The efficacy of `whole word' versus `analytic' reading instruction for children with Down syndrome

An intervention study was conducted toinvestigate whether children with Down syndrome(DS) would benefit from an `analytic' approachto reading instruction, which encompassedexplicit training in phonological awareness.Participants were seven English-speakingchildren with DS aged 8;6 (years;months) to11;1, who demonstrated little or nononword-reading ability prior to intervention.The children received weekly instruction (forsix weeks) in reading aloud 30 regularly speltmonosyllables (e.g., ten, bake) using an`analytic' approach, in which words werelearned by combining onsets with rimes (fourchildren), or a `whole-word' approach (threechildren). Participants' oral reading wasassessed pre- and post-intervention using areading test comprising the 30 trained wordsand 30 untrained (generalisation) words. Mostchildren (six out of seven) read more trainingwords correctly after intervention than before,with significant improvement shown by fourchildren (two trained analytically, and twotrained with whole words). More importantly,reading of generalisation words improvedsignificantly in only three children, all ofwhom had received analytic training. It wasconcluded that children with DS benefit from ananalytic approach to reading instruction, eventhough their auditory-verbal memory (assessedusing digit span) is poor.     

Phonological skills and reading comprehension

In the present study the mainfocus is on the impact of phonologicalawareness on reading comprehension. The studyinvolved 1300 children in Grade 1. Syllableawareness, phoneme awareness, word decodingand reading comprehension were each assessedwith two or three subtests. The results wereanalyzed by structural modeling. Due to themarked skewness observed for some of themanifest variables, separate analyses wereperformed for students with average worddecoding performance and for students with poorword decoding. Both among average and poordecoders, phonological awareness had a directimpact on reading comprehension, indicatingthat phonological factors play an independentrole in the processing of text. One possibleway to explain this observation is that atleast two critical factors in comprehension,vocabulary and short-term memory, are bothdetermined in part by phonological ability. Itmight also be the case that phonologicalawareness partly reflects metacognitiveprocesses assumed to be involved in readingcomprehension.     

Reading on the computer with orthographic and speech feedback

In this paper we present an overview of a computer program directed toward the remediation of children's deficits in word recognition and phonological decoding. In the present studies, 138 children read stories on the computer, in their school, for a half hour per day during a semester. Children were trained to request synthetic-speech feedback (DECtalk) for difficult words by targeting the words with a mouse. Different groups received whole-word feedback, wherein targeted words were highlighted and spoken as a unit, or segmented feedback, wherein segments of words (onsets, rimes, or syllables) were sequentially highlighted and spoken by the computer, requiring the child to pay attention to and blend the segments. Both whole-word and segmented feedback resulted in almost twice the gains in standardized word recognition scores compared to control groups that spent an equal time in their normal remedial reading program. Most important, the computer-trained groups improved their phonological decoding of nonwords at about four times the rate of the control group. However, there was a significant interaction between level of deficit severity and optimal feedback condition. The most severely disabled readers showed the largest phonological decoding gains from syllable feedback, while the largest gains for the less severely disabled readers were from onset-rime feedback. The disabled readers' level of phonological awareness at pre-test was the strongest predictor for gains in word recognition and phonological decoding. Implications of the results for future training programs are discussed.     

Assessing dyslexia in Finnish high-school students: a pilot study

A pilot study concerning Finnish dyslexics at senior high school (lukio), for 16–19-year-olds, is reported. The phonological processing deficit was assumed to underlie dyslexia in these late teenage subjects. The regular nature of Finnish orthography was taken into consideration. Four tasks were introduced to a total of 32 students, of whom 15 were dyslexics and 17 were controls. The controls outperformed the dyslexics on three tasks: text recoding, pseudoword recoding and pseudoword spelling. On the text spelling task, both groups performed equally well. In the correlational analysis of all subjects, both recoding tasks showed high correlations with selfestimated school achievement in language-related subjects. The recoding time appeared to be more important than the number of reading errors. These preliminary results suggest that the three tasks, capable of discriminating dyslexics, might be useful in the development of an adult dyslexia test in Finnish.     

Dyslexia and second language reading: A second bite at the apple?

An unexpected and remarkable preference for second language reading among some dyslexics has been noted, presenting a challenge to accepted theory on dyslexia and the capacity for second language learning. The current study was designed to examine this phenomenon by systematically looking at the differential reading scores in the first and second languages of reading-disabled young Swedish adults who claimed to prefer reading in their second language (English). Three groups were selected for study: a group of 10 reading-disabled young adults who prefer to read English; a second group of 10 reading-disabled with no special preference for second language reading, matched on word recognition efficiency, age group, gender and educational level and a group of 10 normal readers matched on age group and educational level. The test battery was designed to compare overall reading efficiency in English and Swedish and therefore encompassed both speed and accuracy measures. The battery covered seven phonological measures, four orthographic measures,three isolated word reading measures, two continuous text reading measures, a comprehension task and an author recognition task. All tasks were carried out in both English and Swedish. The results showed that two dyslexic groups differed significantly in the degree to which task performance, including reading efficiency, was impeded by the English format. A tentative hypothesis was forwarded as to how the exceptional and unexpected facility with English might be explained.     

