Evidence for complementary effects of code- and knowledge-focused reading instruction

There is growing recognition of the need to end the debate regarding reading instruction in favor of an approach that provides a solid foundation in phonics and other underlying language skills to become expert readers. We advance this agenda by providing evidence of specific effects of instruction focused primarily on the written code or on developing knowledge. In a grade 1 program evaluation study, an inclusive and comprehensive program with a greater code-based focus called Reading for All (RfA) was compared to a knowledge-focused program involving Dialogic Reading. Phonological awareness, letter word recognition, nonsense word decoding, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, written expression and vocabulary were measured at the beginning and end of the school year, and one year after in one school only. Results revealed improvements in all measures except listening comprehension and vocabulary for the RfA program at the end of the first school year. These gains were maintained for all measures one year later with the exception of an improvement in written expression. The Dialogic Reading group was associated with a specific improvement in vocabulary in schools from lower socioeconomic contexts. Higher scores were observed for RfA than Dialogic Reading groups at the end of the first year on nonsense word decoding, phonological awareness and written expression, with the differences in the latter two remaining significant one year later. The results provide evidence of the need for interventions to support both word recognition and linguistic comprehension to better reading comprehension.

Bilingual children judge moral, social, and language violations as less transgressive than monolingual children

Learning the rules and expectations that govern our social interactions is one of the major challenges of development. The current study examined whether bilingualism is associated with differences in children’s developing social knowledge. We presented 54 four- to six-year-old monolingual and bilingual children with vignettes of moral (e.g., hitting), social (e.g., wearing pants on one's head), and language (e.g., calling a common object by a nonsense word) transgressions, and asked about their permissibility. In line with previous research findings, results demonstrate that all children evaluated moral violations more harshly than conventional violations. Notably, however, bilingual children were more permissive of violations across moral, social, and language domains than monolingual children. These findings yield new insights into the role of early experience on the development of social knowledge. We propose that bilinguals’ unique linguistic and social experiences influence their understanding of moral and conventional rules.

How Words Can and Cannot Be Learned by Observation

Three experiments explored how words are learned from hearing them across contexts. Adults watched 40-s videotaped vignettes of parents uttering target words (in sentences) to their infants. Videos were muted except for a beep or nonsense word inserted where each “mystery word” was uttered. Participants were to identify the word. Exp 1 demonstrated that most (90%) of these natural learning instances are quite uninformative, whereas a small minority (7%) are highly informative, as indexed by participants’ identification accuracy. Preschoolers showed similar information sensitivity in a shorter experimental version. Two further experiments explored how cross-situational information helps, by manipulating the serial ordering of highly informative vignettes in five contexts. Response patterns revealed a learning procedure in which only a single meaning is hypothesized and retained across learning instances, unless disconfirmed. Neither alternative hypothesized meanings nor details of past learning situations were retained. These findings challenge current models of cross-situational learning. Learners appear to use a one-trial fast mapping procedure, even under conditions of referential uncertainty.

A Nonsense Consonant-Vowel-Consonant Word Test to Assess Auditory Processing

Dichotic listening (DL), or how the two ears work together as a team, is often used in the assessment of auditory processing disorders in both children and adults. Currently, the battery of dichotic tests includes stimuli containing words, digits, and nonsense consonant–vowel syllables. Single-syllable nonsense words are of particular use in assessing processing abilities because they can evaluate auditory processing without a listener’s dependence on linguistic knowledge. Therefore, nonsense words may assess auditory processes independently of previous vocabulary knowledge.This study is designed to assess the clinical applicability and face validity of a nonsense word DL test in a young adult population.This study included an experimental design to investigate the performance of young adult listeners on a Dichotic Nonsense Word (DNW) test spoken by a male and female speaker. The results were compared with one study that investigated young adult listener’s performance on dichotic tests of English words.A total of 100 young adult participants were recruited from the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh to participate in the study. The participants ranged in age from 20 to 30, with an average age of 23, and all participants had normal hearing.DL performance was measured in all participants using the Dichotic Words Test (DWT) and the newly developed DNW test. Kolmogorov–Smirnoff tests of normality were used to assess distribution of right- and left-ear scores. Criterion cutoff scores were determined for the percent correct scores in the nondominant ear and dominant ear and for ear advantage.Scores were significantly different between the two tests in the right ear, Z = −8.258, p < 0.001, and in the left ear, Z = −8.471, p < 0.001. Scores within each test were higher for the right ear than for the left ear, and scores for both ears were significantly lower on the DNW test than for the DWT. Ear advantage scores from the DNW test were significantly larger than those obtained from the DWT. The low and high 95% criterion cutoff ranges for the DNW test were considerably wider than the 95% criterion cutoff ranges for the DWT.Results indicate that the new DNW test may be a useful clinical tool within a test battery for evaluating auditory processing skills independent of vocabulary knowledge.