Blind children, blind adults, and sighted children were compared on the extent to which they showed a psuedohomophone effect, which is held to reflect phonological coding. While the sighted Ss showed strong evidence for such an effect, the blind Ss did not. Results were interpreted to indicate a differential allocation of attention to levels of…

Two word/nonword decision experiments were carried out to investigate differences in reading between congenitally blind children reading Braille and sighted children dealing with print. Three aspects of single-word recognition were studied: semantic processing, word frequency effects, and phonological recoding. (Author/RH)

Reports on a congenitally blind young girl who learned to read Braille. Suggests that phonological awareness can be well developed even without word or letter experience, and the logographic phase of reading can be bypassed in favor of an alphabetic phase. Notes that her level of skill is similar to that of sighted children. (RS)

Conducted two experiments to investigate phonological and tactual coding in Braille reading by blind children. Results revealed a phonological effect in blind children's reading of single words. Also direct lexical access, from tactual input, proceeded with the same facility for the blind as does visual input for the sighted. (Author)