Development of phonological awareness during the preschool year: the influence of gender and socio-economic status

Phonological awareness is a critical enabling skill in learning to read, often developed outside the context of formal reading instruction. More than 2,000 6-year-old children were tested on phonological awareness at two occasions during the preschool year in two cohorts. Between the assessments, a training program was implemented. A two-level path model was applied. More frequent training sessions were connected to higher gains of test scores especially for children with low initial scores in the first cohort. A clear gender effect was also observed. There were more boys with very low initial scores and more girls among the top scorers. A clear SES-effect indicated the influence of early language stimulation. Children who already at the beginning of the preschool year had grasped the alphabetic code had the highest initial scores on the test.     

The impact of environmental factors on components of reading and dyslexia

Data from 123 male adults were analyzed to estimate environmental influences on components of literacy skills and to explore the impact of environmental factors in different approaches to define reading difficulty. Literacy skills were decomposed into general cognitive function, reading comprehension, spelling, word reading, and phonological ability. Environmental factors examined were related to home conditions, school conditions, and literacy environment. Results suggest that there is a substantial social-cultural bias in the delineation of literacy skills and in the definitions of reading disabilities. Results also suggest that phonological ability constitutes the only measure relatively unaffected by environmental influences. This study has brought forward a new argument for emphasizing phonological deficits as the core component in defining dyslexia.     

Q-Rhetoric and Controlled Equivocation: Revising “The Scientific Study of Subjectivity” for Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

ABSTRACT

This article offers a revision to an existing social science methodology, Q methodology, through “Q-Rhetoric.” After detailing Q methodology’s theoretical underpinnings and practical method, and persistent critiques of the methodology, the article employs perspectives from rhetorical theory and Amerindian anthropology to suggest a methodological correction. It concludes by detailing the use of Q-Rhetoric to intervene in a Wisconsin stream management controversy, proposing Q-Rhetoric as a pragmatic and theoretically sound methodology for working across disciplinary divides.