Substantial research among bilingual adults indicates that exposure to words primes other semantically related words within and across languages, as well as the direct translation equivalents [e.g. Chen and Ng 1989. "Semantic Facilitation and Translation Priming Effects in Chinese-English Bilinguals." "Memory & Cognition"…

Studies investigating relations between morphological awareness and literacy in German, a language with a rather transparent but asymmetric orthography, are sparse. Little is known about the role of grade level for these relationships and of their relative strength compared to those between other language-related variables and literacy skills.…

The Processability Theory suggests that teachability and learn ability of a language is constrained by what learners are ready to acquire. This means that what is presented to the learners should be in line with their level and readiness. Textbooks are one of the fundamental resources of language learning and teaching, and in this sense, analyzing…

This study investigated the presence of word reading difficulties in a sample of students in Grades 1-4 (n = 357) identified with language and reading comprehension difficulties. This study also examined whether distinct word reading and listening comprehension profiles emerged within this sample and the extent to which these groups varied in…

The developmental trajectory of the use of morphemes is still unclear. We investigated the emergence of morphological effects on visual word recognition in German in a large sample across the complete course of reading acquisition in elementary school. To this end, we analyzed lexical decision data on a total of 1,152 words and pseudowords from a…

This investigation examined orthographic and semantic processing during reading acquisition. Children in first to fourth grade were presented with a target word and two response alternatives, and were asked to identify the semantic match. Words were presented in four conditions: an exact match and unrelated foil (STONE-STONE-EARS), an exact match…

This study explores whether activation and inhibition word processes contribute to the characteristic speed deficits found in transparent orthographies (Wimmer, "Appl Psycholinguist" 14:1-33, 1993). A second and fourth grade sample of normal school readers and dyslexic school readers participated in a lexical decision task. Words were…

Recent studies have emphasized that developmental dyslexia is a multiple-deficit disorder, in contrast to the traditional single-deficit view. In this context, cognitive profiling of children with dyslexia may be a relevant contribution to this unresolved discussion. The aim of this study was to profile 36 Portuguese children with dyslexia from…

Knowledge of compound word structures in Chinese and English was investigated, comparing 435 Chinese and 258 Americans, including second, fourth, and sixth graders, and college undergraduates. As anticipated, the results revealed that Chinese speakers performed better on a word structure analogy task than their English-speaking counterparts. Also,…

Particularly in primary school, good performance on copy tasks is an important working technique. With respect to writing skills, copying is a very basic process on which more complex writing abilities are based. We studied the copying ability of second and fourth graders across four types of symbols which vary with respect to their semantic and…

Purpose: To examine concurrently and retrospectively the language abilities of children with specific reading comprehension deficits ("poor comprehenders") and compare them to typical readers and children with specific decoding deficits ("poor decoders"). Method: In Study 1, the authors identified 57 poor comprehenders, 27 poor decoders, and 98…

The authors examined (a) the extent to which kindergarten estimates of core language functions predicted teacher ratings of behavior problems in each of the child's first 4 years of elementary school and (b) the ability of core language measures to predict concurrent behavior problems at each of the early elementary school grades studied.…