Is the frequency of dyslexic problems among prison inmates higher than in a normal population?

The primary objective of this study was to compare a sample ofprison inmates with the norms obtained for large samples of 12year-old students on tests measuring word decoding skills,reading and spelling abilities. Theoretically, we assumed thatphonological processing deficits are a strong predictor ofdyslexic problems, and thus, only those inmates who did not seemto possess appropriate levels of phonological decoding skillsshould be defined as dyslexics. The results showed that theinmates performed better or at the same level as 12 year-oldstudents on all tasks measuring reading, spelling, and worddecoding skills, and that 4 out of 35 inmates (11%) with Swedishas their native language exhibited phonological decoding skillssubstantially below the average of grade 6 students. Thus, bycomparing the group of inmates with 12 year-old students, and byusing phonological decoding skills as an indicator of reading andwriting disabilities, our conclusion was that the frequency ofpossible dyslexic problems found in a group of prison inmateslooks very much like comparable incidence figures from a generalpopulation.     

Phonological skills and comprehension failure: A test of the phonological processing deficit hypothesis

Shankweiler and colleagues argue that text comprehensionproblems in young children arise from phonological processingdifficulties. Their work has focused on children with poor wordreading ability. We investigated this hypothesis for children whoexperience comprehension difficulties in the presence of age-appropriate word reading skills. We found that good and poorcomprehenders performed comparably on various measures ofphonological processing and differed on a task that made greaterdemands on working memory, Bradley and Bryant's odd-word-outtask. In a final study, hierarchical regression analyses supportedthis distinction: the odd-word-out task was a strong predictor ofreading comprehension performance even after IQ, vocabulary and single word reading had been controlled for, but a lessmemory-dependent phonological task was not. These studiessupport previous work which indicates that poor comprehenders'problems arise from higher-level processing difficulties.     

Morphological analysis,phonological analysis and learning to read French: a longitudinal study

This paper presents a longitudinal study, from kindergarten to secondgrade, which aims to examine the relationship between morphologicalanalysis, phonological analysis and learning to read. Three phonologicalawareness tasks, five derivational and four inflectional subtests wereadministered to fifty children at each of the three levels. Evolution ofperformance was analyzed through the three years. Data showed that withthe exception of two subtests, performance increased from kindergarten tofirst grade and from first grade to second grade, without reaching ceilingperformance in second grade, at least for morphological subtests. Linksbetween morphological and phonological analyses were very strong: inparticular, syllable segmentation was highly correlated with themorphological subtests in kindergarten while phonemic segmentation wascorrelated with morphological subtests in first and second grade. Therewere also strong links between morphological analysis and reading.Regression analyses showed that while phonological awarenessexplained a major part of variance in first grade, both phonologicaland morphological scores explained significant part of variance of bothdecoding and comprehension reading scores in second grade. Thus, thislongitudinal study contributes to the evidence of a link between bothphonological and morphological analysis and learning to read French.     

The sbelling of sdops: Preliterate children’s spelling of stops after /s/

Newly literate children have a tendency to spell s-stop sequences in words like spin, stop, sky with B, D, G (SBIN, SDOP, SGY), rather than with standard P, T, K. This observation potentially has implications for theories of English phonology as well as of language and literacy acquisition. Understanding these implications, however, requires data about the spelling preferences of preliterate children. In this study, a training-and-transfer design was used to test these spelling preferences in preliterate children. Results confirm that these children relate words with stops after /s/ to words with initial /b, d, g/ rather than to words with initial /p, t, k/. The paper outlines several possible interpretations: that preliterate children have a different phonemic analysis from adults, that they believe spelling represents archiphonemes that they believe spelling represents allophones, and that their early spelling attempts track the phonetic surface. The data suggest rejection of the second interpretation and in our view favour the last over the remaining interpretations. Several theoretical issues are raised that need to be resolved before a full account of the data can be offered.     

英汉语言歧义现象浅析

语言运用中的歧义现象常会影响人们对话语意义的正确理解。但歧义并不总是消极的,它也有可取之处,本文在简介歧义现象的成因及分类的基础上,以双关语歧义现象为例,探讨了歧义现象在语言交际中的积极作用。