Discusses a word-onset gating technique to investigate the role of prosody in word recognition. Subjects were asked to identify words based on onsets followed by information about full word prosody. Results showed that words were correctly recognized with significantly less segmental onset information when word prosody was available. (Author/VWL)

Two roles for phonological recoding, as a back-up mechanism used when visual word identification fails and as a self-teaching mechanism for visual word identification, are examined in view of research findings on development of reading comprehension and on the relationship of reading disabilities and phonological processing deficits. Teaching…

The accuracy of deaf adults' letter report was greater for real and nonsense words than for pseudowords, and error analysis shows deaf adults tend to produce orthographically regular responses. These findings indicate clearly the use of orthographic structure in word recognition. (MSE)

Investigated word recognition among fluent readers of English as a Second Language (ESL), specifically whether ESL readers' first language (L1) affects the procedures underlying second language word recognition, with respect to the effects of word frequency and regularity on word recognition. Results revealed a similarity in word-recognition…

Reports on a study in which subjects heard the beginnings of spoken words, followed by increasingly larger segments of word-onset information until the words could be correctly identified. Results are discussed in terms of word-initial phonology as a trigger for response activation. (34 references) (Author/OD)

The auditory word gating paradigm was used to examine the quality of the underlying phonological representations in dyslexic and average readers. Although dyslexic children showed age-related nonword and rapid naming deficits, they did not differ from the age-matched controls in the amount of acoustic-phonetic input required to identify sets of…

Reports an experiment contrasting word-onset gating with results when words were gated from their word endings. The study demonstrated a significant recognition advantage for words gated from their onsets. The overall results support the position that the perceptual advantage of word-initial information can be understood within a general…

Using nonword repetition tasks as an experimental approach with both adults and children has become quite common in the past 10 to 15 years for studying lexical learning and phonological processing (e.g., Bailey & Hahn, 2001; Gathercole, Frankish, Pickering & Peaker, 1998; Munson, Edwards, & Beckman, 2005; Storkel, 2001; Vitevich & Luce, 2005). In…

Compared the sentence processing abilities of 19 children with language impairments (LIs) against those of 20 children without impairments. Results found that the children with LIs had significantly longer mean response times under sentence conditions and lower accuracy overall than children without LIs. (29 references) (MDM)

Investigates and compares the real-time language-processing abilities of language-impaired and normal children using a work recognition reaction time paradigm. Results showed that the language-impaired children used linguistic context to facilitate work recognition but were slower to do so than their normally developing peers. (38 references) (GLR)

Describes a study which tested the notion that phonological recoding in important during reading acquisition. Children who had no measurable phonological recoding skills were matched to 28 children who had some skills in this domain and compared on reading performance at the end of grades one and two. Those with phonological recoding skills were…

Examines the hypotheses about how print represents the speech that preliterate children select when they receive input compatible with several such hypotheses. Results indicate that most preliterate children do not select phonologically based hypotheses, but instead focus on morphophonology and/or semantic aspects of words' referents. (40…

Studies of impaired reading processes in children with slow digit naming speeds found that, for first- through third-graders, character-identification automaticity was equally important to the direct-access and speech-recoding routes of word recognition. For 4th- through 10th-graders, the correlation of digit naming speed with reading…

To study whether metalinguistic benefits of childhood bilingualism flow on to reading acquisition, word awareness skills were developed in one group of monolingual English children and in another "marginal bilingual" group. Results strengthen the argument for a causal role in reading acquisition for word awareness. (Contains 63 references.)…

Examined lexical influences on nonword repetition among 30 elementary school boys who were asked to repeat multisyllabic nonword pairs. Results found that nonwords with stressed syllables corresponding to real words were repeated significantly more accurately than nonwords with nonlexical stressed syllables. (23 references) (MDM)