The influence of orthographic consistency on reading development: word recognition in English and German children

Properties of school Chinese: implications for learning to read

The properties of the 2,570 Chinese characters explicitly taught in Chinese elementary schools were systematically investigated, including types of characters, visual complexity, spatial structure, phonetic regularity and consistency, semantic transparency, independent and bound components, and phonetic and semantic families. Among the findings are that the visual complexity, phonetic regularity, and semantic transparency of the Chinese characters taught in elementary school increase from the early grades to the later grades: Characters introduced in the 1st or 2nd grade typically contain fewer strokes, but are less likely to be regular or transparent, than characters introduced in the 5th or 6th grade. The inverse relation holds when characters are stratified by frequency. Low-frequency characters tend to be visually complex, phonetically regular, and semantically transparent whereas high-frequency characters tend to be the opposite. Combined with other findings, the analysis suggests that written Chinese has a logic that children can understand and use.

Dyslexia: verbal impairments in the absence of magnocellular impairments

Sensitivity to dynamic visual and auditory stimuli was assessed in dyslexic children (Grade 7) who at school entrance had suffered from the well-established double-deficit of impaired phonological sensitivity and deficient rapid naming performance. A visual magnocellular deficit was assessed by the coherent motion detection task of the Oxford group. An auditory magnocellular deficit was assessed by the illusory sound movement perception task of Hari and Kiesilä. On both tasks our dyslexic subjects' performance was similar or even better than the performance of normally reading controls. Differences in the inclusion of ADHD cases in dyslexic samples is discussed as a potential explanation of differences in results.

Sonority constraints on onset-rime cohesion: evidence from native and bilingual Filipino readers of English

Research in English suggests that syllables can be analyzed in terms of two subunits-the onset (defined as the initial consonant or consonant cluster) and the rime (the unit formed by the vowel and following consonant/s). This study investigated whether nonnative readers of English, which in the case of the present study were native Filipino speakers, also make use of onset-rime units, particularly when some features of their native language (namely infixation and reduplication) appear to foster no awareness of such units. In two lexical decision experiments, monosyllabic English words were presented, divided in between their first and second consonants (e.g., B LIND), at their onset-rime boundary (e.g., BL IND), or at their antibody boundary (e.g., BLI ND). Results indicated that the processes of infixation and reduplication did not affect the English word processing of native Filipino speakers. Rather, results for both native Filipino and native English speakers suggest that onsets composed of an "s + consonant" sequence (e.g., STAMP) are less cohesive than onsets comprised of a stop-liquid sequence (e.g., BLIND). It was concluded that not only may sonority constraints underlie onset cohesiveness, but that such phonetic properties may also be involved in visual word recognition.

The development of reading speed in Italians with dyslexia: a longitudinal study

The development of reading speed in Italian children with dyslexia was estimated using individualized growth curves for a group of 38 children with dyslexia tested longitudinally from the second to the eighth grade and compared with typical readers. Their reading speed development followed a linear trend of .3 syllables per second per grade, approximately half the increment observed in typical children reading a passage and similar to typical children's reading of nonword lists. These findings give support to the deficit hypothesis versus the lag hypothesis and to reading speed as the core deficit in dyslexia with transparent orthographies.

Identical words are read differently in different languages

It is hypothesized that written languages differ in the preferred grain size of units that emerge during reading acquisition. Smaller units (graphemes, phonemes) are thought to play a dominant role in relatively consistent orthographies (e.g., German), whereas larger units (bodies, rhymes) are thought to be more important in relatively inconsistent orthographies (e.g., English). This hypothesis was tested by having native English and German speakers read identical words and nonwords in their respective languages (zoo-Zoo, sand-Sand, etc.). Although the English participants exhibited stronger body-rhyme effects, the German participants exhibited a stronger length effect for words and nonwords. Thus, identical items were processed differently in different orthographies. These results suggest that orthographic consistency determines not only the relative contribution of orthographic versus phonological codes within a given orthography; but also the preferred grain size of units that are likely to be functional during reading.

Naming speed, phonological awareness and the initial stage of learning to read

Phonological awareness in kindergarten and rapid naming of objects in Grade 1 were used as predictors of reading achievement in Grade 1. Two reading measures were used: oral decoding of both words and pseudowords. They were found to be highly correlated. Both rapid naming and phonological awareness accounted for independent variance in reading achievement except for pseudoword reading, where rapid naming did not contribute significantly after the effect of phonemic awareness had been accounted for. Phonological awareness was the stronger predictor and a large part of the variance was shared between it and rapid naming. The rapid naming testing procedure functioned well and its potential as a research and diagnostic tool is discussed.

Treatment of specific developmental reading disorders, derived from single- and dual-route models

A group of 21 participants with specific reading disorders was treated with a method derived from dual-route models and another group of 23 with a method derived from single-route models of reading. Both treatments were compared with four control treatments. The reading performance of each participant was compared with that of his or her chronological-age controls on the following variables: speed and accuracy of reading passage, isolated words and nonwords, and accuracy in homophone recognition. The treatment deriving from dual-route models produced significant improvements in the homophone recognition, compared to all other treatments. The treatment deriving from single-route models produced significant improvements, compared to all other treatments, in speed of word reading. Furthermore, these two treatments produced significant improvement with respect to all other treatments but one, in speed of nonword reading. These findings support the hypothesis that treatments derived from specific models of reading development are superior to other treatments. However the benefits obtained on the reading of isolated stimuli (words, homophones) did not significantly improve the reading of a passage. This fact suggests that treatments should include exercises involving passages or sentences.

Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework

This paper attempts to integrate recent research findings in phonological development, reading development and dyslexia into a coherent theoretical framework that can provide a developmental account of reading and reading difficulties across languages. It is proposed that the factors governing phonological development across languages are similar, but that important differences in the speed and level of phonological development are found following the acquisition of alphabetic literacy. The causal framework offered is at the level of a cognitive model, which may prove useful in organizing future cross-linguistic developmental work.

Reading and spelling disorders: clinical features and causes

Developmental dyslexia (specific reading and specific spelling disorder) is thought to stem from specific features in cognitive processing strongly related to biological maturation of the central nervous system which interact with non-biological learning conditions. The specific learning disorder should not be accounted for by mental age, gross neurological deficits, emotional disturbances or inadequate schooling. As a clinical guideline, the child's level in reading and spelling must be significantly below that expected for the population of children of the same mental age. The persistence rate is high and dyslexia is often associated with psychiatric problems. The etiology is not known. From the biological point of view, dyslexia is supposed to have a neurological basis. Neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and neuropsychological correlates have been studied by means of autopsy, brain imaging, neurophysiological and neuropsychological methods. There is good evidence that dyslexia is determined by heritable cognitive components of reading and spelling processing. Experimental research focuses on characteristics of brain structure and cognitive skills related to the central nervous systems of auditory-phonological and visual information processing.

Pseudoname learning by German-speaking children with dyslexia: evidence for a phonological learning deficit

In 2 experiments, German-speaking dyslexic children (9-year-olds) showed impaired learning of new phonological forms (pseudonames) in a variety of visual-verbal learning tasks. The dyslexic deficit was also found when phonological retrieval cues were provided and when the to-be-learned pseudonames were presented in spoken as well as printed form. However, the dyslexic children showed no name-learning deficit when short, familiar words were used and they also had no difficulty with immediate repetition of the pseudowords. The dyslexic children's difficulty in learning new phonological forms was associated with pseudoword-repetition and naming-speed deficits assessed at the beginning of school, but not with phonological awareness and visual-motor impairments. We propose that the difficulty in learning new phonological forms may affect reading and spelling acquisition via impaired storage of new phonological forms, which serve as phonological underpinnings of the letter patterns of words or parts of words.

Onsets and rimes in a phonologically transparent orthography: differences between good and poor beginning readers of Dutch

This study investigates whether beginning readers of Dutch develop onset-rime units when these units are emphasized in their reading method, even when the orthography is transparent at the grapheme-phoneme level. The speed of naming intact pseudowords (wot) was compared with the speed of naming pseudowords with an onset-rime (w ot) or body-coda (wo t) segmentation. Whereas body-coda items consistently slowed down naming for both good and poor readers, the onset-rime effect covaried with reading skill: it changed from inhibitory for good readers to facilitatory for poor readers. Two alternative explanations are proposed.

Reading and spelling acquisition in French: the role of phonological mediation and orthographic factors

The objective of this research was to study the development of reading and spelling in French. The two main hypotheses were that (1) phonological mediation is the primary process in the acquisition of these skills and that (2) the use of phonological mediation may allow the construction of the orthographic lexicon. In January and June, first graders (n = 57) were required to read and spell items designed to assess the variables of regularity, graphemic complexity, frequency, lexicality and analogy. The findings of the January session partially corroborated the first hypothesis as a regularity effect, but no frequency effect and no word superiority, were found both in reading and spelling. The main contradictory finding was the presence, in early reading only, of a facilitative effect of analogy. The changes in the frequency and the lexicality effects between the two sessions in reading and in spelling indicated that the children were able to rapidly construct an orthographic lexicon. However, this procedure did not entirely replace phonological mediation since a regularity effect and regularization errors were observed and increased between sessions. The second hypothesis was supported as relationships were found to exist between early phonological skills and subsequent orthographic skills. Finally, we observed that French children were using graphemes (not only letters), in the early stage of reading, and, to a lesser extent, in the early stage of spelling. The findings are discussed in the context of developmental models of reading and spelling.

Beginning readers' use of orthographic analogies in word reading

This research re-investigated the claim that beginning readers exploit information from the orthographic rime of clue words to help them to decode unfamiliar words. In Experiment 1, first-grade children were equally able to use orthographic information from the beginning, middle, and end of clue words to identify unfamiliar target words. Moreover, the improvement in reading end-(or orthographic rime-) same target words following clue word presentation reflected phonological priming. In second-grade children, with correction for retesting effects, improvement following clue word presentation for end-same and beginning-same target words was equivalent, although end-same target words improved more than middle-same target words. In Experiment 2, both first- and second-grade children were able to use orthographic information from the beginning, middle, and end of clue words to identify unfamiliar words. Clue word presentation enhanced the reading of beginning-same and end-same target words more than middle-same target words. Improvement was the same for beginning-same and end-same target words. Target word improvement following clue word presentation was greater than that for phonologically primed words only in children reading target words sharing the beginning sequence of the clue word.

The impact of orthographic consistency on dyslexia: a German-English comparison

We examined reading and phonological processing abilities in English and German dyslexic children, each compared with two control groups matched for reading level (8 years) and age (10-12 years). We hypothesised that the same underlying phonological processing deficit would exist in both language groups, but that there would be differences in the severity of written language impairments, due to differences in orthographic consistency. We also hypothesized that systematic differences due to orthographic consistency should be found equally for normal and dyslexic readers. All cross-language comparisons were based on a set of stimuli matched for meaning, pronunciation and spelling. The results supported both hypotheses: On a task challenging phonological processing skills (spoonerisms) both English and German dyslexics were significantly impaired compared to their age and reading age controls. However, there were extremely large differences in reading performance when English and German dyslexic children were compared. The evidence for systematic differences in reading performance due to differences in orthographic consistency was similar for normal and for dyslexic children, with English showing marked adverse effect on acquisition of reading skills.