may be used effectively to develop this sensitivity. It is suggested that orthographic knowledge is advanced via a process of ‘frequency sensitivity’ to ‘patterns and sequences’ and ‘rules and regularities’ particular to English orthography and that the process of sensitivity to these coarse grain orthographic patterns is influenced by consistency in sound and by morphological knowledge (knowledge of morphemes; words or word parts that form the smallest unit of meaning in language). A model highlighting the increasing importance of orthography and morphology as reading and spelling development progresses is presented. Discussion of the importance of considering phonology, orthography and morphology throughout literacy development and the relative importance of each is discussed. Distinctions are drawn between the processes involved in children who are good readers and good spellers, children who are good readers and poor spellers, and children who are poor readers and poor spellers. This paper outlines how considering these interrelated and developmentally sensitive contributors to literacy development can contribute to the practice of educational professionals in promoting the development of literacy skills throughout childhood.     

Representing written vowels in university students with dyslexia compared with normal hebrew readers

The study investigates dyslexic and normal Hebrew readers’ perception of words containing a vowel letter in different orthographic and morphological contexts. In the first experiment, 72 undergraduate education students (half diagnosed with reading disabilities and half normal readers) were asked to judge pointed words with different morphological structures with and without the grapheme W. Half of the words had consistent (obligatory) W and half had inconsistent (optional) W. In the second experiment, the same procedure was repeated using the same words without pointing marks. Response latencies and accuracy were measured. In both experiments, dyslexic readers did less well than normal readers. They had lower scores on accurate lexical decisions and they took more time over these decisions. They also exhibited some deviant patterns, indicating that they cannot make use of orthographic and morphological cues that are available to normal readers, especially in the pointed experiment. Processing pointed words placed a heavier cognitive burden on the dyslexic readers. These findings are in line with other studies of adult dyslexic reader/writers, and support a reading / spelling processing model, which claims that internal orthographic representations of words are increasingly strengthened with each exposure during reading, but not all graphemes are strengthened equally. The general implication is that the ambiguities that exist in the relationships between orthography, phonology, and morphology underlie spelling knowledge, and are particularly difficult for dyslexic readers.     

Context-sensitive rules and word naming in Italian children

The present study examines the role of orthographic complexity on Italian children’s word reading. Two experiments are reported in which elementary school children (3rd and 5th graders) read aloud words containing simple or contextual letter-sound conversion rules. In Experiment 1, both groups of participants read words containing contextual rules more slowly and less accurately than words containing simple, non-contextual rules. Experiment 2 showed that the effect of rule complexity held for low but not high frequency words, on both reading speed and accuracy. No interactions with grade were found. This pattern is in line with previous findings on the effects of rule contextuality on adult performance [Burani, C. Barca, L. & Ellis, A. W. (2006). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 346–352]. Despite the regularity of the Italian orthography, the presence of complex rules influences both reading speed and accuracy of young readers. Moreover, the reading system of readers of a shallow orthography seems efficient from the first years of reading instruction.     

A possible contribution of word-retrieval difficulties to reading and spelling impairments

Good and poor readers at the junior high school level and good and poor spellers at the university level were compared on their ability to produce words in response to a semantic cue (a category name), a visual cue (three letters), and an auditory cue (a syllable rime). Kindergarten children were tested on a word-identification task and their retrieval of words in response to the semantic and auditory cues. At all ages, poor readers or spellers produced fewer words on all word-retrieval tasks than did good readers or spellers. Performance on the auditory and visual word-retrieval tasks correlated very highly with pseudoword reading and spelling ability in the two older groups; in the kindergarten children, auditory retrieval correlated with word identification. The results suggest that poor readers have not organized words in long-term memory according to rhyming families but that good readers have. We speculate that failure to retrieve rhyming words during acquisition of reading and spelling skills underlies the failure of poor readers and spellers to abstract the higher-order relationships between orthography and phonology.     

Learning to spell in Hebrew: Phonological and morphological factors

This paper investigates children's developingknowledge of the Hebrew spelling system in view of theclaim that language-specific typology affects the rateand the pattern of development of orthographicspelling. Hebrew is a morphologically syntheticlanguage with a phonologically ``deep' orthography, onthe one hand, and a consistent representation ofmorphology in the spelling system, on the other. Thispaper focuses on the difference between representingcontent words versus grammatical words, and rootsversus morphemic and attached function letters inwritten Hebrew. The paper describes two studies. InStudy 1, compositions from gradeschool children (grade1 through 6) were analyzed for types of spellingerrors; in Study 2, children from grades 2–4 wereadministered a spelling task. Results indicate thatgrammatical words are spelled correctly before contentwords, and that within content words, the correctspelling of function letters precedes that of rootletters. These differences are attributed to factorsof transparency, consistency and frequency, coupledwith gradeschoolers' growing perception ofphonological and morphological patterning in Hebrew.     

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.     

