Purpose: Two types of orthographic knowledge were examined: i) knowledge of permissible letter combinations (general orthographic knowledge) and ii) knowledge of whole words (word-specific orthographic knowledge), to gain further insights into the relationship of general and word-specific orthographic knowledge with literacy skills. Method:…

Skilled reading requires fast and accurate access to previously encountered words stored in memory. Yet, little research addresses skills that support such lexical access. Based on theoretical predictions, one skill that may support lexical access is orthographic knowledge. Thus, our goal was to investigate the relation between lexical access and…

The study examines whether the average performance of the population with dyslexia in a working memory measure can be inferred dimensionally from the characteristics of the typical population. Specifically, we focused on Associative Phonological Working Memory (APWM), an ability that we predicted being impaired in dyslexia due to the relationship…

The goal of the paper was to investigate whether morphological units -- stems and suffixes -- influence orthographic processing by modulating visual attention demands to the task. Orthographic processing was measured with a visual one-back task requiring letters to be detected within pseudowords not including stems/suffixes, or containing real…

In this study, we examined the mechanism for the relationship between morphological awareness and Chinese character reading in a group of Hong Kong primary school children when they were in grade two (n = 176, mean age = 8.07) and grade three (n = 163, mean age = 9.02). The results showed that morphological awareness, morpheme family size and the…

Phonological coding plays an important role in reading for hearing students. Experimental findings regarding phonological coding in deaf readers are controversial, and whether deaf readers are able to use phonological coding remains unclear. In the current study we examined whether Chinese deaf students could use phonological coding during…

In a quasiregular orthography like English, children inevitably encounter irregular words during reading. Previous research suggests successful reading of an irregular word depends at least partially on a child's ability to address the mismatch between decoded form and stored word pronunciation, referred to as a child's set for variability, and…

Previous studies have established the relationship between behavioral problems and specific learning disorders (SLD); however, the exact mechanism by which behavioral disorders impact SLD remains unclear. This longitudinal study used the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to investigate how parents' judgment of children's behavioral problems changed…

This eye-tracking study explored how phonological encoding and speech production planning for successive words are coordinated in adult readers with dyslexia (N = 22) and control readers (N = 25) during "rapid automatized naming" (RAN). Using an object-RAN task, we orthogonally manipulated the word-form frequency and phonological…

This study examined the relation between Theory of Mind (ToM) and reading comprehension in 42 7- to 9-year-old Hong Kong Chinese children with autism and 55 typically developing peers (TD) who were comparable in age, nonverbal intelligence, and working memory. Relative to their TD peers, children with autism exhibited difficulties with reading…

Previous research has generally focused on understanding individual variation in either on-line processing or off-line comprehension even though some theories explicitly link difficulty in processing to comprehension problems. The goal of the current study was to examine individual variation in performance both during on-line and off-line reading…

This study investigated the association of timed visual processing tasks varying in levels of phonological processing with word reading. We tested 293 Chinese children on Cross Out, Visual Matching, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and Chinese character recognition across three to five years. Children's character recognition at ages 6 and 7…

Reading fluency undoubtedly underlies reading competence; yet, the role of executive functions (EFs) is less well understood. Here, we investigated the relation between children's reading fluency and EF. Children's (n = 82) reading and language performance was determined by standardized assessments and EF by parental questionnaire. Results…

The causes that individuals attribute to reading outcomes shape future behaviors, including engagement or persistence with learning tasks. Although previous reading motivation research has examined differences between typical and struggling readers, there may be unique dynamics related to varying levels of reading and attention skills. Using…

Potential implicit orthographic learning deficits were investigated in adults with dyslexia. An artificial grammar learning paradigm served to assess dyslexic and typical readers' ability to exploit information about chunk frequency, letter-position patterns, and specific string similarity, all of which have analogous constructs in real…