The speech perception system must be flexible in responding to the variability in speech sounds caused by differences among speakers and by language change over the lifespan of the listener. Indeed, listeners use lexical knowledge to retune perception of novel speech (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003). In that study, Dutch listeners made…

A study of 114 12-year-olds in the Netherlands found that dyslexia was associated with deficits in: (1) phonological recoding, word recognition in both Dutch and English, and spelling skills; and (2) naming speed for letters and digits. Dyslexia was not associated with other cognitive and motor skills evaluated. (Contains extensive references.)…

A study investigated the question of whether normal and poor readers differ in the way they process sublexical structures in printed words. In a reading level design experiment, two matched groups of normal and poor readers (11 subjects of mean age 9.4 years and 11 subjects of mean age 12.6 years) were compared with regard to their use of…

Three experiments using beginning readers of Dutch (seven and eight years old) as subjects provide evidence that visually recognizing the unique graphemic structure of words is important in word identification, even in early stages in learning to read. Results are discussed regarding the importance of building accurate graphemic entries in the…

The purpose of this study was to find new evidence for phonological coding in written word recognition among deaf Dutch children. A lexical decision task was presented to 48 severely and profoundly deaf children aged from 6 years 8 months to 13 years 5 months, and a control group of Grade 1 hearing children matched on written word recognition.…

In the present study, it was investigated whether kindergartners with specific language impairment (SLI) and normal language achieving (NLA) kindergartners can benefit from slowing down the entire speech signal or part of the speech signal in a synthetic speech discrimination task. Subjects were 19 kindergartners with SLI and 24 NLA controls.…

Shows that Dutch children acquire and use lexical entries containing specific information about visual-orthographic structure quite early, even after only six months of formal training in reading. (FL)

Lexical-decision studies with experienced English and French readers have shown that visual-word identification is not only affected by pronunciation inconsistency of a word (i.e., multiple ways to pronounce a spelling body), but also by spelling inconsistency (i.e., multiple ways to spell a pronunciation rime). The aim of this study was to…

Examined whether children with reading problems could be taught to use multiletter patterns in word decoding. Testing used practiced words and similar and dissimilar nonpracticed words. Found that all types of practice were beneficial for the recognition of practiced words transfer to the reading of novel words appeared only when graphemic and…

Explores (1) the errors made by Dutch first graders in spelling syllable-initial and syllable-final consonant clusters; (2) error types that discriminate poorer spellers from better spellers; and (3) the relationship between these errors and those made when segmenting the same words. Finds the most prominent spelling error among poor spellers was…

A study investigated the effect of training Dutch students to learn to derive word meanings from written context. Subjects, 64 grade 6 primary school children, were randomly divided into control and experimental groups. The experimental group followed eight lessons in their mothertongue (Dutch), while the control group followed their regular…

Two experiments investigated the processing and representation of Dutch compound words as a function of their semantic transparency. The results provided clear evidence for the sensitivity of the lexical processing system to morphological complexity, independent of semantic transparency. (50 references) (MDM)

In two experiments, poor and normal Dutch readers, matched for reading age, were presented with visual matching tasks on a computer screen. In the first experiment, word and pseudoword letter strings were used. Poor readers needed more time to decode uppercase/lowercase pairs, especially when the pairs consisted of pseudowords. Experiment 2…

Studies effects of an instructional program for deriving word meanings from context and through morphological analysis for primary school students with poor-to-average reading comprehension. Shows that it has a significant effect on the ability of students to derive word meanings, but found little evidence of transfer to general reading…

Compares the acquisition of vocabulary by Dutch advanced students of French reading a French story in one of three text reading conditions: marginal glosses; dictionary; or control. Results indicate that frequency of word occurrence fosters incidental vocabulary learning more when the first two conditions exist. (40 references) (Author/CK)