We evaluated two experimenter-delivered, small-group word reading programs among at-risk poor readers in Grade 1 classes of regular elementary schools using a two-arm, dual-site-matched control trial intervention. At-risk poor word readers (n = 201) were allocated to either (a) Direct Mapping and Set-for-Variability (DMSfV) or (b) Current or…

We examined whether young children acquire orthographic knowledge during structured adult-led storybook reading even though minimal viewing time is devoted to print. Sixty-two kindergarten children were read 12 storybook "chapters" while their eye movements were tracked. Results indicated that the children quickly acquired initial mental…

This study investigated the phonological skills of university students who were unexpectedly poor spellers relative to their word reading accuracy. Compared with good spellers, unexpectedly poor spellers showed no deficits in phonological memory, selection of appropriate graphemes for phonemes in word misspellings and nonword spellings, and…

The current study examined the use of sublexical clusters in normal and dyslexic readers. We focused primarily on onset consonantal clusters, but the use of rimes and digraphs was also considered. A segmentation paradigm, the separation of two adjacent letters in a word by a nonletter symbol, was used. We hypothesized that the effect of this…

Reading words may take several forms. Readers may utilize decoding, analogizing, or predicting to read unfamiliar words. Readers read familiar words by accessing them in memory, called sight word reading. With practice, all words come to be read automatically by sight, which is the most efficient, unobtrusive way to read words in text. The process…

Studies elementary students' ability to match up graphemes to phonemes within individual words. Shows that older students exhibited greater graphophonemic awareness and greater digraph knowledge than younger students. Results are interpreted to bear on Ehri's phrase theory of word reading acquisition and on connectionist models of word reading.…