Rhyme judgement ability in good and poor readers

Abstract

Abstract Groups of eight and 11 year old poor readers were studied in order to investigate their ability to carry out visual rhyme judgements. Poor readers of average intelligence performed as rapidly and accurately as their reading age controls, although the eight year olds showed a sensitivity to visual similarity rather than rhyme in terms of their response times. Poor readers of below average intelligence were, however, less accurate at rhyme judgement than their reading age controls, and the eight year olds showed a sensitivity to visual dissimilarity rather than rhyme in their response times. All of the groups studied, that is, poor readers and their reading and chronological age controls, made more errors when orthography and rhyme conflicted (e.g. in pairs like ‘deaf‐leaf and ‘paid‐fade’, compared to controls). This shows that by a reading age of seven, the expectation that words which rhyme will also look alike has developed in both good and poor readers.