There are contradictory findings in the literature about prosodic sensitivity's contribution to reading. In this study, we examined whether prosodic sensitivity makes a unique contribution to different reading outcomes in German after controlling for the effects of phonological awareness. Word reading, nonword reading and sentence reading as well…

Purpose: Two types of orthographic knowledge were examined: i) knowledge of permissible letter combinations (general orthographic knowledge) and ii) knowledge of whole words (word-specific orthographic knowledge), to gain further insights into the relationship of general and word-specific orthographic knowledge with literacy skills. Method:…

Until at least the end of adolescence, children articulate speech differently than adults. While this discrepancy is often attributed to the maturation of the speech motor system, we sought to demonstrate that the development of spoken language fluency is shaped by complex interactions across motor and cognitive domains. In this study, we…

This study investigates the effects of prosodic sensitivity on reading. Highly capable adult musicians (i.e., persons with potentially excellent prosodic skills) and non-musicians were compared in terms of prosodic sensitivity and reading. Furthermore, the study examines possible reciprocal effects of prosodic sensitivity and reading. Sixty native…

This study set out to examine the basic reading skills (accuracy and fluency in decoding, word and text reading) and some of the reading-related language skills (phonological awareness and rapid-naming) of 54 adults with low reading comprehension, who read the transparent German orthography. Participants were born in Germany and showed a typical…

Performing a stay in a country where the L2 is the official language can provide the perfect immersion for L2 development (traditional study abroad). In the case of English learners, internationalization and the role of English as a lingua franca make it unnecessary to perform the stay in an English-speaking country. Hence, an increasing number of…

Automation of frequently used words is a key component in the development of reading fluency. However, acquiring fast word recognition skills is a serious challenge for many children in their early years of formal education. Lagging word recognition leads to general reading problems, as fluency is a vital prerequisite for text comprehension.…

The growing number of children in primary schools in Germany who have German as their second language (L2) has raised questions about the fairness of performance assessment. Fair tests are a prerequisite for distinguishing between L2 learning delay and a specific learning disability. We evaluated five commonly used reading and spelling tests for…

Reading fluency is a major determinant of reading comprehension but depends on moderating factors such as auditory working memory (AWM), word recognition and sentence reading skills. We investigated how word and sentence reading skills relate to reading comprehension differentially across the first 6 years of schooling and tested which reading…

In most general education classrooms in Germany, students with and without special educational needs are taught together. To support teachers in adapting instruction to these heterogeneous classrooms, we have developed learning progress assessment (LPA) and reading instructional materials, the "Reading Sportsman" (RS), in line with the…

We examined the contribution of rapid automatized naming (RAN) components (articulation time, pause time, and pause time consistency) to reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling in a sample of 257 German children (139 boys, 118 girls; M[subscript age] = 5.60 years, SD = 0.31) followed from kindergarten to Grade 1. In kindergarten,…