In this classic edition of their ground-breaking work, Usha Goswami and Peter Bryant revisit their influential theory about how phonological skills support the development of literacy. The book describes three causal factors which can account for children's reading and spelling development: (1) pre­school phonological knowledge of rhyme and…

Three studies were conducted to investigate changes in global procedures (memory for a whole word), component procedures (memory for a letter in a word), and serial procedures (memory for a letter sequence in a word) as a function of learning to read. (PCB)

Examines the notion that words are sometimes perceived with greater ease than letters and that word shape sometimes plays a role in the perception of words. The data collected from 40 Israeli kindergarteners revealed that beginning readers found it easier to identify single letters than whole words, thus refuting the above notion. (Author/AS)

This paper examines the need for a transcription system that allows the symbolization of nonnormal articulations. The paper then describes transcription systems proposed by clinical phoneticians and speech pathologists, especially PRDS (phonetic representation of disordered speech) symbols and extensions of the International Phonetic Alphabet.…

First grade students (n=221) were tested on measures of verbal fluency, visual attention, phonological awareness, orthographic recognition, rapid automated naming (RAN) of letters and objects, and reading. Findings indicated that word reading was directly and significantly predicted by RAN letter naming and general RAN cognitive processing time of…

Reports an experiment on the rapid naming of printed letter strings by third- and fifth-grade Yugoslavian children. As is consistent with previous experiments on adults, the phonologically ambiguous form of a word or pseudoword was named much more slowly than the phonologically unambiguous form. (Author/BE)

G. Wolford's perturbation model of letter identification is designed to account for identification errors of briefly presented characters. Its chief assumptions are that features are extracted in parallel, that some of these features become perturbed or mislocalized, and that mislocalizations are more likely to occur in the direction of the fovea…

This article argues for widening the research base on reading from the specific constraints of reading in alphabetic scripts to a larger database covering a variety of scripts. Several recent studies on reading the alphasyllabaries of India are reviewed. Findings indicate that alphasyllabaries are not processed in the same manner as alphabets.…

Seventy-three children (ages 4-18) with hearing impairments were administered the Auditory Perception of Alphabet Letters test. Results indicated excellent reliability, and high intercorrelations with both open-set and closed-set auditory tests. The study concludes that spoken names of alphabet letters can be employed as an effective auditory…

This study, involving 47 students in grades 2-10, investigated letter-naming speed to determine whether it measures cognitive speed, a theoretical factor that purportedly influences reading rate. It was determined that cognitive speed and cognitive power are two independent factors and that letter-naming speed can be used to measure cognitive…

This book remains a comprehensive, myth-debunking examination of how L1 features (orthographic system, phonology, morphology) can influence English L2 reading at the "bottom" of the reading process. It provides a thorough but very accessible linguistic/psycholinguistic examination of the lowest levels of the reading process. It is both theoretical…

Reports results of four experiments testing whether syllable structure affects children's performance in phonemic analysis tasks and in other reading related tasks. The experiments were motivated by theories that syllables consist of an onset (initial consonant or consonant cluster) and a rime (vowel and any following consonants). (AS/Author)

A cohort of 92 children was followed through sixth grade to investigate the relationship of preschool skills and first-grade phonological awareness to later reading and spelling abilities. In particular, the focus was on the changing roles of letter naming, orthographic awareness, and phonological processing in prediction of reading vocabulary,…

This bibliography provides citations to studies of word/letter frequencies and vocabulary applications based on issues of word frequency. While the original intent was to gather information pertinent to developing communication board vocabularies for argumentative communication systems, these resources should be useful for a variety of word…

A study was made of similarities and differences in parent-child interaction in two contexts: a book-reading activity and a home computer activity involving an alphabet program. A total of 20 children 3 years of age and their parents (10 children with mothers, 10 with fathers) were videotaped in two 12-minute sessions of each activity. A variety…