Visual information conveyed by a speaking face aids speech perception. In addition, children's ability to comprehend visual-only speech (speechreading ability) is related to phonological awareness and reading skills in both deaf and hearing children. We tested whether training speechreading would improve speechreading, phoneme blending, and…

In Kannada, visual features are arranged in blocks called "akshara," making this a visually more complex writing system than typical alphabetic orthographies. Akshara knowledge was assessed concurrently and 8 months later in 113 children in the first years of reading instruction (aged 4-7 years). Mixed effects logistic regression models…

There appears to be a close and probably causal relationship between early variations in phoneme skills and later reading skills in typically developing children, though the pattern in children with Down Syndrome is less clear. We present the results of a 2-year longitudinal study of 49 children with Down Syndrome (DS) and 61 typically developing…

This article reports the evaluation of a 6-week programme of teaching designed to support the development of phoneme blending skills in children with Down syndrome (DS). Teaching assistants (TAs) were trained to deliver the intervention to individual children in daily 10-15-minute sessions, within a broader context of reading and language…

This study examines the concurrent relationships between phoneme awareness, visual-verbal paired-associate learning, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and reading skills in 7- to 11-year-old children. Path analyses showed that visual-verbal paired-associate learning and RAN, but not phoneme awareness, were unique predictors of word recognition,…

Background: This study evaluates the effects of a language and literacy intervention for children with Down syndrome. Methods: Teaching assistants (TAs) were trained to deliver a reading and language intervention to children in individual daily 40-min sessions. We used a waiting list control design, in which half the sample received the…

We examined the growth of spelling skills in a large sample of Norwegian children (N = 228) over the first 3 years in school. The roles of phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN), visual-verbal paired-associate learning, and verbal short-term memory as predictors of later spelling skills were examined. Phoneme awareness…

The authors present the results of a 2-year longitudinal study of 228 Norwegian children beginning some 12 months before formal reading instruction began. The relationships between a range of cognitive and linguistic skills (letter knowledge, phoneme manipulation, visual-verbal paired-associate learning, rapid automatized naming (RAN), short-term…

The authors report a short-term reading intervention study involving 15 children with Down syndrome (DS) who attended mainstream schools. The intervention programme taught children phoneme segmentation and blending skills in the context of learning letter-sounds and working with words in books. The children were taught by their learning support…

This study investigated children's sensitivity to spelling consistency, and lexical and sublexical (rime) frequency, and their use of explicitly learned canonical vowel graphemes in the early stages of learning to spell. Vowel spellings produced by 78 British children at the end of reception year (mean age 5 years, 7 months) and 6 months later in…

Two studies investigated whether knowledge of specific letter-sound correspondences is a necessary precursor of children's ability to isolate phonemes in speech. In both studies, Czech and English children reliably isolated phonemes for which they did not know the corresponding letter. These data refute the idea that phoneme manipulation ability…

Castles and Coltheart (2004) argued that the causal link between children's underlying phonological awareness and success in learning to read remains unproven. We argue that the balance of evidence does favor such a causal link. We also argue, however, that learning to read depends on broader language skills and that, like other aspects of…

We report two studies examining the relations among three paired-associate learning (PAL) tasks (visual-visual, verbal-verbal, and visual-verbal), phoneme deletion, and single-word and nonword reading ability. Correlations between the PAL tasks and reading were strongest for the visual-verbal task. Path analyses showed that both phoneme deletion…

Background: It is widely recognized that effective interventions for poor reading involve training in phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge, linked in the context of reading books. From the applied perspective, it is important to gather data on the effectiveness of different forms of implementation of literacy support within this framework.…

A range of possible predictors of arithmetic and reading were assessed in a large sample (N=162) of children between ages 7 years 5 months and 10 years 4 months. A confirmatory factor analysis of the predictors revealed a good fit to a model consisting of four latent variables (verbal ability, nonverbal ability, search speed, and phonological…