Some inconsistency is observed in the results from studies of reading development regarding the role of the syllable in visual word recognition, perhaps due to a disparity between the tasks used. We adopted a word-spotting paradigm, with Spanish children of second grade (mean age: 7 years) and sixth grade (mean age: 11 years). The children were…

The present study explored the speed, accuracy, and reading comprehension of vowelized versus unvowelized scripts among 126 native Hebrew speaking children in second, fourth, and sixth grades. Findings indicated that second graders read and comprehended vowelized scripts significantly more accurately and more quickly than unvowelized scripts,…

The present study explored how average- and high-skilled second-grade readers (as identified by their Woodcock-Johnson III Test of Academic Achievement Broad Reading scores) differed on behavioral measures of reading related to comprehension: eye movements during silent reading and prosody during oral reading. Results from silent reading implicate…

Verbal protocols have provided literacy researchers with a strong understanding of what processes readers (both adults and children) use as they read narrative and informational text. Little is known, however, about the comprehension processes that are prompted by the graphics in these texts. This study of nine second graders used verbal protocol…

Reports on a study stemming from schema theory that assessed the role that background knowledge plays in determining young children's ability to process relationships that are explicitly and fully specified in a text, in comparison to those that are only partially specified by the same text. (Author/HOD)

Examines students for the effects of grade level and recall task type on children's memory for explicit, implicit, and metaphorical information following reading. Finds that fifth graders fare better than second graders and the cued condition exceeds free recall. Finds that second graders engage in metaphorical reasoning when the task is…

Subjects within one reading level only were included in this study to determine reflective and impulsive subject groups on the basis of Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) test time and error scores within that reading level rather than over all levels, to use the same reading test passages for all subjects, and then to apply statistical tests of…

Results agreed with previous findings that good and poor readers did not differ in mean scan rate when words instead of letters had been used as stimuli. (Authors)

Both associative and conceptual learning are presumed to be of importance in reading at all developmental levels. However, it is hypothesized in the present study that there is a stronger relationship between beginning reading and associative learning than between beginning reading and conceptual learning. Conversely, it is hypothesized that there…

Trained fast- and slow-namer groups of poor-reading second graders to read words using different training regimes. Found that slow namers were particularly disadvantaged compared to fast namers when trained with word-level units. Children showed poorer retention following onset/rime training compared to other types. They showed the best…

Through a descriptive analysis of the oral reading behavior of three groups of readers, this study compared the oral reading behavior of proficient readers with that of readers who use less effective reading strategies. The subjects were five proficient second grade readers, five weak sixth grade readers and five highly proficient sixth grade…

Reversals in poor and normal second-grade readers were studied in relation to their whole phonological error pattern in reading real words and nonsense syllables. Error categories included sequence and orientation reversals, other consonants, vowels, and total error. Reversals occurred in quantity only in poor readers, with large individual…

Second-grade students' reading proficiency was studied by determining the influence of rhyming or nonrhyming items on their recall of random letter strings, using visual and auditory presentations. Good and poor readers differed in their use of phonetic coding in working memory. (MH)

A study was devised for investigating developmental change in the extent to which children use a speech recoding process during silent reading to obtain meaning from sentences. The subjects, 48 second and 48 sixth grade students, were shown a series of single sentences that included equal numbers of sentences at the second, fourth, and sixth grade…

A study was undertaken to investigate the extent to which reading by students with varying skill levels is a text-driven or a concept-driven process; that is, it examined the conditions under which readers used context to identify words. The 72 second and third grade students in the study read target words that varied in decodability, frequency,…