Discrimination of reversible mirrored letters (e.g., d and b) poses a challenge when learning to read as it requires overcoming "mirror invariance," an evolutionary-old perceptual tendency of processing mirror images as equivalent. The present study investigated "when," in reading development, mirror-image discrimination…

FOR THE THIRD YEAR, THE FOLLOWING FOUR DIFFERENT METHODS OF TEACHING READING WERE CONTRASTED--(1) THE INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET, (2) A PHONIC, FILMSTRIP, WHOLE-CLASS APPROACH, (3) A WHOLE-WORD, ECLECTIC BASAL READER METHOD, AND (4) THE PRECEDING APPROACH SUPPLEMENTED BY A PHONICS PROGRAM. SOME 400 FIRST-GRADE PUPILS WERE RANDOMLY ASSIGNED TO…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the longitudinal effects of i/t/a and T.O. instruction on students' reading, spelling, and language abilities at the end of third grade. It was primarily concerned with determining whether the effects of early reading instruction, which were not statistically evident at the end of second grade, became…

THREE METHODS OF TEACHING READING, THE INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET (ITA), THE DIACRITICAL MARKING SYSTEM (DMS), AND THE TRADITIONAL ORTHOGRAPHY (TO) METHOD WERE COMPARED IN 21 FIRST GRADES FOR THE THIRD YEAR. A FOLLOWUP STUDY WAS MADE OF THE NEW DMS GROUP FOR A SECOND YEAR. TWO HUNDRED NINETY-NINE STUDENTS OF AN ORIGINAL SAMPLE OF 393 STUDENTS WERE…

Examines the development of word recognition skills of 80 school children (grades two-four). Good beginning readers rapidly learn to recognize high frequency words from visual input alone and simultaneously expand and consolidate spelling sound correspondences. Younger and poor readers rely more on phonological information in word decoding.…