In early Finnish reading instruction, hyphens are used to denote syllable boundaries. However, this practice slows down reading already during the 1st grade. It has been hypothesized that hyphenation forces readers to rely more on phonology than orthography. Since hyphenation highlights the phonology of the word, it may facilitate reading during…

This study investigated how experience with a first language (L1) writing system affects the development of the second language (L2) word recognition subskills and how L2 linguistic knowledge constrains such L1 impacts. In this study, word recognition is conceptualized as a complex construct that entails multiple subskills necessary for…

We examined whether akshara knowledge, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and RAN predict variability in word and nonword reading skills in Grade 1-4 children (N = 200) learning to read Sinhala. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that akshara knowledge had the strongest unique association with both word and nonword reading accuracy…

Background: The role of phonological awareness (PA) in successful reading attainment in Northern Sotho has received some attention. However, the importance of developing an awareness to the different phonological grain sizes that underlie decoding (i.e. to different dimensions of PA) has not been established in this language. Aim: This study…

Purpose: The gold standard for diagnosing childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is expert judgment of perceptual features. The aim of this study was to identify a set of objective measures that differentiate CAS from other speech disorders. Method: Seventy-two children (4-12 years of age) diagnosed with suspected CAS by community speech-language…

This study investigated children's acquisition of three aspects of an early literacy curriculum, "Foundations for Literacy" ("Foundations"), designed specifically for prekindergarten students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH): syllable segmentation, identification of letter-sound correspondences, and initial-sound…

Most of the world is multilingual--multilingual at the national level (policies), at the community and family level (practices), and at the individual level (cognitive)--and each of these has implications for teaching and learning. Yet, at present, most reading decisions are not based on empirical research of how children learn to read in…

Effects of lexical and sublexical variables on visual word recognition are often treated as homogeneous across participants and stable over time. In this study, we examine the modulation of frequency, length, syllable and bigram frequency, orthographic neighborhood, and graphophonemic consistency effects by (a) individual differences, and (b) item…

This study investigated (1) the role of syllable awareness in word reading and spelling after accounting for the effects of print-related skills (letter-name and letter-sound knowledge, and rapid serial naming), and (2) unique contributions of orthographic, semantic (vocabulary and morphological awareness), phonological, and print-related…

The primary purpose of this study was to re-examine the influence of phonetic complexity on stuttering in young children through the use of the Word Complexity Measure (WCM). Parent-child conversations were transcribed for 14 children who stutter (mean age = 3 years, 7 months; SD = 11.20 months). Lexical and linguistic factors were accounted for…

In the current study, we explore the influence of orthographic knowledge on phonological awareness in children with cochlear implants and compare developmental associations to those found for hearing children matched for word reading level or chronological age. We show an influence of orthographic knowledge on syllable and phoneme awareness in…

Verbal and nonverbal predictors of spelling performance in Grades 1-12 were investigated using the national norming data from a standardized spelling test. Verbal variables included number of letters, phonemes, syllables, digraphs, blends, silent markers, r-controlled vowels, and the proportion of grapheme-phoneme correspondence. The nonverbal…

We present the results from an experiment that tests the perception of English consonantal sequences by Korean speakers and we confirm that perceptual epenthesis in a second language (L2) arises from syllable structure restrictions of the first language (L1), rather than linear co-occurrence restrictions. Our study replicates and extends Dupoux,…

This study examines a salient intrasyllabic phonological unit in Korean, the body-coda unit, its role in literacy skills in Korean, and a possible source of the salience of body-coda units in the spoken language. Data were collected from Korean-speaking, monolingual beginning readers (41 kindergarteners, 40 first graders). The results indicate…

Two cohorts of preschool children (n=238) were followed to determine whether tests of phonological awareness, orthographic processing, and serial-naming speed, added to a preschool battery, would improve prediction of reading. The major predictors of first-grade reading and spelling were preschool letter-naming and sentence memory for both…