The relationship of reading performance to difficulty level of material was the focus of this study. Participants in the study were 83 fourth graders from four urban schools. Each student was administered passages at different levels of challenge (independent, instructional, frustration) based on word identification accuracy. Passages were scored…

"Reading Mastery," one of several curriculum components that constitute the "Direct Instruction" curriculum from SRA/McGraw-Hill, is designed to provide systematic instruction in reading to students in grades K-6. "Reading Mastery," which can be used as an intervention program for struggling readers, as a supplement…

Investigates whether readers of Turkish (which has a simple relation between spelling and sound) depend more on decoding for word recognition than readers of English (which has an "opaque" orthography). Suggests that readers become less dependent on phonological mediation with experience and that this reduction is more rapid for readers of opaque…

Concludes that poor readers are equally able to generate phonological information from nonwords as their reading age controls, and that there is no evidence to suggest that the poor readers suffer from a phonological dysfunction. (RS)

Reviews the literature on phonic generalizations and presents a formula measuring the usefulness of word recognition, concluding that further research is needed. (RB)

Finds evidence for a relationship between children's ability to use word recognition generalizations and their reading achievement, although they may not need to be able to verbalize those generalizations. (Author/FL)

Investigates differences among children in relative reliance on spelling-sound rules v word-specific associations in reading words. The tendency to rely on rules is correlated with ability to read regular words. Findings indicate that analogies and smaller-unit rules are used in the reading tasks. (JMB)

Assesses the role of the onset-rime structure in visual word recognition. Finds experiments 1 through 3 showed no evidence for the importance of onset-rime in children (2nd through 6th graders) or adults; experiment 4 with adults found onset-rime structure is important in oral reading. Suggests the onset-rime structure may be an important unit in…

A study explored word recognition and structural features of words as determinants of reading comprehension. Word recognition scores and comprehension scores for three age groups (6-7 years, 8-9 years, and 10-12 years) representing 1,200 children were used to examine the relationships of structural features of the word recognition task to…

Research on word recognition is listed in two sections: Part 1, 1950 to the present, and Part 2, 1900-1949. Citations in each section are alphabetized according to the author's last name and are followed by descriptive abstracts in Part 1 and by brief annotations in Part 2. In order to make this bibliography helpful to users with varying concepts…

Analyzes the reading disorder, hyperlexia, and suggests that further study of this syndrome may contribute to an understanding of both word recognition and comprehension in the total reading process. (AEA)

Investigates whether two different versions of the serial rapid automatized naming (RAN) task, using similar alphanumeric stimuli, would differentially predict performance on word level reading skills. Indicates that the RAN-Alternative measure explained significantly more unique variance in word recognition and orthographic-processing skills than…

Uses picture-word interference tasks to examine the relationship between reading achievement and the automatic recognition of familiar and less familiar words and pseudowords. Finds that achieving and nonachieving fourth-grade readers show similar automatic recognition of both familiar and less familiar words. (MM)