In search of methods enhancing fluency in reading: An examination of the relations between time constraints and processes of reading in readers of German

A meta-analytic review of comprehension deficits in students with dyslexia

Beyond the established difficulties of individuals with dyslexia in word recognition and spelling, it remains unclear how severe their difficulties in comprehension are. To examine this, we performed a meta-analytic review. A random-effects model analysis of data from 76 studies revealed a large deficit in reading comprehension in individuals with dyslexia compared to their chronological-age (CA) controls (g = 1.43) and a smaller one compared to their reading-level (RL) matched controls (g = 0.64). Individuals with dyslexia also differed significantly from their CA controls in listening comprehension (g = 0.43). Results further showed significant heterogeneity in the effect sizes that was partly explained by orthographic consistency (the deficits were larger in languages with low orthographic consistency) and vocabulary matching (the deficits were larger in studies in which the groups were not matched on vocabulary). These findings suggest, first, that individuals with dyslexia experience significant difficulties in both reading and listening comprehension, but the effect sizes are smaller than those reported in the literature for word reading and spelling. Second, our findings suggest that the deficits in reading comprehension are likely a combination of deficits in both decoding and oral language skills.

The Training of Morphological Decomposition in Word Processing and Its Effects on Literacy Skills

This study set out to examine the effects of a morpheme-based training on reading and spelling in fifth and sixth graders (N = 47), who present poor literacy skills and speak German as a second language. A computerized training, consisting of a visual lexical decision task (comprising 2,880 items, presented in 12 sessions), was designed to encourage fast morphological analysis in word processing. The children were divided between two groups: the one underwent a morpheme-based training, in which word-stems of inflections and derivations were presented for a limited duration, while their pre- and suffixes remained on screen until response. Another group received a control training consisting of the same task, except that the duration of presentation of a non-morphological unit was restricted. In a Word Disruption Task, participants read words under three conditions: morphological separation (with symbols separating between the words' morphemes), non-morphological separation (with symbols separating between non-morphological units of words), and no-separation (with symbols presented at the beginning and end of each word). The group receiving the morpheme-based program improved more than the control group in terms of word reading fluency in the morphological condition. The former group also presented similar word reading fluency after training in the morphological condition and in the no-separation condition, thereby suggesting that the morpheme-based training contributed to the integration of morphological decomposition into the process of word recognition. At the same time, both groups similarly improved in other measures of word reading fluency. With regard to spelling, the morpheme-based training group showed a larger improvement than the control group in spelling of trained items, and a unique improvement in spelling of untrained items (untrained word-stems integrated into trained pre- and suffixes). The results further suggest some contribution of the morpheme-based training to performance in a standardized spelling task. The morpheme-based training did not, however, show any unique effect on comprehension. These results suggest that the morpheme-based training is effective in enhancing some basic literacy skill in the population examined, i.e., morphological analysis in word processing and the access to orthographic representations in spelling, with no specific effects on reading fluency and comprehension.