The influence of phonology on good and poor readers when reading for meaning

Abstract

Poor readers (8 and 11 years old) of average and below average intelligence were compared with reading age and chronological age controls on their performance in reading for meaning tasks. The childrens' ability to reject sentences which sounded correct, for example, “Can you poast this letter?” was compared with their ability to reject sentences which sounded incorrect, for example, “She has loast her bike.” Two tasks were carried out, one where the critical items were nonwords, and one where these items were (homophonic) real words. All of the groups identified more of the sentences which sounded meaningful as being correct, thus showing an influence of phonological information. The average and below average intelligence poor readers performed very similarly to each other, and only differed from their reading age controls at the age of 8, when the latter group was more strongly influenced by phonological information in the reading for meaning (words) task. It was concluded that both good and poor readers can generate phonological codes from print, and that they utilize them when making judgments about the meaningfulness of sentences.