Predictors of Orthographic Learning of Regular and Irregular Words

The aim of this study was to explore the reading and language skills that are associated with orthographic learning and to examine whether the effects of these factors are influenced by word regularity. Grade 2 and 3 children learned the phonology and meaning of novel words and were subsequently exposed to their orthography, with either regular or irregular mappings. At the participant level, phonological decoding skill, orthographic knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge were associated with orthographic learning for both word types. However, at an item level, reading novel words correctly did not directly relate to the successful acquisition of the representations of those novel words. In addition, item-specific vocabulary knowledge was a predictor of success in orthographic learning, but only for irregular words. The findings are discussed in relation to the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 1995).     

Syllable and rime patterns for teaching reading: Analysis of a frequency-based vocabulary of 17,602 words

A frequency-based vocabulary of 17,602 words was compiled and analyzed in order to group words with recurring syllable and rime patterns for teaching reading. The role of the rime unit (e.g.,ite inkite andinvite) in determining vowel pronunciation was central to the analysis because of the difficulty that the ambiguity of English vowel spelling presents to children who do not learn to read words easily. Vowel pronunciation in each orthographic rime was examined, both for its consistency in all words in which the rime occurs and for regularity, defined as conformity to the most frequent pronunciation for each vowel spelling in each of six orthographic syllable types. Of the 824 different orthographic rimes, 616 occur in rime families as the building blocks of almost all the 43,041 syllables of the words. These rimes account for a striking amount of patterning in the orthography: 436 are both regular and consistent in pronunciation (except where a single exception word occurs); another 55 are consistent but not regular. Of the remaining 125, only 86 have less than a 90 percent level of consistency. The high order of congruence of orthographic and phonological rimes suggests their usefulness as units for teaching reading.     

Differences in Phonological Recoding in German- and English-Speaking Children

Orthographic consistency in different languages is likely to have an effect on phonological recoding skills, which are basic to the acquisition of reading. To explore this issue, we investigated word and nonword reading in German- and English-speaking 7- to 12-year-old children. Comparability of the stimuli across the 2 languages was strictly controlled: The German and English words used were common to both languages. Nonwords were derived by exchanging consonantal onsets between short words and by recombining syllables in long words. An identical set of CVCVCV nonwords was also presented to both language groups. At ages 7, 8, and 9, English-speaking children made a higher proportion of errors than their German-speaking peers when reading nonwords and words of low frequency. This was the case even when word-recognition ability was equated between the 2 language groups. By age 12, both groups had equally fast nonword-recognition latencies, but English-speaking readers were still less accurate when recoding long and complex nonwords. Only the younger English-speaking readers made substantial numbers of errors with CVCVCV nonwords. Vowels, which are the most inconsistent feature of English orthography, were often mispronounced in English but hardly ever in German, where they are consistent. Word-substitution errors occurred more frequently in English than in German. We suggest that low orthographic consistency, as in English, necessitates the use of complex and error-prone strategies in phonological recoding, whereas high consistency, as in German, allows phonological recoding into syllables on-line. This makes the teaching of phonological recoding relatively straightforward and allows the acquisition of basic reading skills to proceed at a faster pace. Differences in the teaching of reading might in turn contribute to differences in recoding skills.     

Reading and spelling acquisition in Thai children

Thai, a tonal language, has its own distinctive alphabetic orthography. The study investigates reading and spelling development in Thai children, with an aim of examining the grain size that is predominantly used when reading and spelling. Furthermore, word and nonword lists were developed to examine the acquisition of the complex system of vowels and tone rules in Thai. Reading and spelling of words and nonwords were assessed in 60 Thai children ranging in age from 7 to 9 years 8 months from Grade(s) 1, 2, and 3. A lexicality effect was found for both reading and spelling. Spelling lagged behind reading in the Grade 1 children. Development rapidly increased between the youngest Grade 1 children and the older Grade 2 and 3 children. For word reading there were significantly more lexical errors than phonological errors. Beginning readers appear to predominantly use a larger lexico-syllabic grain size to read Thai.     

Orthographic Neighborhood-Size Effects on the Reading Aloud of Italian Children With and Without Dyslexia

This study examines the effects of orthographic neighborhood size (N-size) in relationship with word frequency on the reading aloud of children with and without dyslexia whose language has a consistent orthography. Participants included 22 Italian fourth-grade children with dyslexia and 44 age-matched typically developing readers. Children with dyslexia read low-frequency words with high N-size faster than words that had no neighbors; by contrast, typically developing readers showed no N-size effects, irrespective of word frequency. The facilitating effect of N-size on low-frequency word reading in children with dyslexia indicates that they benefit from lexical activation spreading from dense neighborhoods.     

