Interventions in developmental reading and spelling disorders

Author(s):  
Gerheid Scheerer-Neumann
2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 544-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly A. Murphy ◽  
Emily A. Diehm

Purpose Morphological interventions promote gains in morphological knowledge and in other oral and written language skills (e.g., phonological awareness, vocabulary, reading, and spelling), yet we have a limited understanding of critical intervention features. In this clinical focus article, we describe a relatively novel approach to teaching morphology that considers its role as the key organizing principle of English orthography. We also present a clinical example of such an intervention delivered during a summer camp at a university speech and hearing clinic. Method Graduate speech-language pathology students provided a 6-week morphology-focused orthographic intervention to children in first through fourth grade ( n = 10) who demonstrated word-level reading and spelling difficulties. The intervention focused children's attention on morphological families, teaching how morphology is interrelated with phonology and etymology in English orthography. Results Comparing pre- and posttest scores, children demonstrated improvement in reading and/or spelling abilities, with the largest gains observed in spelling affixes within polymorphemic words. Children and their caregivers reacted positively to the intervention. Therefore, data from the camp offer preliminary support for teaching morphology within the context of written words, and the intervention appears to be a feasible approach for simultaneously increasing morphological knowledge, reading, and spelling. Conclusion Children with word-level reading and spelling difficulties may benefit from a morphology-focused orthographic intervention, such as the one described here. Research on the approach is warranted, and clinicians are encouraged to explore its possible effectiveness in their practice. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12290687


Author(s):  
Walter Ott

Despite its difference in aspiration, the Meditations preserves the basic structure of perceptual experience outlined in Descartes’s earliest works. The chapter explores Descartes’s notion of an idea and uses a developmental reading to clear up the mystery surrounding material falsity. In the third Meditation, our protagonist does not yet know enough about extension in order to be able to tell whether her idea of cold is an idea of a real feature of bodies or merely the idea of a sensation. By the time she reaches the end of her reflections, she has learned that sensible qualities are at most sensations. As in his earliest stages, Descartes believes that the real work of perceiving the geometrical qualities of bodies is done by the brain image, which he persists in calling an ‘idea,’ at least when it is the object of mental awareness.


1953 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 142
Author(s):  
Rosemary S. Donahue

1986 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 691-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Wise Berninger

Visual, linguistic, reading, and spelling tests were administered to the same 45 children at the end of kindergarten and of first grade. Normal variation, i.e., diversity not related to pathology, was found in the visual and linguistic skills and was shown to be related to reading and spelling achievement for a sample of suburban children of similar socioeconomic status. Individual differences in three visual skills—selective attention to letter information (RT), memory for a component letter (accuracy), and memory for a whole word (accuracy)—and two linguistic skills—phonemic analysis and vocabulary understanding—were reliable over the first year of formal reading instruction and had concurrent validity in that they were correlated with achievement in word decoding/encoding at the end of kindergarten and of first grade. Of these five skills, phonemic analysis accounted for more variance in achievement (52% to 64%, depending upon achievement measure) than any other single skill. Significantly mote variance in achievement was accounted for when both a visual skill (memory for a sequence) and a linguistic skill (phonemic analysis) were considered than when either alone was at end of first grade. The predictive validity of quantitatively defined “disabilities” (at or more than a standard deviation below the mean) was investigated; disabilities in both visual and linguistic skills at the end of kindergarten were associated with low achievement in word decoding/encoding at the end of first grade. Two pairs of identical twin girls (each co-twin taught by a different teacher) were not mote congruent on several achievement measures than two pairs of unrelated girls, taught by the same teacher and matched to each other and a twin pair on verbal ability and age. Normal variation in acquisition of word decoding/encoding probably results from an interaction between genetic individual differences in cognitive skills and the processes of assimilation and accommodation during environmental transactions proposed by Piaget.


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