Descriptive statistics of grapheme patterns to which child readers are initially exposed were determined, with the purpose of providing a data source for research on children's knowledge and use of orthographic structures in reading and spelling English. (DF)

Examines the role of early reading instruction on the nonword reading strategies employed by beginning readers. Describes how three groups of children were following either: the Early Reading Research project; the National Literacy Project; or usual classroom practice. Suggest that early reading instruction does have a significant impact on early…

This study investigated the relationships between phonological awareness and reading in Oriya and English. Oriya is the official language of Orissa, an eastern state of India. The writing system is an alphasyllabary. Ninety-nine fifth grade children (mean age 9 years 7 months) were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, word reading and…

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)

Investigates the relation between phonological awareness, sound-to-letter mapping knowledge, and printed word learning in novice five-year-old readers. Explores effects of visual memory and of teaching methods. Finds mental representations of printed words are more easily formed by beginners who are able to match at least some of the phonological…

This paper examines the relationship between orthographic depth and reliance upon context for oral reading in English and Hebrew. Research on context effects in English has indicated that the decoding ability of adequate readers is only minimally affected by context. The effect of context may be greater in Hebrew because of its deeper orthography…

The Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg and Patterson (1996) connectionist model of reading was evaluated at two points early in its training against reading data collected from British children on two occasions during their first year of literacy instruction. First, the network's non-word reading was poor relative to word reading when compared with the…

Concludes that the regularity effect is phonologically, not orthographically, mediated; that good readers use a predominantly phonological strategy in lexical decisions, while poor readers do not; and that for the best readers-spellers, orthographically and phonologically irregular words have a special status, allowing them to gain fast and…

Examines how spelling-to-sound irregularity affects pronunciation latencies when words are presented in a sentence, and concludes that pronunciation latencies are strongly affected by the type of preceding sentence, with the specific sentences producing shorter latencies than the general sentences. (HOD)

This study compared the early reading development of five-year-old children who were learning to read either English (an opaque orthography) or Welsh (a shallow orthography). The children were being educated in Welsh and English-speaking primary schools in Wales during their first year of formal reading instruction. Teaching methods in both…

Uses a proofreading task to investigate whether function and content words are processed differently in a text. Concludes that misprints are hard to detect in words that retain the original shape, short words prevent detection of misprints more than long words, and that there is an interaction between word type and length. (HOD)

Reports a case study of the reading and spelling processes of a developmentally disabled child indicating that there was almost a complete lack of alphabetic functions, that reading appeared to be based on a "logographic lexicon," and that spelling was based on a letter sequence generator. (RS)

Concludes that less proficient readers, in general, are less able to use graphophonic cues and may rely more on contextual cues than proficient readers.

Cites the case of Hebrew learning in Israel to show that, contrary to popular belief, the complexity of grapho-phonetic relationships is a minor or nonexistent factor in learning difficulties. (FL)