The Relationship of Spelling Recognition, RAN, and Phonological Awareness to Reading Skills in Older Poor Readers and Younger Reading-Matched Controls

The role of spelling recognition was examined in word reading skills and reading comprehension for dyslexic and nondyslexic children. Dyslexic and nondyslexic children were matched on their raw word reading proficiency. Relationships between spelling recognition and the following were examined for both groups of children: verbal ability, working memory, phonological measures, rapid naming, word reading, and reading comprehension. Children’s performance in spelling recognition was significantly associated with their skills in word reading and reading comprehension regardless of their reading disability status. Furthermore, spelling recognition contributed significant variance to reading comprehension for both dyslexic and nondyslexic children after the effects of phonological awareness, rapid naming, and word reading proficiency had been accounted for. The results support the role of spelling recognition in reading development for both groups of children and they are discussed using a componential reading fluency framework.     

The influence of reading unit size on the development of Stroop interference in early word decoding

The purpose of the experiments was to determine the automatic use of large or small word reading units in young readers in the absence of word decoding strategies. Picture-word Stroop interference was examined from four types of conflicting labels: (a) words containing both highly predictable grapheme–phoneme correspondence (GPC) units and highly consistent rime units (henceforth, Hi-GPC + Hi-Rime); (b) words with highly predictable GPC units and less consistent rime units (Hi-GPC + Lo-Rime); (c) words with low predictability GPC units and highly consistent rime units (Low GPC + High Rime); (d) nonwords that contained both highly predictable GPC and highly consistent rime units. Naming time for pictures containing these labels was compared against that for pictures with random letter strings or no labels. In Experiment 1, Stroop interference was examined in first, second, and third grade children to determine whether there was developmental change in the presence of rime or GPC interference. In Experiment 2, Stroop interference was examined as a function of relative reading skill in first grade children. In Experiment 3, Stroop interference in adults was compared to the use of rime or GPC pronunciation strategies for nonword reading. In all experiments, Stroop interference in picture naming was longer for pictures with highly predictable GPC unit labels than less predictable GPC unit labels. However, in Experiment 3, even though adults showed interference from predictable GPC units in the Stroop task, they always preferred rime pronunciation for ambiguous nonwords in the nonword reading task. It is argued that the current experiments provide evidence for a flexible units model. The results of this study were presented at the Cognitive Development Society meeting, November 2001, Virginia Beach, VA, and the American Educational Research Association meeting, April 2004, San Diego, California.     

The developing mental lexicon: evidence from morphological priming of irregular Hebrew forms

This study investigated the development of automatic word recognition processes, in particular the development of the morphological level of processing. We examined masked priming of Hebrew irregular forms at two levels of reading experience. Both third- and seventh-grade children showed morphological priming for defective roots when primes and targets conformed to the canonical morphological structure, containing all three letters of the roots, and also when the surface form of the primes and targets contained only two of the root letters. However, priming was not observed when primes and targets did not overlap in the surface form of the roots, i.e. the full three-letter root as prime and only two root letters in the target. These results suggest that both tri- and bi-consonantal representations of defective roots exist in the mental lexicon of young readers. The formation of interconnections between these allomorphic representations, however, requires more extensive reading experience.     

《尔雅》在训诂学史上的开创意义

《尔雅》是我国最早的按照词义系统和事物分类来沟通“正统语言”与其他语言系统间的词义关系的词学专著。它在语词训释实践中。反映了诸多训诂原则和训诂方法,开创了中国训诂中的“词义互释”方法和“义界释词”方法,为训诂学的产生奠定了理论基础。     

Religious education and the interwar intellectuals: a secularism case study

ABSTRACT

For some time now, the idea of secularism has been the subject of renewed scrutiny. Statistical portraits, representing a simple, if relentless, narrative have been increasingly disparaged by scholars as unhelpful. Statistical secularism, as we may call it, tells a story of decline and little else. It is incapable of telling the real story which is one in which religious experience becomes hyper-fragmented. The memoirs and reminiscences of those English intellectuals who came to maturity in the interwar period have a contribution to make to this discussion. These pieces of life-writing reveal both the march of secularism in action but also the emergence of new religious experiences. At the heart of these radical changes was a widespread dissatisfaction with the way in which they were taught their religious faith. Where the experts of their day cautioned against teaching students doctrine, students like Evelyn Waugh, W. H. Auden and John Betjeman were particularly critical of that very concession. Thus, we get the chance to tease out an attitudinal pattern towards the religious education of the period and its contribution to the growing experience of secularism.     

