In this chapter, we examine adult- and child-focused models of reading with respect to cognitive processing deficits associated with low literacy. We examine influential integrative models of reading and reading comprehension. We then review the empirical literature on components of reading ability, subdivided into three categories: language…

The contribution of linguistic and cognitive variables to reading processes might vary depending on the particularities of the languages studied. This view is thought to be particularly true for Arabic which is a diglossic language and has particular orthographic and morpho-syntactic systems. This cross-sectional study examined the contribution of…

This study addresses whether reading involves a process termed semantic and phonological ability to adjust recoding (SPAAR). It was hypothesized that SPAAR helps readers link inaccurate pronunciations to lexical entries (e.g., "spynitch" to "spinach"). Psychometric properties of the Mispronunciation Correction Task (MCT), a…

The mental lexicon plays a central role in reading comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). It encompasses the number of lexical entries in spoken and written language (vocabulary breadth), the semantic quality of these entries (vocabulary depth), and the connection strength between lexical representations (semantic relatedness); as such, it…

Paired associated learning (PAL) is a critical skill for making arbitrary associations among print, pronunciation and meaning in reading development. Extended from past research of PAL, this study investigated whether PAL operated flexibly to linguistic demands of languages, by examining word reading abilities in Chinese-English bilingual…

Decisions about whether pairs of letter strings are both words or not are faster for semantically related words than unrelated words. Two experiments showed the semantic relatedness effect is greatly reduced when orthographically illegal, unpronounceable strings were used as negative items. Lexical decisions involve options on codes representing…

Four experiments examined the "distinctiveness of encoding" hypothesis with respect to recall of text materials. Specifically, they investigated: (1) recall of distinctively versus nondistinctively encoded material; (2) readers' interactions with the semantic base of the text; (3) encoding and recall of semantic content; and (4) the role…

The purpose of this study was to examine the character identification strategies of Chinese children during their oral reading of a continuous text. Eighteen second graders' oral reading of a story, as well as an interview about their decoding strategies, were audiotaped and transcribed. The results generally converged with those of previous oral…

Early and late first-grade children, third-grade poor and good readers, and adults named pictures under several interference conditions: with embedded intracategory or extracategory words, pronounceable or nonpronounceable letter strings, and visual noise. (Author/JMB)

Two tasks of word identification were proposed to children in their last year of upper preschool classes. The results show that identification is not based on an holistic processing but on an analytic one: some letters are enough, especially the first ones. Moreover, their order does not matter. During this period where reading is visuo-semantic…

While semantic development has been alleged to proceed slowly, reading instruction begins early in the child's school career. Yet, little research has been addressed toward understanding how beginning readers extract meaning from the printed word. This paper reports two experiments that measured latencies in a picture-word interference task to…

Working from theories of text grammar and logic, the authors suggest and tentatively confirm several hypotheses concerning the role of micro- and macro-structures in comprehension and recall of texts. (Text is in French.) (DB)

Fourteen adults who stuttered and 14 adults who did not participated in a self-paced word-by-word reading experiment. Results indicated that the two groups were not different with respect to speed of word identification but that persons who stuttered retrieved semantic information more slowly than those who did not stutter. (Author/PB)

Two major hypotheses are currently at issue concerning the effects of semantic context on ambiguous word recognition: (1) the selective-retrieval hypothesis (SRH) maintains that a single meaning is retrieved from memory, and (2) the nonselective-retrieval hypothesis maintains that all meanings are retrieved from memory. To help clear up this…

This research investigates the role of speech recoding, particularly its relationship to meaning analysis during reading. Experiment I documents a speech processing conflict; Experiment II analyzes this conflict; and Experiment III demonstrates contributions of speech and meaning processes to reading memory. Results are related to three classes of…