Purpose: Reading comprehension is consistently poor in many school-age children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this tutorial is to provide an overview from a multicomponent view on the many predictors that may contribute to reading comprehension difficulties in ASD. Method: This tutorial reviews current literature on profiles…

Word frequency is an important predictor of lexical-decision task performance. The current study further examined the role of this variable by exploring the influence of frequency trajectory. Frequency trajectory is measured by how often a word occurs in childhood relative to adulthood. Past research on the role of this variable in word…

This article examines current research on the role and importance of lower-level processes in second language (L2) reading. The focus is on word recognition and its subcomponent processes, including various phonological and orthographic processes. Issues related to syntactic and semantic processes and their relationship with word recognition are…

The simple view of reading posits that reading comprehension can be decomposed into a print-specific component (concerning decoding and sight word reading) and a language comprehension component (concerning verbal and metalinguistic skills not related to print). One might properly consider lexical skills, indexed by vocabulary measures, part of…

This family-risk (FR) study examined whether the literacy skills of parents with dyslexia are predictive of the literacy skills of their offspring. We report data from 31 child-parent dyads where both had dyslexia (FR-D) and 68 dyads where the child did not have dyslexia (FR-ND). Findings supported the differences in liability of FR children with…

Children's social skills are an important class of learned behaviors that facilitate success in the classroom; the primary method used in the assessment of social skills involves having parents or teachers complete standardized checklists using judgments of frequency or intensity. Children's (N = 1,102) social skills were modeled as time-varying…

The purpose of this study was to examine the developmental trajectory of speed and accuracy of words in context and in isolation among skilled, average, and less skilled readers (N = 201). The authors assessed fluency of words read in isolation and in contextual measures in the fall, winter, and spring of 1st grade. They performed a multivariate…

Forty-eight adults were trained on monosyllabic pseudowords and their meanings and then tested in vocal spelling. The orthographic inconsistency of the rime (e.g. "orn, awn" for "glorn") and the number of learning trials affected accuracy and response latency in the vocal spelling test. In addition, orthographic typicality as assessed by neighbour…

Traditional neuropsychology employs visual half-field (VHF) experiments to assess cerebral language dominance. This approach is based on the assumption that left cerebral dominance for language leads to faster and more accurate recognition of words in the right visual half-field (RVF) than in the left visual half-field (LVF) during tachistoscopic…

The purpose of this study was to compare the contribution of two different versions of working memory to word reading and reading comprehension in relation to phonological awareness and rapid naming speed. Fifty children were administered two measures of working memory, namely an adaptation of the Daneman and Carpenter sentence span task and…

The objectives of the present study were twofold: (a) to explore the interrelationship among distal, proximal cognitive skills, and word reading; and (b) to identify those cognitive processes that predict phonological awareness and rapid naming. Seventy First-Nation Canadian children attending grades 3 and 4 were examined on phonological…

The purpose of this study was to assess the roles of oral language and phonological awareness on reading performance in grade 3 bilingual students. Several hierarchical models assessed the best predictors of third grade English and Spanish word attack, word identification and reading comprehension. Predictor variables were measures of phonological…

Seventy-six children ages 3 to 5 were individually read two storybooks that had been specially formatted to contain salient printed words within the text, and illustrations and text on left or right-facing pages. The reader pointed to each word while reading to half of the children. After each book, children were asked to recognize elements of the…

Instruction in English as a foreign language at an early age is becoming more common worldwide even though the effects of this early instruction are not yet known. This study investigated the English and Chinese language performance of students enrolled in early English immersion in a Chinese primary school. In addition, factors that could predict…

People recall taboo words better than neutral words in many experimental contexts. The present rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) experiments demonstrated this taboo-superiority effect for immediate recall of mixed lists containing taboo and neutral words matched for familiarity, length, and category coherence. Under binding theory (MacKay et…