Word Reading Development Research Articles

The Role of Foreign Domestic Helpers in Hong Kong Chinese Children's English and Chinese Skills: A Longitudinal Study

We investigated the influence of nonparental caregivers, such as foreign domestic helpers (FDH), on the home language spoken to the child and its implications for vocabulary and word reading development in Cantonese‐ and English‐speaking bilingual children. Using data collected from ages 5 to 9, we analyzed Chinese vocabulary, Chinese character recognition, English vocabulary, and English word reading among 194 native Cantonese‐speaking children in Hong Kong with English‐speaking FDHs (n = 46), children with Cantonese‐speaking FDHs (n = 32), and children with no FDHs who were spoken to in Cantonese (n = 116). Multilevel modeling results showed potential advantages in initial English vocabulary and disadvantages in initial Chinese character recognition among children in the English‐speaking FDH group, with no evidence for compounding or diminished costs or benefits over time. Results are discussed in relation to both theoretical and practical aspects of home language and literacy development.

Word and pseudoword superiority effects on letter position processing in developing and skilled readers.

Studies have shown that letter position processing changes as reading develops. Whether these changes are driven by the development of the orthographic lexicon is currently unclear. In this study, we administered a novel variant of the Reicher-Wheeler task to children aged 7-12 years (Experiment 1) and adults (Experiment 2) to clarify the role of the developing lexicon in letter position processing. The task required participants to report the identity of a letter at a specified position within 3 orthographic contexts: anagram words (e.g., slime - which has the anagram partner, smile), pseudowords (e.g., blire - brile), and illegal nonwords (e.g., bfgsv - bsgfv). The influence of a reader's whole-word orthographic representations was investigated by comparing the performance of words to pseudowords (word superiority effect or WSE), and the influence of their knowledge of orthotactic constraints was investigated by comparing pseudowords to illegal nonwords (pseudoword superiority effect or PSE). While the PSE increased with developing orthographic skills (as indexed by irregular word reading) in primary schoolchildren, the WSE emerged only in adult readers. Furthermore, the size of the WSE increased with orthographic skill in adults. The findings are discussed in regards to current models and theories of visual word recognition and reading development. (PsycINFO Database Record

Tone matters for Cantonese-English bilingual children's English word reading development: A unified model of phonological transfer.

Languages differ considerably in how they use prosodic features, or variations in pitch, duration, and intensity, to distinguish one word from another. Prosodic features include lexical tone in Chinese and lexical stress in English. Recent cross-sectional studies show a surprising result that Mandarin Chinese tone sensitivity is related to Mandarin-English bilingual children's English word reading. This study explores the mechanism underlying this relation by testing two explanations of these effects: the prosodic hypothesis and segmental phonological awareness transfer. We administered multiple measures of Cantonese tone sensitivity, English stress sensitivity, segmental phonological awareness in Cantonese and English, nonverbal ability, and English word reading to 123 Cantonese-English bilingual children ages 7 and 8years. Structural equation modeling revealed a longitudinal prediction of Cantonese tone sensitivity to English word reading between 8 and 9years of age. This relation was realized through two parallel routes. In one, Cantonese tone sensitivity predicted English stress sensitivity, and English stress sensitivity, in turn, significantly predicted English word reading, as postulated by the prosodic hypothesis. In the second, Cantonese tone sensitivity predicted English word reading through the transfer of segmental phonological awareness between Cantonese and English, as predicted by segmental phonological transfer. These results support a unified model of phonological transfer, emphasizing the role of tone in English word reading for Cantonese-English bilingual children.

Understanding the Mapping Principle of One Syllable One Character as a Predictor of Word Reading Development in Chinese

Speech-print mapping awareness is defined as the awareness of the principles underpinning how speech sound is matched to print symbols. Chinese is unique in that it follows the one syllable one character mapping principle. The present study examined the predictive power of speech-print mapping awareness in young children's word reading. Seventy-four Hong Kong children from the first and second kindergarten years were tested with phonological awareness, visual skills, syllable-level mapping awareness, and Chinese reading ability at Time 1. Chinese reading abilities were tested again 1 year later. It was found that syllable-level mapping awareness predicted Chinese word reading abilities 12 months later. Further, it seemed that the link of syllable mapping to Chinese reading is particularly significant for beginning readers. The findings suggest that understanding the language-specific speech-print mapping principle is critical for reading acquisition at the early stage of reading development.

