This study examined how top-down control influenced letter-speech sound (L-SS) learning, the initial phase of learning to read. In 2020, 107 Dutch children (53 boys, M[subscript age] = 106.845 months) learned eight L-SS correspondences, either preceded by goal-directed or implicit instructions. Symbol knowledge and artificial word-reading ability…

A portion of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit a strength in early word reading referred to as hyperlexia (HPL), yet it remains unclear what mechanisms underlie this strength. Typically developing children (TD) acquire phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge and language skills as precursors to word reading. We compared these…

This study investigated kindergarten, preschool, and first-grade children who were typical or specific language impaired (SLI) to determine whether there were developmental differences in their phonological awareness abilities (i.e., syllable, onset/rime, phonemes). Results revealed a significant difference between children who were typical and…

Vocabulary growth was suggested to prompt the implementation of increasingly finer-grained lexical representations of spoken words in children (e.g., [Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). "Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading…

Describes a study of the developmental ordering of syllable and phoneme segmentation abilities in preschool, kindergarten and first-grade children. Results indicate that both syllable and phoneme segmentation increased with grade level, but analysis into phonemes is significantly harder and perfected later than analysis into syllables. (Author/SDH)

Two groups of adolescents with language impairment (n=87) were compared with 20 adolescents with dyslexia, 19 aged-matched controls, and 18 younger typical children. Adolescents with dyslexia only performed as well as those with persistent oral language impairments and younger controls in reading and spelling, however, their reading comprehension…

This study uses linguistic humor to show that awareness of only those linguistic units transcribed by the orthography bear a special relation to early reading success. The study is decribed following a review of the literature and a discussion of advantages and problems associated with the use of humor appreciation as a probe of children's…

A study examined the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading ability in 29 elementary children enrolled in a residential school for students with deafness. Reading ability was significantly correlated to language ability, but not to phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness did not contribute to any variance in reading ability. (Contains…

This literature-based review examines the relationship between the acquisition of segmental awareness and the acquisition of alphabetic literacy. Cited studies show that the segmental analysis ability of most dyslexics is very poor and suggest one factor may be related to the conscious representation of speech on which the analytic capacity…

While previous studies have investigated children's awareness of two units within words--syllables and phonemes, there is experimental evidence that children are also aware of intrasyllabic units (units intermediate in size between the syllable and the phoneme), and that these units may be useful for teaching phonological awareness and reading.…

This study examined the development of metaprocessing abilities in children with varying degrees of language abilities and sought to determine if the patterns of metaprocessing development that emerged were similar for these ability groups. Subjects were 141 children ages 4-5 at the beginning of the study, divided into a control group, a low…

A patient with chronic agrammatic Broca's aphasia exhibited deep dyslexia and was treated with functional reorganization of the phonetic route of reading, with the patient learning consciously to control formerly automatic behaviors. The patient's responses indicated that the phonetic route encompasses at least two dissociable functions:…

Research on reading has tried, and failed, to account for wide disparities in reading skill even among children taught by the same method. Why do some children learn to read easily and quickly while others, in the same classroom and taught by the same teacher, don't learn to read at all? In "Language Development and Learning to Read", Diane…