Are Nonword and Other Phonological Deficits Indicative of a Failed Reading Process

Abstract

Phonological processing problems have been consideredcritical in explaining developmental readingdisability. Reading disabled children were comparedwith two matched reading-level normal control groupson indicators of phonological processing. The readingdisabled children had lower nonword readingperformance than the phonics taught controls. However, performance was equivalent to that of thecontrols without phonics teaching. Therefore anonword reading deficit was not in itself diagnosticof developmental reading disability. The readingdisabled children and the non-phonics control groupwho exhibited lower nonword reading did not differfrom the phonics taught control group in phonemeawareness, nor in magnitude of the word regularityeffect. Nevertheless, within all groups thosechildren with higher phonemic awareness skills showedlarger word regularity effects and better nonwordreading. Processes involving two sources of knowledgefor phonological recoding are discussed asexplanations of these and many previous results onphonological deficits and of the phonological effectsof phonics instruction.