Examines the effect of graphic, phonological, and graphic-and-phonological information on Chinese character identification by 22 Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese graduate students. Finds that graphic information plays an essential role in Chinese character identification, while phonological information does not enhance the accuracy of identification.…

Discusses the impact of the cognitive revolution in psychology on reading research. Cognitive perspectives of reading have revealed complex processes ranging from simple peripheral visual processing in letter recognition to high order processes in text comprehension. It is also argued that a full account of reading skill should include…

Introduces the articles in this special issue. Reviews research on linguistic processes in reading across orthographies. Concludes that these articles contribute to the understanding of factors affecting development of efficient reading in first and second languages; they also help to ameliorate the relative silence in the reading literature about…

Determines the beneficial effects of integrating various Davis Learning Strategies, primarily Davis Symbol Mastery, on sight word skills. Indicates that children scored significantly higher than the control group for the mastery of 100 basic sight words for the first grade students. Gives suggestions for further assessment of the Davis method. (SG)

Finds (1) positive phonemic-masking effects occurred for dominant homophones; (2) null phonemic-masking effects occurred for subordinate homophones; and (3) subordinate homophones were much more likely to be falsely identified as their dominant mate. Suggests the source of these null phonemic-masking is itself a phonology effect. Concludes…

Focuses on the issue of convergent and predictive validity of measures using a broader range of orthographic tasks than previously examined. Finds that a measure of print exposure predicted variance in orthographic processing after the variance in phonological processing had been partialed out. (SG)

Students in grades 1-6 who were part of the norming sample for the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement took both a word identification task, Reading and Decoding, and a spelling test. Each word in both tests was coded for linguistic components: number of phonemes, consonant blends, vowel digraphs, consonant digraphs, r-controlled vowels,…

A study examined whether the morphological structure of words--that is to say, the analysis of words into prefixes, stems, and suffixes--plays a role in how words are represented in an individual's internal lexicon. Ninety-five students from a large midwestern university identified stem words, matched for length and individual frequency, which…

Confirms previous findings that young children do not have an adequate concept of what constitutes the spoken "word." (RB)

While studies of college-level readers have yielded evidence both for and against the use of phonological or speech recoding in the recognition of written words, no consistent picture of when recoding occurs has yet emerged. However, one model, the adjunct access model, can account for the previous research findings. According to this model,…

M.H. Ashcraft found that people tend to know more properties of items they rate as typical of a category than of items they rate as atypical, suggesting that variations in typicality result from variations in familiarity. Three experiments were designed to challenge this suggestion. The first investigated whether familiarity is necessarily…

One of the most widely respected features of English orthography is its sequential redundancy. Its psychological reality is evidenced by the relative ease with which good readers can encode sequentially redundant nonwords as compared to arbitrary strings of letters. Its psychological importance is implicated by evidence that this advantage is…

A study extended word association methodology beyond isolated word stimuli to investigate the effects of written context on the meanings that proficient readers impart to words. A repeated-measures design was used to assess the responses of 62 sixth grade readers to target words at three levels: no context, limited context, and expanded context.…

This study consisted of two experiments. In the first experiment, 40 college students gave frequency ratings for concrete and abstract words which were equated on normative frequency. From the results it was concluded that abstract (low imagery) words, even though the two sets of words are of equal frequency. In the second experiment, different…

This study deals with the ability of the beginning reader to recognize the relationships between isolated letter sounds and the same sounds embedded in a word context. The subjects were 64 prekindergarten children attending six private preschools in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The subjects were all Caucasian and spoke a standard English…