Metalinguistic awareness in bilingual children's word reading: A cross-lagged panel study on cross-linguistic transfer facilitation

ABSTRACTThis longitudinal study examined metalinguistic awareness in bilingual word reading development among Malay–English bilingual children in Singapore. Participants were assessed with the same tasks twice with a 1-year interval from Grade 3 to Grade 4 in phonological and morphological awareness and derived word decoding in both English and Malay. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that both types of metalinguistic awareness significantly predicted derived word reading in both languages. Subsequent cross-lagged panel modeling found construct-level transfer facilitation effect from Malay on English for phonological awareness but conversely from English on Malay for morphological awareness. Neither type of metalinguistic awareness exerted a transfer facilitation effect on word reading. These findings shed light on the developmental mechanism of cross-linguistic transfer in biliteracy acquisition.

The Impact of Diglossia on Voweled and Unvoweled Word Reading in Arabic: A Developmental Study From Childhood to Adolescence

ABSTRACTAll native speakers of Arabic read in a language variety that is remarkably distant from the one they use in everyday speech. The study tested the impact of this distance on reading accuracy and fluency by comparing reading of Standard Arabic (StA) words, used in StA only, versus Spoken Arabic (SpA) words, used in SpA too, among Arabic native speakers in Grades 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 (N = 100). Pseudowords in SpA and StA were also compared. Analysis of variance results revealed significant differences in reading SpA versus StA words across all grades and in reading voweled and unvoweled words. The findings support the effect the linguistic distance between SpA and StA on word reading development.

Social, emotional and behavioural influences on young children's pre-reading and word reading development

The first formal instruction of reading typically takes place in the school environment setting. Therefore, there is good reason to predict that children's classroom behaviours at the time of formal learning will influence their early reading acquisition. The present study compared the extent to which symptoms of hyperactivity/inattention, conduct problems, emotional problems, peer relationship problems and pro-social behaviour predicted children's pre-reading (letter-sound knowledge, phonological awareness) and word reading development. Seventy three new school entrants were assessed during their first 2years at school. Children were assessed at T1 (prior to reading instruction) on pre-reading and word reading, at T2 (approximately 6months later) on pre-reading, word reading and classroom behaviours and at T3 (1year after T2) on classroom behaviours and word reading. Overall, hyperactivity/inattention was the strongest predictor of pre-reading and word reading development, but not the only predictor. Implications for education are discussed.

When Language Experience Fails to Explain Word Reading Development: Early Cognitive and Linguistic Profiles of Young Foreign Language Learners

Although language experience is a key factor in successful foreign language (FL) learning, many FL learners fail to achieve performance levels that were predicted on the basis of their FL experience. This retrospective study investigated early cognitive and linguistic correlates of learning English as a foreign language (FL) in a group of Mandarin‐speaking elementary students who, at Grade 5, showed discrepancies between actual FL word reading attainment and attainment predicted on the basis of FL experience that had been available to them until Grade 3. Based on the residual score of regressing FL word reading against FL experience at one standard deviation below and above the mean, participants were grouped into overachievers, achievers performing at expected levels, and underachievers. The three cohorts were compared on learner characteristics, including lexical‐level (phonological processing and morphological awareness), text‐level (syntactic and contextual bootstrapping), and rote word learning abilities measured in Grade 3 and Grade 4. Compared with achievers performing to expectation, underachievers were characterized by poorer performance in lexical‐level abilities and rote word learning; overachievers were characterized by one superior lexical‐level ability (i.e., morphological awareness) and superior rote word learning. The three groups did not differ in either of the text‐level abilities. The results suggest that FL learning can be significantly constrained by limitations in lower level processing capacities in some learners despite adequate FL experience.

Whole Language and Phonics: Which Instructional Practices are Most Effective in Teaching At-Risk Students to Read?

A disproportionate number of New Zealand students fail to learn to read. Children from low socio-economic backgrounds are over-represented among New Zealand’s under-achieving readers. This study investigated the extent to which teachers of beginning readers in low-decile schools emphasised explicit phonological-based instruction, as well as the relationship between teacher emphasis on phonological instruction and student progress in reading-related skills. Results demonstrated that children from different literacy instruction programmes progressed similarly in all reading-related skills except word reading. Students receiving explicit phonological- based literacy instruction made superior progress in word reading skills over children receiving implicit phonological-based instruction. A strong emphasis on explicit phonological instruction was also associated with a reduction in variation of class word reading scores over time. The study findings support previous research demonstrating that phonological awareness and decoding skills play a crucial role in the development of word reading ability and that explicit phonological-based instruction can attenuate differences in word reading development. Implications for teachers and policy makers are described.

