A descriptive cross-sectional study was undertaken with Sinhala speaking students from grades 1 and 2 in the Gampaha District of Sri Lanka to determine how akshara graphical features influence emerging reading skills. A battery of locally validated assessments evaluated akshara knowledge (recognition and production), word reading (accurate and…

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…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore, analyse and summarise the potential tangible user interface (TUI) design features for dyslexics learning to read and spell. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopts a systematic literature review method through a manual search of published papers from 2011. This systematic literature review…

There is increasing evidence for an association between both serial order short-term memory (STM) and the long-term learning (LTL) of serial order information and reading abilities. In this developmental study, we examined the hypothesis that STM for serial order supports online grapheme-to-phoneme conversion processes during the initial stages of…

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 aims to compare word spelling outcomes for French-speaking deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) with hearing children who matched for age, level of education and gender. A picture written naming task controlling for word frequency, word length, and phoneme-to-grapheme predictability was designed to analyze spelling productions. A…

Purpose: To assess strengths and weaknesses of the reading level (RL) match approach and its potential to generate insights regarding the cognitive foundations of reading ability and disability. Method: We applied RL-match design to a sample of 2nd-6th graders reading a consistent orthography, Russian, using an "extreme phenotype"…

The automatic letter-sound integration hypothesis proposes that the decoding difficulties seen in dyslexia arise from a specific deficit in establishing automatic letter-sound associations. We report the findings of 2 studies in which we used a priming task to assess automatic letter-sound integration. In Study 1, children between 5 and 7 years of…

Background: Many South African children attend African language medium of instruction (MOI) schools, learn English as an additional language and switch to English MOI three years later. There is still much to be researched about how a child's first and second language literacy develops over time in South Africa. Aim: This study aims to outline the…

A study was conducted to measure possible sex differences in phonological awareness and reading ability among children in early primary school. A subset of the "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills" (DIBELS) was administered to 140 children in kindergarten through to second grade (mean ages five to seven years). Independent…

Paired-associate learning is a dynamic measure of the ability to form new links between two items. This study aimed to investigate whether paired-associate learning ability is associated with success in orthographic learning, and if so, whether it accounts for unique variance beyond phonological decoding ability and orthographic knowledge. A group…

The current work examines children's sensitivity to rime unit spelling-sound correspondences within the context of early word reading as a way of assessing word-specific influences on early word-reading strategies. Sixty 6-7-year-olds participated in an experimental reading task that comprised word items that shared either frequent or infrequent…

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…

This study assessed the effect of metacognitive instruction on the spelling and word reading of Hebrew-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). Participants were 67 kindergarteners with SLI in a supported learning context. Children were classified into three spelling instruction groups: (a) metalinguistic instruction (ML), (b) ML…

We examined the longitudinal predictors of nonword decoding, reading fluency, and spelling in three languages that vary in orthographic depth: Finnish, Greek, and English. Eighty-two English-speaking, 70 Greek, and 88 Finnish children were followed from the age of 5.5 years old until Grade 2. Prior to any reading instruction, they were…