The study examines whether the average performance of the population with dyslexia in a working memory measure can be inferred dimensionally from the characteristics of the typical population. Specifically, we focused on Associative Phonological Working Memory (APWM), an ability that we predicted being impaired in dyslexia due to the relationship…

Investigated, at three elementary levels, how word reading speed is related to rapidly naming series of numbers, letters, colors, and pictures, and to general processing speed. Also sought to determine how these relationships vary with the reading task employed. (Author/VWL)

Two young autistic children exhibited normal reading comprehension but reading speeds considerably faster than controls. The effect of randomizing word order was minimal for the older of the two autistic boys. Results indicate that efficient grapheme-phoneme conversion is primarily responsible for the fast reading of the autistic children.…

A study involving 238 fourth grade pupils was conducted to determine whether a relationship exists between the use of instruction with masked materials and pupils' word recognition and comprehension. The pupils were placed into either an experimental or a control group. Each group was administered a pretest to measure reading rate, to insure that…

Compared to placebo controls, 28 individuals treated with Piracetam (a new drug thought to enhance learning and memory consolidation) showed statistically significant improvements above baseline scores on measures of effective reading accuracy and comprehension, reading speed, and writing accuracy. The medication was well tolerated and showed no…

People with reading difficulties experience automatic gaze guidance when using gliding text (subtitles). Reading exercises with gliding text eliminated reading difficulties for 21 second graders in 24 15-minute sessions. Mean reading speed increased from 10 to 24 words per minute. (SK)

The study involving 11 reading disabled and 9 normal elementary school children evaluated the relative efficacy of practice with feedback on accuracy and practice with feedback on both accuracy and response rate related to response speed on word reading performance. Ss were exposed to randomized blocks of 10 high frequency words and 20 words which…

This investigation compared the reading comprehension of 60 fourth-grade students in an open space school during periods of quiet and periods of naturally occurring background noise. Noise had no significant effect on accuracy or reading speed. (JMF)

Investigates whether the layout of type in two popular children's reading schemes was suitable for the intended reading age. Concludes that the reading development of some children might benefit from a larger text size and spacing than is currently the norm, and that no children would be disadvantaged by such a change. (SG)

Five elementary level males with learning disabilities read material at two levels of difficulty in a multi-element design. Findings suggested that oral reading rate and reading comprehension performance are more strongly linked than previously suggested. (CL)

Three experiments compared 14 intellectually gifted, 14 musical, and 14 control Ss (8 to 12 years old) on picture and word classification tasks. Experiments focused on judgments about picture and word pairs, speed of motor response in simple reaction times, and perceptual speed in stimulus identification. (SBH)

Forty-two below-average readers (ages 7 to 10 years) were given single-word training, phrase training, or no training. Trained children in either condition learned to decode target words quickly and accurately using flashcards, and had better comprehension than untrained children. (SLD)

Examines strategy use of biliterate third- and fourth-grade readers reading in Spanish and in English. Finds that students reported the same number and same type of strategies whether reading in Spanish or English; reading times and gist recall on the retellings did not differ for the two languages; and strategy use was related to comprehension.…

The effects of assisted reading (in which students listen to the passage and then read it along with the teacher prior to reading the material independently) on three elementary students with learning disabilities were evaluated using a multiple baseline design. Assisted reading resulted in more words read correctly, fewer words read incorrectly,…

Investigates whether asynchrony of speed of processing between visual-orthographic and auditory-phonological modalities can account for word recognition deficits among dyslexic readers. Indicates that dyslexic readers were slower than control readers in most of the experimental tasks. Proposes a theory suggesting that asynchrony between the…