Purpose: Statistical learning (SL) approaches to reading maintain that proficient reading requires assimilation of the rich statistical regularities in the writing system. Reading skills in developing first- and second-language readers in English have been shown to be predicted by individual differences in sensitivity to regularities in mappings…

Orthographic knowledge is predicted to be central in the process of children's reading development. We examined both the temporal order between orthographic knowledge and each of word reading and word spelling--effectively, which predicts which by including autoregressive controls--and cross-linguistic transfer between English and French for our…

Purpose: Multiple factors impact reading acquisition in individuals with reading disability, including genetic disorders such as Williams syndrome (WS). Despite a relative strength in oral language, individuals with WS usually have an intellectual disability and tend to display deficits in areas associated with reading. There is substantial…

The purpose of the current study was to explore longitudinally the bidirectional cross-language effects between morphological awareness and vocabulary development across English and French over one year. Participants included 81 Grade 1 students and 75 Grade 2 students. All were non-native speakers of French, and demonstrated average English word…

A letter-search task was used to test the hypothesis that affixes are chunked during morphological processing and that such chunking might operate differently for prefixes and suffixes. Participants had to detect a letter target that was embedded either in a prefix or suffix (e.g., "R" in "propoint" or "filmure") or…

Many deaf students encounter great difficulty in learning to read. Typically, research has cited deaf students' difficulties to use phonological processing as the source of their reading deficit. However, recent studies have shown that morphological processing also plays an important part in reading. Since morphological units are visually…

Deaf people often achieve low levels of reading skills. The hypothesis that the use of phonological codes is associated with good reading skills in deaf readers is not yet fully supported in the literature. We investigated skilled and less skilled adult deaf readers' use of orthographic and phonological codes in reading. Experiment 1 used a masked…

This article queries whether consonant sonority (sonorant vs. obstruent) and status (coda vs. onset) within intervocalic clusters influence syllable-based segmentation strategies. We used a modified version of the illusory conjunction paradigm to test whether French beginning, intermediate, and advanced readers were sensitive to an optimal…

This study examined the relations between 8-12-year-olds' perceived attachment security to father, academic self-concept and school performance in language mastery. One hundred and twenty two French students' perceptions of attachment to mother and to father were explored with the Security Scale and their academic self-concept was assessed with…

This study investigates the syllable's role in the normal reading acquisition of French children at three grade levels (1st, 3rd, and 5th), using a modified version of Cole, Magnan, and Grainger's (1999) paradigm. We focused on the effects of syllable frequency and word frequency. The results suggest that from the first to third years of reading…

Discusses three experiments that used a visual version of the syllable monitoring technique to investigate the role of syllabic units in beginning and adult readers. Participants responded whenever a visually presented target syllable appeared at the beginning of a subsequently presented printed word. (Author/VWL)

If Anglophone students are to read French at an adult level, they must not only acquire a selected small vocabulary but also be trained to interpret words creatively within a context in order to use their vocabulary. Instruction should include exercises to foster this creativity. (MSE)

Following a brief review of the literature on cognates, and a discussion of six arguments in favor of using cognates as a vocabulary acquisition device, a study is described which was designed to determine whether students were able to utilize English-French cognates in listening and reading comprehension in French. Seventy-four tenth grade…