In this classic edition of their ground-breaking work, Usha Goswami and Peter Bryant revisit their influential theory about how phonological skills support the development of literacy. The book describes three causal factors which can account for children's reading and spelling development: (1) pre­school phonological knowledge of rhyme and…

In this article in this "American Annals of the Deaf" special issue that also includes the present article, Grushkin (EJ1174123) argues that the writing difficulties of many deaf and hard of hearing children result primarily from the orthographic nature of the writing system; he proposes a new system based on features found in signed…

A collection of cognitive, linguistic, and spelling measures were administered to third-grade English L1 and L2 learners. To capture formative assessments of children's developing mental graphemic representations (MGRs), spelling errors in isolation were subjected to analysis across three metrics: (1) Phonological constrained; (2)…

To clarify the link between anomalous letter processing and developmental dyslexia, we examined the impact of surrounding contours on letter vs. pseudo-letter processing by three groups of children--phonological dyslexics and two controls, one matched for chronological age, the other for reading level--and three groups of adults differing by…

Poor parallel letter-string processing in developmental dyslexia was taken as evidence of poor visual attention (VA) span, that is, a limitation of visual attentional resources that affects multi-character processing. However, the use of letter stimuli in oral report tasks was challenged on its capacity to highlight a VA span disorder. In…

The special circumstances of bilingual and second language literacy learning offer investigators an important additional vantage point from which to better understand the components of reading ability. Cross-writing system comparisons complement this perspective. Comparing writing systems and how children learn to read through the medium of each…

Children (n = 122) and adults (n = 200) with dyslexia completed rapid automatic naming (RAN) letters, rapid automatic switching (RAS) letters and numbers, executive function (inhibition, verbal fluency), and phonological working memory tasks. Typically developing 3rd (n = 117) and 5th (n = 103) graders completed the RAS task. Instead of analyzing…

Reviews "Great Debate" over code emphasis versus meaning emphasis in reading instruction, concluding incidental instruction provided by writing activities of whole language do not guarantee alphabetic understanding. Attempts to disassociate instruction in alphabetic coding from criticism of components of whole-language instruction and challenges…

This study examined the influence of phonological memory and rapid naming on the development of letter knowledge. Participants were 77 Dutch children, who were followed from the start of their first kindergarten year (mean age 4 years 6.8 months) to the end of their second kindergarten year. Phonological memory was assessed by a nonword repetition…