Development of Orthographic and Phonological Processes in Normal and Disabled Reading

Abstract

The processes used in reading by disabled and normal readers have been the subject of a great deal of research. Varieties of the dual route theory have been used as an exploratory framework. These theories have a number of manifestations, but the basic premise of “dual route theories” is that two possible routes are involved in gaining access to the meaning of print (e.g. Coltheart, 1978; Forster & Chambers, 1973; Meyer, Schvanevelt & Ruddy, 1975). The first component process involved in learning to read is a phonological process, whereby readers learn to read by learning how the sounds of the language correspond to letters and letter patterns. Grapheme-phoneme conversion rules are used to gain lexical access to print by translating a graphemic code into a phonemic one. Because the application of the rules does not rely on word-specific pronunciation, this route is referred to as non-lexical. The second route postulated by the dual route theory involves direct lexical access, that is, reading a word without intermediate phonological processing. The orthographic configuration of a word is directly mapped onto an internal visual store in lexical memory and readers learn the distinctive visual representations of words.