A controversial question in reading research is whether dyslexia is associated with impairments in the magnocellular system and, if so, how these low-level visual impairments might affect reading acquisition. This study used a novel chromatic flicker perception task to specifically explore "temporal" aspects of magnocellular functioning…

Background: The Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA; Neale, 1997) is a widely used assessment of reading comprehension and word reading accuracy. Spooner, Baddeley, and Gathercole (2004) questioned the suitability of the NARA for identifying children with specific reading comprehension deficits. Aims and methods: An evaluation of the NARA…

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…

Gives background information on the journal's mini-series on reading assessment and intervention. States that over the past decade cognitive psychologists have learned that reading disabilities are primarily language-related disorders and neuropsychologists have advanced ideas on reading process. The mini-series seeks positive and significant…

Background: Children with fluent and accurate word reading in the presence of poor text comprehension are impaired on a wide range of reading-related tasks. Aims: This study investigated the consistency of skill impairment in a sample of poor comprehenders to identify any fundamental skill weakness that (i) might be associated with poor text…

Analysis of the performance of hearing impaired and normal hearing nine- to eleven-year-old children on a standardized reading test shows that the hearing impaired children tackled significantly more test items than their hearing counterparts and made significantly more errors in achieving similar reading scores. (FL)

Examined the phonological analysis and verbal working memory components of the sound categorization task and their relationships to reading skill differences. Children were tested on sound categorization by having them identify odd words in sequences. Sound categorization performance was sensitive to individual differences in speech perception…

Conducted from October 1970 through August 1971, this assessment of reading was concerned with four age levels--9, 13, 17, and 26-35. A total of 98,016 people responded to a wide variety of reading exercises which were administered and scored by trained professionals. The results were then examined according to various group characteristics: sex,…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether primary dyslexic children are impaired equally in the areas of language and cognition and to assess the value of verbal cues in raising the dyslexic group's performance on word-retrieval tasks. Two groups of male children were used in the investigation. The experimental group consisted of primary…

Reviewed studies that used methods of brief lateral visual presentation of linguistic stimuli to investigate asymmetry of organization in the cerebral hemispheric functions of both normal and poor readers. Most studies failed to demonstrate that both groups approach the given tasks in the same way. (Author/DB)

Conditions were examined in which second and third graders used context to identify words. The data indicated that good readers were predominantly text-driven, while poor readers used more context clues. (MKM)

The reading achievement of two age groups (eleven- and fifteen-year-olds) was surveyed in Northern Ireland's schools during 1976, and the results were compared to those of a similar study in 1972. Two significant findings emerged: an increase in reading standards of eleven-year-olds, and a decrease in severe reading retardation at both age levels.…

This article reports a study in which fourth graders were tested on their recall of stories they had read. Thrity-two children, divided into two groups of 16 by reading ability, each read two passages and were scored for recall. The passages read were either the original versions of two stories, semantic rewrites (in which anaphoric elements,…

The Distar and Open Court reading programs illustrate contrasting definitions and emphases of reading instruction that are part of a larger concern--how children are expected to use their literacy skills. Both programs teach phonics, but they define phonics in different ways. Each relies on teacher-directed group instruction, but Open Court was…

The following papers on acquisition of reading skills are included: (1) "Miscue Analysis and Future Research Directions" (Goodman); (2) "Reading in Spanish: Insights from Children's Miscues" (Barrera); (3) "An Investigation of the Oral Reading Behaviors of Native Spanish Speakers Reading in Spanish" (Hudelson); (4) "A Study of Oral Reading in…