The pathway to English word reading in Chinese ESL children: the role of spelling

The present longitudinal study investigated the role of spelling as a bridge between various reading-related predictors and English word reading in Chinese children learning English as a Second Language (ESL). One hundred and forty-one 5-year-old kindergarten children from Hong Kong, whose first language (L1) was Cantonese and second language (L2) was English, were administered tests of phonological awareness, letter knowledge, English vocabulary, spelling and English word reading at three time points (T1, T2 and T3) at 3-month intervals over a 6-month period. Nonverbal IQ was included as a control variable. The results showed that phonological awareness, letter knowledge and English vocabulary at T1 all predicted English word reading (T3) through spelling (T2). Further mediation analyses showed that, for phonological awareness and English vocabulary, full mediation effects were found. For letter knowledge, a partial mediation effect was observed. These results suggest that, in Chinese ESL kindergarteners, reading-related predictors foster word reading via spelling, a process that intersects phonology, orthography and semantics. Practical implications of these findings were also discussed.     

The role of feedback from phonology to orthography in orthographic learning: an extension of item‐based accounts

Skilled readers were trained to recognise either the oral (n=44) or visual form (n=40) of a set of 32 novel words (oral and visual instantiation, respectively). Training involved learning the ‘meanings’ for the instantiated words and was followed by a visual lexical decision task in which the instantiated words were mixed with real English words and untrained pseudowords, and the instantiated words were to be considered as words. The phonology‐to‐orthography consistency (feedback consistency) of the instantiated words was manipulated to investigate the role of feedback from phonology in orthographic learning. Masked consonant and vowel‐preserving form primes were used in the lexical decision task as probes of orthographic learning. Feedback‐consistent instantiated words were recognised significantly faster in lexical decision than feedback‐inconsistent instantiated words, and facilitation was significantly greater from consonant‐preserving than vowel‐preserving primes for orally but not visually instantiated words. The results support the hypothesis that orthographic representations based on a consonant frame can be generated from the speech signal before encountering the printed forms, and that feedback from phonology is involved in the early stages of orthographic learning.     

Spanish-speaking children’s spelling errors with English vowel sounds that are represented by different graphemes in English and Spanish words

Vowels in Spanish have direct one-to-one letter-sound correspondences, whereas vowels in English usually have multiple spellings. For native Spanish-speaking children learning to spell in English, this transition from a shallow to a deep orthography could potentially cause difficulties. We examined whether the spelling of English vowel sounds was particularly difficult for native Spanish-speaking children, and whether the errors are consistent with Spanish orthographic rules. Twenty-six native Spanish-speaking and 53 native English-speaking children in grades 2 and 3 were given real-word and pseudoword spelling tasks in English that included words containing four vowels that have different spellings between Spanish and English. Results supported our hypothesis—native Spanish-speaking children committed significantly more vowel spelling errors that were consistent with Spanish orthography. The number of vowel spelling errors not consistent with Spanish orthography did not differ between the two language groups. These findings suggest that orthographic properties of the children’s native language influence their learning to spell in a second language. Educational implications address how knowledge of this cross language influence can aide teachers in improving spelling instruction.     

Word learning: An ERP investigation of word experience effects on recognition and word processing

Adults of varying reading comprehension skill learned a set of previously unknown rare English words (e.g., gloaming) in three different learning conditions in which the type of word knowledge was manipulated. The words were presented in one of three conditions: (1) orthography-to-meaning (no phonology); (2) orthography-to-phonology (no meaning); and (3) phonology-to-meaning (no orthography). Following learning, participants made meaning judgments on the learned words, familiar known words, and unpresented (unlearned) rare words while their ERPs were recorded. The behavioral results showed no significant effects of comprehension skill on meaning judgment performance. Contrastingly, the ERP results indicated comprehension skill differences in P600 amplitude; high-skilled readers showed stronger familiarity effects for learned words, whereas less-skilled readers did not distinguish between learned words, familiar words, and unlearned words. Evidence from the P600 and N400 illustrated superior learning of meaning when meaning information was coupled with orthography rather than phonology. These results suggest that the availability of word knowledge (orthography, phonology, and meaning) at learning affects subsequent word identification processes when the words are encountered in a new context.     

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 Role of Set for Variability in Irregular Word Reading: Word and Child Predictors in Typically Developing Readers and Students At-Risk for Reading Disabilities

ABSTRACT

In a quasiregular orthography like English, children inevitably encounter irregular words during reading. Previous research suggests successful reading of an irregular word depends at least partially on a child’s ability to address the mismatch between decoded form and stored word pronunciation, referred to as a child’s set for variability, and the word’s relative transparency, measured here using a spelling to pronunciation transparency rating. Item-level analyses were used to explore the relationship between general child performance on the set for variability mispronunciation task, word specific set for variability (predicting reading of that word), spelling to pronunciation transparency rating, and irregular word reading. Significant predictors included general word reading, general set for variability performance, and item-specific set for variability performance; word frequency and spelling to pronunciation transparency rating; and an interaction between word reading and the transparency rating. Results underscore the importance of considering both general and item-specific factors affecting irregular word reading.