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…

This paper describes a Hebrew naming test that consists of 48 line drawings ordered by word frequency. The initial validation phase included 48 young adults (ages 20-28), 48 old adults (ages 67-85), and 27 individuals with Alzheimer's disease (ages 68-87). Results indicated a modest odd-even internal consistency effect, word frequency effect, and…

The current research is an examination of the nature of reading difficulties in dyslexic readers of Hindi. The reading performance of children with dyslexia was compared with that of reading-age (RA) and chronological-age (CA) matched controls on word and non word reading of items of different length. The results showed that the dyslexic children…

Reports describing subcortical apraxia of speech (AOS) have received little consideration in the development of recent speech processing models because the speech characteristics of patients with this diagnosis have not been described precisely. We describe a case of AOS with aphasia secondary to basal ganglia hemorrhage. Speech-language symptoms…

This article briefly reviews recent research on teaching phonological awareness skills to preschoolers as well as the benefits of different types of bilingual education. A more in-depth analysis of research on cross-language transfer of phonological awareness/metalinguistic skills follows. The major recommendation resulting from this review is…

Two reading experiments investigated the extent to which the presence of phonemic repetition in sentences influenced processing difficulty during syntactic ambiguity resolution. In both experiments, participants read sentences silently as reading time was measured. Reading time on sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity was compared…

In speech perception, children give particular patterns of weight to different acoustic cues (their cue weighting). These patterns appear to change with increased linguistic experience. Previous speech perception research has found a positive correlation between more analytical cue weighting strategies and the ability to consciously think about…

This study investigated the effectiveness and efficiency of the Reading Recovery early intervention. At-risk 1st-grade students were randomly assigned to receive the intervention during the 1st or 2nd half of the school year. High-average and low-average students from the same classrooms provided additional comparisons. Thirty-seven teachers from…

In this technical report, the authors describe the development alternate forms of three types of early literacy measures as part of a comprehensive progress monitoring literacy assessment system developed in 2006 for use with students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. They begin with a brief overview of the two conceptual frameworks underlying…

Previous studies have shown that phonological awareness correlates with children's reading aloud and also adults' literacy experience. More recent research has further suggested that phonological awareness is associated with the processing of spoken language, which is a correlate of reading comprehension. In this paper, I argue that phonological…

"Phonological Awareness Training plus Letter Knowledge Training" is a general practice aimed at enhancing young children's phonological awareness, print awareness, and early reading abilities. Phonological awareness, the ability to detect or manipulate the sounds in words independent of meaning, is a precursor to reading. Phonological…

A group of 21 hard-of-hearing and deaf children attending primary school were trained by their teachers on the production of selected consonants and on the meanings of selected words. Speech production, vocabulary knowledge, reading aloud, and speech perception measures were obtained before and after each type of training. The speech production…