English vowels are phonologically and orthographically more difficult than consonants when learning to map speech to print. We sought to determine if teaching young at-risk readers and spellers to use a visual vowel hand sign system to segment spoken words into their component phonemes contributed to improved grapheme-phoneme correspondence…

This study aimed to profile the sublexical, lexical, and text level language skills, and cognitive processes of a sub-group of children with poor reading comprehension known as poor comprehenders. An assessment protocol was developed to assess each of the components from Perfetti and Stafura's Reading Systems Framework. A comprehensive profile was…

The main aim of this study was to develop standardised tests that assess some of the most important spelling skills for children in primary school: sound-letter mappings (non-lexical spelling) and word spelling accuracy (lexical spelling). We present normative comparison data for children in Grades 1-7 as well as measures of validity and…

Paired-associate learning is a dynamic measure of the ability to form new links between two items. This study aimed to investigate whether paired-associate learning ability is associated with success in orthographic learning, and if so, whether it accounts for unique variance beyond phonological decoding ability and orthographic knowledge. A group…

When integrated within a holistic literacy program, phonics applications can be used in classrooms to facilitate students' self-directed learning of letter-sound knowledge; but are they designed to allow for such a purpose? With most phonics software applications making heavy use of image cues, this project has more specifically investigated…

Children who have difficulty learning to read are at increased risk for academic failure, poor self-esteem, anxiety and depression, and unemployment. To help reduce these risks, it is important to identify and treat weaknesses in a child's reading as early as possible. The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable comprehensive…

The influence of dialect on child speech assessment processes is important to consider in order to ensure accurate diagnosis and appropriate intervention (teaching or therapy) for bidialectal children. In Australia, there is limited research evidence documenting the influence of dialectal variations on identification of speech impairment among…

In a recent study we (Greaney & Arrow, 2009) undertook an analysis of the types of spelling errors that students had made during a National Education Monitoring Project writing task (Crooks, Flockton & White, 2007). We discussed several issues related to spelling, including the value of analysing students' error-response patterns as a way…

Six primary school-aged braille students were taught to name 4 to 10 braille letters as phonemes and another 4 to 10 braille letters as graphemes (Study 1). They were then taught to name 10 braille words as onset-rimes and another 10 braille words as whole words (Study 2). Instruction in phonemes and onset rimes resulted in fewer trials and a…

Children (5 and 6 years old, n = 30) at familial risk of dyslexia received a home-based intervention that focused on phoneme awareness and letter knowledge in the year prior to formal reading instruction. The children were compared to a no-training at-risk control group (n = 27), which was selected a year earlier. After training, we found a small…

Two groups of sighted pre-school children were taught to name six braille letters: one group received phoneme instruction and the other grapheme instruction. Ten boys and ten girls (average age 4:5 years) participated. There was a statistically significant advantage for the phoneme group (Experiment 1). In a repeated measures design, 16 sighted…

Second and fourth graders were assessed as skilled or less skilled in reading ability. Less skilled fourth graders performed worse than skilled second and fourth graders in recognizing the odd phoneme in a group of phonemes and performed similarly to skilled second graders on a test of verbal working memory. (BC)

A group of 21 hard-of-hearing and deaf children attending primary school were trained by their teachers on the production of selected consonants and on the meanings of selected words. Speech production, vocabulary knowledge, reading aloud, and speech perception measures were obtained before and after each type of training. The speech production…