The current study followed literacy skills development amongst 79 Arabic native speaking pupils from kindergarten to fourth grade. Based on reading comprehension attainments in fourth grade, two groups of skilled and poor readers were identified. Poor readers showed significantly lower performance on measures of phonological and morphological…

Spelling errors are considered a paramount criterion in the evaluation of written texts. The present study aimed: (1) to describe the developmental path of spelling errors in expository texts written by Hebrew-speaking children from the second to fifth grades; and (2) to reveal the predictive power of cognitive, linguistic and reading variables on…

This study examined the level of social communication problems (SCP), social anxiety (SA), and mood problems (MP) among children with ASD (age 4-13 years) enrolled in special classes (n = 74) and regular classes (n = 73) and grade level (kindergarten, 1st-3rd, 4th-6th) from teachers' perspective in schools of Palestinian Arabs in Israel. Teachers…

The simple view of reading (SVR) model posits that reading comprehension is a product of decoding and listening comprehension and that reading comprehension difficulties can be categorized according to the weakness and strength of these 2 components. In the present study, I tested the applicability of the SVR to reading comprehension subgroups in…

The purpose of this paper is to exemplify a "grass-roots" change based on Dewey's experimental progressive education model employed in the "Bridge over the Valley" bilingual school, a Palestinian-Arab and Jewish school in Israel. In order to identify the progressive "approach" underlying this change, the…

All native speakers of Arabic read in a language variety that is remarkably distant from the one they use in everyday speech. The study tested the impact of this distance on reading accuracy and fluency by comparing reading of Standard Arabic (StA) words, used in StA only, versus Spoken Arabic (SpA) words, used in SpA too, among Arabic native…

The current study examined the development of two effects that have been found in single-digit multiplication errors: relatedness and distance. Typically achieving (TA) second, fourth, and sixth graders and adults, and sixth and eighth graders with a mathematics learning disability (MLD) performed a verification task. Relatedness was defined by a…

The developmental course of children's automatic extraction of meaning from printed words is recharted by using a Stroop-type recall task. Results confirm that, after a year of practice with reading material, children do automatically extract meaning from a single printed word. (GK)

Describes a study designed to differentiate between universal and culturally specific aspects of children's biological understanding. A group of 363 kindergartners, second graders, and fourth graders from Israel, Japan, and the United States matched 16 attributes to people, animals, plants, and inanimate objects. Results revealed how cultural…