The development of phonemic awareness in reading-disabled children

1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMIE L. METSALA

Reading-disabled children display a phonemic awareness deficit when compared with normally achieving children matched for word reading ability. However, previous research has not examined phonemic awareness deficits in reading-disabled children when compared with children matched on pseudoword reading. This article examines phonemic awareness ability in both a traditional design and a pseudoword reading level match design. The results show that a group of reading-disabled children who show typical pseudoword reading and phonemic awareness deficits in the traditional reading level match design nonetheless have phonemic awareness skills commensurate with their level of pseudoword reading ability.

1988 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew L. Cohen ◽  
Joseph K. Torgesen ◽  
Jeffrey L. Torgesen

The present study investigated the relative effectiveness of two versions of a computer program designed to increase the sight-word reading vocabulary of reading disabled children. One version required children to type words into the computer as part of the practice activity; in the other no typing was involved. Subjects were nine reading disabled students, average age 10 years, 7 months. A repeated-measures design was used to expose all subjects three times to two treatment conditions and a no-practice control condition. Accuracy and speed of reading, as well as spelling accuracy for multisyllable words were measured in pre- and posttests. Both versions of the program proved to be equally effective in improving speed and accuracy of reading words, but the typing version was more effective in increasing spelling accuracy. However, students enjoyed the no-typing version better, and they were able to attain mastery levels for new words on this version faster than on the typing version. Implications of these results for reading software design are considered.


1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn S. Snyder ◽  
Doris M. Downey

In this study, the word retrieval, phonological awareness, sentence completion, and narrative discourse processing skills of 93 reading-disabled and 93 normally achieving subjects from 8 to 14 years of age were compared. The subjects were matched for age, sex, and neighborhood. Results revealed that the two groups differed significantly on the time and accuracy of word retrieval, their ability to produce a syntactically appropriate structure in a sentence completion task, their retelling of stories that had been read to them, their answers to questions about the stories, and their inferences. Further analysis revealed that the variance in the younger reading-disabled children’s reading comprehension scores was best accounted for by their performance on the sentence completion and word retrieval measures; the inferencing skills of the older reading-disabled children best accounted for the variance in their reading comprehension. By contrast, the younger normally achieving children’s reading comprehension scores were best accounted for by their sentence completion, the proportion of the stories that they retold, and word retrieval scores. The proportion of stories retold and the phonological awareness score of the older normally achieving children best accounted for the variance in their reading scores. These findings suggest that the oral language skills of normally achieving and reading-disabled children may relate differently to their reading comprehension at different age levels.


1978 ◽  
Vol 46 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1047-1054 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Lovegrove ◽  
Christina Brown

8- and 11-yr.-old reading-disabled children were compared in two experiments with controls matched on intelligence and age. Exp. I measured duration of visual information store by means of a separation threshold technique. Exp. II determined the rate of transfer from visual information store to short-term memory using a backward masking technique. Results from Exp. I showed that at each age specific reading-disabled children had significantly longer durations of visual information store than controls. The difference between the reading ability groups decreased with increasing age. Exp. II demonstrated that rate of transfer of information was significantly slower for specific reading-disabled children than for controls at both age levels. In contrast to Exp. I, this difference increased with increasing age. The results are considered in terms of their possible relevance to developmental lag theories. The evidence indicates that the development of visual information processing in reading-disabled children is similar to that in controls but occurs at a slower rate.


1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Signorini

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to investigate word reading abilities in first and third grade Spanish-speaking children who were learning to read in Spanish; the performance of skilled and less skilled readers was compared across measures that assessed phonological recoding ability, knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and phonemic awareness. The findings suggest that Spanish-speaking children relied on phonological recoding strategies in the process of becoming readers. First grade, less skilled readers seemed to depend on partial letter-sound knowledge. Furthermore, spelling-sound correspondences appeared to be the main source of information used by first grade, skilled readers and third grade, less skilled readers. The latter seemed to lag behind skilled readers in the use of word-specific information. The phonemic awareness tasks displayed moderate to low correlations with reading ability in the less skilled groups. It is argued that the simple phonological structure of Spanish and its shallow orthography lead to the phonological processing of letter strings during reading acquisition.


1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Frankel Tal ◽  
Linda S. Siegel

ABSTRACTThis study examined the pseudoword reading strategies of dyslexic readers (i.e., children whose reading was significantly lower than predicted by their IQ score) and poor readers (i.e., children whose reading scores were consistent with their lower IQ scores). The disabled readers were grouped according to their reading grade level and were compared with reading level matched, normally achieving readers. The reading performance on a test of pseudoword reading (Woodcock Word Attack Subtest) for the three groups (dyslexic, poor, and normal readers) was analyzed according to the type of error committed. The performance of dyslexic and poor readers was virtually indistinguishable at both reading grade levels 2–3 and 4–5. There was very little difference among dyslexic, poor, and normally achieving readers in the types of errors made. Nearly 50010 of all the oral reading errors of all three groups were vowel substitutions, followed by consonant substitution and deletion and insertion errors. Sequential, reversal, and word substitution errors were committed infrequently for all three reader groups. The findings failed to support the existence of a critical phonological processing difference between IQ reading- discrepant and IQ reading-nondiscrepant disabled readers and suggest that disabled readers lag behind normally achieving readers in phonological decoding skills.


