Four experiments examined influence of task demands on 5- to 9-year olds' and adults' reading strategy. Results showed that less-skilled readers predominantly used simple grapheme-phoneme-level correspondences in reading isolated unfamiliar items. Skilled readers more likely adopted an analogy strategy. The "clue word" technique yielded…

Two groups of adolescents with language impairment (n=87) were compared with 20 adolescents with dyslexia, 19 aged-matched controls, and 18 younger typical children. Adolescents with dyslexia only performed as well as those with persistent oral language impairments and younger controls in reading and spelling, however, their reading comprehension…

A study found that all regular and reading recovery students (n=150) participating in a code-oriented program, Schoolwide Early Learning and Literacy (SWELL), significantly outperformed counterparts (n=163) on tests measuring pseudoword decoding, reading connected text, invented spelling, and a standardized reading measure at the end of Year 1.…

This article reviews literature on normal and impaired spelling development, and discusses the influence of consonant clusters, phonetic influences, and the role of letter names. Research that underscores the importance of fine-grained linguistic analyses of spelling performance is described. It is concluded that such an approach holds promise.…

Examines semantic errors produced by normal and aphasic speakers on a picture naming test for their phonological similarity to the targets they replace. A second study examines phonological relationships within sets of semantically related words and shows there is no tendency for these words to share phonological characteristics. (35 references)…

Three longitudinal studies involving kindergartners are presented that attempt to measure variance in the quality of phonological structures within lexical items using three tasks: non-word repetition, cued word fluency, and a gated auditory word recognition task. Nonword repetition was a consistent predictor of later phonological awareness.…

All second language (L2) learning theories presuppose that learners learn the target language from the speech signal (or written material, when learners are reading), so an understanding of learners' ability to detect and represent novel patterns in linguistic stimuli will constitute a major building block in an adequate theory of second language…

The authors examined the developmental relations between language acquisition and emergence of reading prior to formal literacy instruction. Sixty-one Finnish-speaking children were followed up once a year from infancy to school start (1 year 0 months-7 years 3 months). Before entering first grade, 43% of the children were classified as emergent…

The present study examined the long-term effects of a computer intervention for the development of phonological awareness in Dutch kindergartners. Native Dutch and immigrant children worked with the software 15 min per week during one school year. Following a pretest - interim test - post-test - retention test design, the effects on rhyming,…

In this 2-year longitudinal study the developmental relationships among letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming, and task orientation were examined, and linguistic-motivational pathways of word reading acquisition were traced from kindergarten to Grade 1 by means of structural equation modeling. The participants were 100…

Purpose: This study examined the effect of phonological awareness intervention that focused on syllable and rhyme awareness on the acquisition of literacy and the development of phonological awareness skills 2 years post intervention. The longitudinal study compared two groups of children from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds in the United…

This study describes the development of a minimal-pairs word list targeting phoneme contrasts that pose difficulty for Mandarin Chinese-speaking learners of English as a second language. The target phoneme inventory was compiled from analysis of phonetic transcriptions of about 800 mono- and polysyllabic English words with examples of all the…

The notion of a universal pattern of phonological development, rooted in basic physiological constraints, is controversial, with some researchers arguing for a strong environmental (ambient language) influence on phonological development or an interaction of both physiological constraints and ambient language effects. This research examines the…

This study explored developmental differences in children's segmentation skills of VC and CV syllables (e.g., /af/ and /fa/) in relation to their early reading abilities. To this end, we followed a subgroup of Dutch speaking prereaders who participated in Geudens and Sandra (2003, Experiment 1), and replicated the segmentation task in first grade,…

This study examined the effect of incorporating a visuo-haptic and haptic (tactual-kinaesthetic) exploration of letters in a training designed to develop phonemic awareness, knowledge of letters and letter/sound correspondences, on 5-year-old children's understanding and use of the alphabetic principle. Three interventions, which differed in the…