Purpose: To assess strengths and weaknesses of the reading level (RL) match approach and its potential to generate insights regarding the cognitive foundations of reading ability and disability. Method: We applied RL-match design to a sample of 2nd-6th graders reading a consistent orthography, Russian, using an "extreme phenotype"…

Despite a history of reading or spelling difficulties, some adults attain age-appropriate spelling skills and succeed at university. We compared the spelling of 29 such high-functioning dyslexics with that of 28 typical students, matched on general spelling ability, and controlling for vocabulary and non-verbal intelligence. Participants wrote…

Orthographic and phonological processing skills have been shown to vary as a function of reader skill (Stanovich & West, "Reading Research Quarterly, 24", 402-433, 1989; Unsworth & Pexman, "Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56A", 63-81, 2003). One variable known to contribute to differences between readers of higher and lower skill is…

Examines research on the impact of sub-word levels in the computation of word phonology for alphabetic English and logographic Japanese kanji. Suggests some involvement of sub-word level processing in the computation of word phonology in kanji. Suggests structural differences between On-reading words (of Chinese origin) and Kun-reading word (of…

Provides an alternative explanation of the divergent findings appearing in the literature on conceptual tempo and reading acquisition. (HOD)

This article provides a brief overview of the various areas of research that have served to clarify the condition of dyslexia. Using topics and content appearing in A. L. Benton and D. Pearl's (1978) text, Dyslexia: An Appraisal of Current Knowledge, as the point of departure, evolution of the definitions of dyslexia is traced to the current and…

Examines the performance of normal and disabled readers in recognizing whether orally presented letter strings represent real words. Finds that disabled readers have difficulty in making available the full range of semantic cues when processing stimuli in an acoustic form, supporting a verbal-processing deficit hypothesis of reading disability.…

Examines accuracy as a function of native language and reading ability of grade two children who spelled pseudo-words and real words. Substantiates the hypothesis that poor readers would spell more poorly than average readers. Finds second language speakers also displayed phonological deficits relative to native speakers; however, they performed…

The assumption that phonological processes support comprehension guided two experiments in manipulating the similarity of the consonant code both within silently read sentences and between these sentences and concurrently vocalized phrases. The first experiment examined whether tongue-twisters would take longer to read than phonetically…

An investigation of native language influence on second-language (English) reading processed indicated that, when essential phonological information was inaccessible, Arabic and Spanish phonographic readers were seriously impaired, although Japanese morphographic readers were not affected. (83 references) (Author/CB)

Parsing sentences into meaningful phrases and clauses is an essential step in language comprehension, and parsing difficulty is a common reading problem. Prosody (intonation, stress, and rhythm) provides information about phrase and clause boundaries in spoken language that is not available in written language. In an experiment to test whether…

Twenty-two Cantonese-speaking Chinese students and 16 Spanish-speaking students were tested for short-term memory encoding strategies on word-recognition tests. Chinese speakers were found to encode Chinese ideographs phonologically, but both Chinese and Spanish learners of English were found to encode English words visually. (Author/CFM)