Only by exploring the past of the reading field can the literacy leaders of today make informed decisions about reading education in the future. This indispensable resource offers new insight into the development of reading education by examining the groundbreaking contributions of the "early reading pioneers"--16 reading researchers, reading…

The purpose of this study was to determine the part of a word upon which first and fifth graders depend most in word recognition and to determine whether any change occurs between grades one and five. Fifty-six first grade students and sixty-three fifth graders were tested. The children individually read sixty words from flash cards presented by…

A sample of 80 first- and second-grade children selected to represent four levels of reading competence were tested in their recognition of semantic, syntactic, and lexical change in sentences previously decoded during prose reading. (JMB)

This study investigated the developmental relationships between a battery of cognitive tasks--including Piagetian operations of conservation, classification, and seriation--and early reading achievement. Subjects were 128 kindergarten through third-grade students at a suburban elementary school. They were administered a battery of cognitive tests…

This study presents an account of position saliency in terms of children's ability to utilize graphic information, and in particular the serial encoding of information from letters in a graphic pattern. By varying the number and position of the letters distinguishing graphic patterns (positive condition) in a short-term recognition memory (STRM)…

States that children with hyperlexia who learn to read spontaneously before age five are impaired in reading and listening comprehension but have word recognition skills well above their measured cognitive and linguistic abilities. Administers phonemic awareness measures to three early readers. Finds that all three children's phonemic awareness…

Investigates whether early reading comprehension is holistic or comprises different separate subskills. Finds that reading comprehension of early readers is holistic, closely related to general intelligence and verbal problem solving. (RS)

Investigates the reading development of six preschool children who learned to read at home without systematic instruction. Attempts (1) to find out whether there was an identifiable process by which these children learned to read and (2) to study th role of the parents in these children's early reading acquisition. (HOD)

Explores children's ability to segment utterances into syllables and phonemes, and their skills in the recall of sentences of low and high complexity. (HOD)

The reading development of six preschool children who learned to read at home without systematic instruction was studied in depth using the case study method. The main objective of the study was to ascertain (1) if there was an identifiable process by which these children learned to read and (2) the role of the parents in these children's early…

A study examined the types of reading strategies emergent readers used as they read to make sense of the text. In addition to data obtained for the children's oral readings, a reading strategy classification scheme, Strategy Type Strategy Behavior (STSB), was employed to identify the types of strategies the children were using on this task.…

Through stories, children become aware of their culture and make sense of their world. Past stories came from books; now they come from television. To develop a theory of children's literature, knowledge about children, about their books, and about reading must be placed in a new theoretical pattern. (PP)

This book brings together papers presented at a conference on early experience and visual information processing in perceptual and reading disorders sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. The goal of the conference was to integrate basic knowledge of structure and mechanisms of eye and brain with their function and their behavioral roles…

Argues that observations of how children construct literacy and their responses to print-filled environments will help child care providers and families be better prepared to support children's emergent literacy. Provides advice on literacy development, supporting emergent literacy, developing positive attitudes toward reading, and developing…