Behavioral Attention: A Longitudinal Study of Whether and How It Influences the Development of Word Reading and Reading Comprehension Among At-Risk Readers

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which teacher ratings of behavioral attention predicted responsiveness to word reading instruction in first-grade and third-grade reading comprehension performance. Participants were 110 first-grade students identified as at risk for reading difficulties who received 20 weeks of intensive reading intervention in combination with classroom reading instruction. Path analysis indicated that teacher ratings of student attention significantly predicted students’ word reading growth in first grade even when they were competed against other relevant predictors (phonological awareness, nonword reading, sight word efficiency, vocabulary, listening comprehension, hyperactivity, nonverbal reasoning, and short-term memory). Also, student attention demonstrated a significant indirect effect on third-grade reading comprehension via word reading but not via listening comprehension. Results suggest that student attention (indexed by teacher ratings) is an important predictor of at-risk readers’ responsiveness to reading instruction in first grade and that first-grade reading growth mediates the relationship between students’ attention and their future level of reading comprehension. The importance of considering ways to manage and improve behavioral attention when implementing reading instruction is discussed.

Discovering and accounting for limitations in applications of theories of word reading acquisition.

More attention to the discovery of the limitations of current theories of word reading acquisition would enable progress in development of theories with a wider and more varied range of valid and useful applications. This general opinion is illustrated here with work that makes such an attempt. There have been recent occasional attempts to apply computational connectionist models of adult word reading in simulations of children's normal progress in word and pseudoword reading (Hutzler et al., 2004; Powell et al., 2006), but they failed unless modifications were made that included adding “context-free” letter-sound correspondences to the initial training of the model. Taught phonics sounds for letters are such, as they are not bound to features within a word, such as position and/or the context of other (adjacent or otherwise) letter-sound correspondences of the word. Adding the phonic sounds was justified as a representation of the way children learnt because it was how they were taught reading. This introduces a major potential limitation in application of the model, in so far as it was improved for only one type of teaching, that with phonics. A new multiple-route theory (Grainger et al., 2012) of learning to read words has been proposed which may appear to avoid that problem but much of the learning of the beginner reader is modeled as in the theory of Share (1995). This, however, also requires full knowledge of “context-free” letter sounds for the initial development of word reading (Share, p. 164), as does the widely recognized theory of Ehri (1999, 2005, 2012). The illustration for my opinion focuses on the discovery of the limitations of this feature common to these theories, and on development of theory that accounts for evidence beyond the limitations.

Development of word reading, reading comprehension and reading motivation among typically developing children and children with mild intellectual disabilities

Development of word reading, reading comprehension and reading motivation among typically developing children and children with mild intellectual disabilities

Roles of Attention Shifting and Inhibitory Control in Fourth-Grade Reading Comprehension

Executive functioning (EF) refers to a set of higher order, core cognitive processes that facilitate planning, problem solving, and the initiation and maintenance of goal-directed behavior. Although recent research has established the importance of EF for word reading development in early childhood, few studies have investigated the role of EF in reading comprehension during middle childhood. This study investigated the relations between two specific dimensions of EF—attention shifting and inhibitory control—and reading comprehension for students in fourth grade (N = 120). Specifically, we used path analysis to investigate the direct, unique associations of attention shifting and inhibitory control with reading comprehension as well as the indirect associations with reading comprehension via language comprehension and word reading, controlling for working memory, processing speed, and phonological awareness. Results indicated that both attention shifting and inhibitory control demonstrated unique direct associations with reading comprehension. Attention shifting also demonstrated a significant indirect association via language comprehension. Findings support growing evidence for the importance of these EF dimensions to reading, raise questions about potential mechanisms underlying links between EF and reading comprehension, and offer implications for understanding and addressing reading comprehension difficulties.

Towards an understanding of how children read and spell irregular words: the role of nonword and orthographic processing skills

This study examined, in 180 children aged from 6 to 9 years, to what extent irregular word reading and spelling were predicted by vocabulary knowledge, reading frequency, orthographic processing and nonword reading skill. Consistent with models of reading highlighting the quasi‐regular nature of irregular words, it was found that nonword reading was a large and significant predictor of irregular word reading even when entered into a regression analysis after all of the other variables. However, irregular word spelling was equally well predicted by orthographic and nonword reading skills. The results are discussed in relation to models of word reading and reading development.

The Impact of Early Classroom Inattention on Phonological Processing and Word-Reading Development

The present study investigated the longitudinal relationships between inattention, phonological processing and word reading across the first 2 years of formal reading instruction. In all, 136 school entrants were administered measures of letter knowledge, phonological awareness, phonological memory, rapid naming, and word reading at the start and end of their 1st year of school, and the end of their 2nd year, while teachers completed rating scales of inattention. School entry inattentiveness predicted unique variance in word reading at the end of first grade, after controlling for verbal ability, letter knowledge, and phonological processing. End-of-first-grade inattention predicted a small but significant amount of unique variance in second-grade word reading and word-reading efficiency. Inattention, however, was not a reliable predictor of phonological processing in either first or second grade. Early classroom inattentiveness influences learning to read independent of critical developmental precursors of word-reading development.

