Gender differences in reading development are a global phenomenon, with girls typically performing better than boys. Some studies have reported gender differences favouring girls in reading comprehension in South Africa, but little systematic evidence exists about gender differences in the cognitive-linguistic abilities that underlie reading…

This study investigated visual statistical learning (VSL) in 24 deaf signers and 24 hearing non-signers. Previous research with hearing individuals suggests that SL mechanisms support literacy. Our first goal was to assess whether VSL was associated with reading ability in deaf individuals, and whether this relation was sustained by a link between…

Reading ability is comprised of several component processes. In particular, the connection between the visual and verbal systems has been demonstrated to play an important role in the reading process. The present study provides a review of the existing literature on the visual verbal connection as measured by two tasks, rapid serial naming and…

Reading-impaired children have difficulty tapping to a beat. Here we tested whether this relationship between reading ability and synchronized tapping holds in typically-developing adolescents. We also hypothesized that tapping relates to two other abilities. First, since auditory-motor synchronization requires monitoring of the relationship…

According to the Simple View of Reading, reading ability can be divided into decoding and language comprehension. In the present study, decoding and comprehension's contribution to reading ability was studied both in children with reading difficulties and in children with typical reading ability. Decoding and comprehension was further divided into…

Current research shows that, despite standards-based mathematics reform, American students lag behind in mathematics achievement when compared to their counterparts in other countries. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine if reading level, as measured by the Scholastic Reading Inventory, is related to standards-based mathematics…

Although language experience is a key factor in successful foreign language (FL) learning, many FL learners fail to achieve performance levels that were predicted on the basis of their FL experience. This retrospective study investigated early cognitive and linguistic correlates of learning English as a foreign language (FL) in a group of…

The ability to learn visual-phonological associations is a unique predictor of word reading, and individuals with developmental dyslexia show impaired ability in learning these associations. In this study, we compared developmentally dyslexic and nondyslexic adults on their ability to form cross-modal associations (or "bindings") based…

In this study we investigated the frequency and types of questions asked when parents read with their four-year-old children, the relationship between the frequency and types of questions parents and children asked, and the relationship between these and the children's early literacy knowledge. Forty dyads shared two narrative texts and two…

Natural reading development gradually builds up to the adult vocabulary over a period of years. This has an effect on lexical processing: early-acquired words are processed more quickly and more accurately than later-acquired words. We present a connectionist model of reading, learning to map orthography onto phonology to simulate this natural…

Developmental dyslexia is often characterized by a visual deficit, but the nature of this impairment and how it relates to reading ability is disputed ("Brain" 2003; "126": 841-865). In order to investigate this issue, we compared groups of adults with and without dyslexia on the Ternus, visual-search and symbols tasks.…

This study examined the relationships of 3 levels of reading fluency--the individual word, the syntactic unit, and the whole passage--to reading comprehension among 278 5th graders heterogeneous in reading ability. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that reading fluency at each level related uniquely to performance on a standardized reading…

Individual differences in reading and cognitive processing among a sample of generally poor readers were studied in order to answer two major questions: Do they have a specific cognitive style that favors global-simultaneous strategies and a weak sequential strategy? If they do not have a distinct cognitive style or strategy, but are merely poor…

Good and poor readers from grades 2 to 5 were compared on conceputal style preference, cognitive tempos and attentional styles. Attentional style measures distinguished poor and good readers better than the other cognitive style measures. (Author/BJG)

Individual differences in digit span, susceptibility to proactive interference, and various aptitude/achievement test scores were investigated in two experiments with college students. Results indicated that digit span was strongly correlated with aptitude/achievement scores, but did not indicate that susceptibility to proactive interference…