《方言调查字表》入声字在普通话中的分派情况

入声字是上古音在方言中的遗留。作对《方言调查字表》中入声字的分派情况做了穷尽性的统计，总结了入声字在普通话中的分派规律，通过研究，发现《方言调查字表》中的入声字没有现在普通话中属鼻韵母的字等。此项研究对于掌握普通话具有一定的借鉴和指导意义。     

采用DDE技术实现VFP与WORD动态数据变换

介绍数据库应用程序开发中不常用的方法——DDE技术，通过它可以实现VFP所不具备的或处理能力薄弱的功能(如格式处理)，使数据库系统更加完善。并给出相应实现过程供参考。     

Understanding Chinese children’s word reading by considering the factors from cognitive,psychological and ecological factors

Reading is a complex activity that is related to factors from the cognitive, ecological, and psychological domains. However, few studies have investigated the mechanisms underlying word learning by including the factors from the three domains in Chinese children. One hundred and ninety-four Chinese first graders completed tasks on cognitive abilities and word reading ability and a questionnaire relating to the psychological domain, their parents answered questionnaires relating to the psychological and ecological domains. The cognitive factors in the present study involved general (i.e., working memory) and reading-specific (i.e., vocabulary and morphological awareness) abilities. As ecological factors, the parent-reported family socioeconomic status (SES) and home literacy environment (HLE) were used to indicate parents’ resource characteristics of the literacy interactions at home. As psychological factors, an overall mental status was measured by the Conners’ Parent Rating Scale-Revised and reading self-efficacy were used to indicate children’s demand and force characteristics in the literacy interactions. The results of path analysis showed that, after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence, the reading-specific cognitive abilities had a direct effect on word reading. Working memory, HLE, and reading self-efficacy contributed to word reading through the reading-specific cognitive abilities. Family SES facilitated HLE, which subsequently benefited the reading-specific cognitive abilities, and then assisted word reading.     

A developmental investigation of word length effects in reading using a new on-line word identification paradigm

Third and fifth grade children (average age 8.6and 10.6 years) and adult participants weretested with printed words of varying length ina new on-line identification task (theluminance increment paradigm, LIP) and aspeeded naming task. Effects of general length(length in letters, phonemes and syllables)were shown to decrease systematically with agein both tasks. Third grade children showedsubstantial effects of word length while theeffect practically disappeared in adults. Ingeneral, this developmental pattern was alsofound when separately examining effects ofphonological length (with length in lettersheld constant) and small unit length (withnumber of syllables held constant), althoughsome differences were observed in performancein the identification and the naming task. Thetwo tasks also showed different developmentalpatterns, with the greatest gain in performancearising between 3rd and 5th grade inthe naming task, and the largest improvementoccurring between 5th grade and adults inthe identification task. The results suggestthat the new luminance increment paradigm canbe usefully applied as an on-line measure ofprinted word perception in beginning readers.     

Powerful knowledge: insights from music's case

This paper examines Young and Muller's elaboration of Michael Young's concept of powerful knowledge and considers music's alignment with the characteristics theorised as distinguishing this type of knowledge. Consideration of the concept in relation to music may be timely as music teachers continue to grapple with the problem of knowing what knowledge to include within the parameters of a school curriculum. The concept of powerful knowledge may provide us with a fresh way of considering what school music may have to offer in such a noisy and musically heterogeneous world. This curricular challenge, however, is by no means unique to music, even though it may be exacerbated in music which is so open to the forces of cultural change. I argue that access to this knowledge occurs by placing abstract concepts at the centre of curriculum conception as the means to mediate the space between everyday knowledge and the more vertical discourse of school knowledge. It is in this ‘academic’ space that students can come to understand and utilise music as a form of powerful knowledge, when epistemic understanding illuminates the experiential and aesthetic dimensions of musical experiences.