2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. HÉLÈNE DEACON ◽  
JOHN R. KIRBY

Given the morphophonemic nature of the English orthography, surprisingly few studies have examined the roles of morphological and phonological awareness in reading. This 4-year longitudinal study (Grades 2–5) compared these two factors in three aspects of reading development: pseudoword reading, reading comprehension, and single word reading. Morphological awareness contributed significantly to pseudoword reading and reading comprehension, after controlling prior measures of reading ability, verbal and nonverbal intelligence, and phonological awareness. This contribution was comparable to that of phonological awareness and remained 3 years after morphological awareness was assessed. In contrast, morphological awareness rarely contributed significantly to single word reading. We argue that these results provide evidence that morphological awareness has a wide-ranging role in reading development, one that extends beyond phonological awareness.


1997 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald B. Gillam ◽  
Rebekah M. Carlile

Students with specific language impairment (SL) and students matched for single-word reading ability read and retold stories that were approximately one grade level above their reading level. Children with SLI produced a significantly greater percentage of oral reading discrepancies (miscues) between printed and read words. Their miscues were less graphophonemically, syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically consistent with the original texts than the miscues produced by their reading-matched peers. Despite these differences in oral reading story retellings by students in the two groups were similar in terms of percentages of recalled vocabulary, story elements, and problem-resolution pairs. Holistic analysis of the retellings indicated that fewer retellings by students in the SLI group were complete, and more of their retellings were confusing. Lack of prior knowledge regarding the topics of the stories that were read, slowed language processing and/or working memory deficiencies could account for these results.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry J. A. de Groot ◽  
Kees P. van den Bos ◽  
Alexander E. M. G. Minnaert ◽  
Bieuwe F. van der Meulen

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 603-616
Author(s):  
Kenn Apel ◽  
Victoria S. Henbest

Purpose Morphological awareness is the ability to consciously manipulate the smallest units of meaning in language. Morphological awareness contributes to success with literacy skills for children with typical language and those with language impairment. However, little research has focused on the morphological awareness skills of children with speech sound disorders (SSD), who may be at risk for literacy impairments. No researcher has examined the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD and compared their skills to children with typical speech using tasks representing a comprehensive definition of morphological awareness, which was the main purpose of this study. Method Thirty second- and third-grade students with SSD and 30 with typical speech skills, matched on age and receptive vocabulary, completed four morphological awareness tasks and measures of receptive vocabulary, real-word reading, pseudoword reading, and word-level spelling. Results Results indicated there was no difference between the morphological awareness skills of students with and without SSD. Although morphological awareness was moderately to strongly related to the students' literacy skills, performance on the morphological awareness tasks contributed little to no additional variance to the children's real-word reading and spelling skills beyond what was accounted for by pseudoword reading. Conclusions Findings suggest that early elementary-age students with SSD may not present with concomitant morphological awareness difficulties and that the morphological awareness skills of these students may not play a unique role in their word-level literacy skills. Limitations and suggestions for future research on the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1240-1253
Author(s):  
Victoria S. Henbest ◽  
Lisa Fitton ◽  
Krystal L. Werfel ◽  
Kenn Apel

Purpose Spelling is a skill that relies on an individual's linguistic awareness, the ability to overtly manipulate language. The ability to accurately spell is important for academic and career success into adulthood. The spelling skills of adults have received some attention in the literature, but there is limited information regarding which approach for analyzing adults' spelling is optimal for guiding instruction or intervention for those who struggle. Thus, we aimed to examine the concurrent validity of four different scoring methods for measuring adults' spellings (a dichotomous scoring method and three continuous methods) and to determine whether adults' linguistic awareness skills differentially predict spelling outcomes based on the scoring method employed. Method Sixty undergraduate college students who were determined to be average readers as measured by a word reading and contextual word reading task were administered a spelling task as well as morphological, orthographic, phonemic, and syntactic awareness tasks. Results All four scoring methods were highly correlated suggesting high concurrent validity among the measures. Two linguistic awareness skills, morphological awareness and syntactic awareness, predicted spelling performance on both the dichotomous and continuous scoring methods. Contrastively, phonemic awareness and orthographic awareness predicted spelling performance only when spelling was scored using a continuous measure error analysis. Conclusions The results of this study confirm that multiple linguistic awareness skills are important for spelling in adults who are average readers. The results also highlight the need for using continuous measures of spelling when planning intervention or instruction, particularly in the areas of orthographic and phonemic awareness.


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