We investigated how letter length, phoneme length, and consonant clusters contribute to the word length effect in 2nd- and 4th-grade children. They read words from three different conditions: In one condition, letter length increased but phoneme length did not due to multiletter graphemes (H"aus"-B"auch"-S"chach"). In…

Dyslexia in consistent orthographies like German is characterized by dysfluent reading, which is often assumed to result from failure to build up an orthographic lexicon and overreliance on decoding. However, earlier evidence indicates effects of lexical processing at least in some German dyslexic readers. We investigated variations in reading…

Examines early difficulties with phonological coding/phonemic segmentation of German children diagnosed dyslexic after four years in school. States that phonics was used since German exhibits straightforward phoneme-grapheme correspondence; however, most students had difficulty with accurate reading of nonwords and unfamiliar words after seven…

Within alphabetic languages, spelling-to-sound consistency can differ dramatically. For example, English and German are very similar in their phonological and orthographic structure but not in their consistency. In English the letter "a" is pronounced differently in the words "bank," "ball," and "park,"…