There has been much recent interest in letter position coding in adults, but little is known about the development of this process in children learning to read. Here, the letter position coding abilities of 127 children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 (aged 7-10 years) were examined by comparing their performance in reading aloud "migratable" words (e.g.,…

We investigated whether young English-French biliterate children can distinguish between English and French orthographic patterns. Children in French immersion programs were asked to play a dictionary game when they were in Grade 2 and again when they were in Grade 3. They were shown pseudowords that contained either an English spelling pattern or…

The aim of the study was to undertake a behavioral investigation of the development of automatic orthographic processing during reading acquisition in French. Following Castles and colleagues' 2007 study ("Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 97," 165-182) and their lexical tuning hypothesis framework, substituted-letter and…

We examined how rapid automatized naming (RAN) components--articulation time and pause time--predict word and text reading fluency in a consistent orthography (Greek). In total, 68 children were followed from Grade 2 to Grade 6 and were assessed three times on RAN (Digits and Objects), phonological awareness, orthographic processing, speed of…

Experienced readers show influences of orthographic knowledge on tasks ostensibly tapping phonemic awareness. Here we draw on data from an experimental training study to demonstrate that even preschoolers show influences of their emerging orthographic abilities in such tasks. A total of 40 children were taught some letter-sound correspondences but…

The self-teaching hypothesis suggests that children learn orthographic structure of words through the experience of phonologically recoding them. The current study is an individual differences analysis of the self-teaching hypothesis. A total of 40 children in Grades 2 and 3 (7-9 years of age) completed tests of phonological recoding, word…

This study examined the influence of the number of orthographically similar candidates, neighborhood size, on the word and pseudoword naming performance of normal, dyslexic, and beginning readers. Participants were 23 Dutch dyslexic fourth-graders matched to 23 fourth-grade chronological age controls and 17 second-grade reading age controls.…

Among 30 Hong Kong Chinese fourth graders, sensitivities to character and word constructions were examined in judgment tasks at each level. There were three conditions across both tasks: the real condition, consisting of either actual two-character compound Chinese words or real Chinese compound characters; the reversed condition, with either the…

The importance of phonological awareness for learning to read may depend on the linguistic properties of a language. This study provides a careful examination of this language-specific theory by exploring the role of phoneme-level awareness in Mandarin Chinese, a language with an orthography that, at its surface, appears to require little…

Most theories of reading development assume a shift from slow sequential subword decoding to automatic processing of orthographic word forms. We hypothesized that this shift should be reflected in a concomitant shift in reading-related cognitive functions. The current study investigated the cognitive dynamics underlying reading development in a…

This study investigated whether semantic information presented along with novel printed nonwords facilitates orthographic learning and examined predictors of individual differences in this important literacy skill. A sample of 35 fourth graders was tested on a variety of language and literacy tests, and participants were then exposed to 10 target…

Research to date has proposed four main variables involved in reading development: phonological awareness, naming speed, orthographic knowledge, and morphological awareness. Although each of these variables has been examined in the context of one or two of the other variables, this study examines all four factors together to assess their unique…

A masked priming procedure was used to explore developmental changes in the tuning of lexical word recognition processes. Lexical tuning was assessed by examining the degree of masked form priming and used two different types of prime-target lexical similarity: one letter different (e.g., rlay [right arrow] PLAY) and transposed letters (e.g., lpay…

The influence of orthography on children's online auditory word recognition was studied from the end of Grade 4 to the end of Grade 9 by examining the orthographic consistency effect in auditory lexical decision. Fourth-graders showed evidence of a widespread influence of orthography in their spoken word recognition system; words with rimes that…

This experiment investigated orthographic learning via self-teaching in 8- and 9-year-olds learning to read English. Children were exposed to novel words, and following a 1- or 7-day delay interval, orthographic learning was assessed by asking children to select previously seen novel words from an array of visually and phonologically similar…