Computer-assisted learning in young poor readers: The effect of grapho-syllabic training on the development of word reading and reading comprehension

Two experiments examine the effects of two computer-based interventions, one with grapho-syllabic training (GST) and another with grapho-phonemic training (GPT) on the development of word recognition and reading comprehension in French children during Grade 1 and Grade 2. In Exp 1, poor readers (N=27) in second grade were selected and divided into three equal groups, one GST group, one GPT group and a control group. After the session training (10h), the children from the grapho-syllabic training group outperformed their counterparts in word reading. In Exp 2, poor readers in first grade (N=18) were divided in two groups, a GST group and a GPT group. Six sessions were conducted in order to examine the possible long-term effect of training (10h) during 16months. The results revealed an effect of grapho-syllabic training on silent word recognition, word reading aloud and reading comprehension. A computer-assisted learning (CAL) system based on the syllable, which is considered to be the phonological and orthographic unit that is used by French young readers, could be a promising tool to help poor readers decode words and consequently boost their word recognition and reading comprehension capabilities.

Learning to Read: What We Know and What We Need to Understand Better.

The authors review current knowledge about the cognitive processes underlying the early stages of word reading development. Recent findings in a variety of alphabetic languages converge on the conclusion that there are 3 "cognitive foundations" for learning to read: letter-sound knowledge, phonemic awareness, and rapid automatized naming skills. Deficits in each of these skills appear causally related to problems in learning to read, and deficits in letter-sound knowledge and phonemic awareness appear to be remediable by suitable teaching. The authors argue that this evidence has important practical implications for early education and for the diagnosis and treatment of children with reading difficulties.

Evidence for Common Etiological Influences on Early Literacy Skills in Kindergarten

Understanding how the etiology of print awareness and phonological awareness are related to the etiology of decoding can provide insights into the development of word reading. To address this issue, we examined the degree of overlap among etiological influences of prereading skills in 1,252 twin pairs in kindergarten. Genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental factors were significant for all three literacy phenotypes. The majority of genetic and shared environmental influence on decoding was due to common factors that included print awareness and phonological awareness. Notably, only a single genetic factor contributed to all three literacy phenotypes, but there was additional shared environmental influence common to phonological awareness and decoding. Findings suggest commonalities in the etiology of prereading literacy skills that could inform work on the development of reading skill.

A follow-up study on word and non-word reading skills in Down syndrome

The current study was designed to trace changes in the relationship between non-word reading and irregular word reading on the one hand, and between phonological awareness and non-word reading on the other, through a follow-up study of a group of individuals with Down syndrome. Twelve individuals with Down syndrome, whose data were originally reported in Roch and Jarrold (2008), were seen four years later, and were given the same tasks as in the previous study evaluating phonological awareness, non-word reading and irregular word reading. After four years, an improvement was observed in all the skills of interest. Furthermore, the pattern of relationships among the three skills was observed to change considerably across the four year period. At the first time point, a weak association between non-word and irregular word reading was found, but there was a strong association between these two measures at the second time point. In contrast, a strong relationship was found at Time 1 between non-word reading and phonological awareness, which became weaker at Time 2. Longitudinal associations between the three skills were also examined in order to explain this changing pattern of associations. The results indicated that the ability to decode non-words plays a marginal role on later irregular word reading. In contrast, irregular word reading is a longitudinal predictor of later non-word reading. Phonological awareness was not longitudinally related to non-word reading. The results indicate that developing word knowledge can facilitate later non-word reading in Down syndrome, perhaps by a process of reading by visual analogy to known lexical items.Learning outcomes: Readers will be able to (a) explain the development of word reading, non-word reading and phonological awareness in Down syndrome; (b) explain the longitudinal changes in the relationships among the three skills; (c) explain the relevance for education of the influence of word reading for the improvement in non-word reading.

Effects of phonological and morphological awareness on children’s word reading development from two socioeconomic backgrounds

This study examined variations in reading acquisition according to socioeconomic background. Word reading speed and accuracy, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness were assessed among 199 native Hebrew-speaking children from high and low SES in the second, fourth, and sixth grades. The study further investigated the possible mediating role of phonological and morphological awareness in predicting reading of vowelized vs. unvowelized Hebrew scripts. Results indicated that despite an overall pattern of development in word reading found for both high SES and low SES children, the development was slower among children of low SES. A discrepancy emerged between children of high and low SES regarding levels of phonological and morphological awareness; this discrepancy increased with grade. Moreover, differences in reading ability showed a comparatively small increase with grade when controlling for phonological and morphological awareness, indicating that SES affected reading indirectly through its impact on the phonological and morphological precursors to reading. Thus, the present findings asserted that children from low SES families enter school with weak phonological and morphological awareness skills, which have cascading consequences on the development of reading skills in general, and the speed of reading scripts in particular.