Finds that the variation in literacy activity found among undergraduate college students is associated with the ability to interpret texts by enhancing the ability to deal with subtle distinctions among mental-state verbs; however, the view that print exposure fosters decontextualized reasoning, as typified in syllogistic reasoning, received only…

Argues that use of intelligence as an aptitude benchmark in the definition of dyslexia conceals illogical assumptions about the concept of potential. Concludes that the validity of a severe discrepancy between aptitude and achievement as the defining feature of dyslexia has yet to be established sufficiently to justify differential educational…

Primary school children performed a discrete-trial Stroop task in which they named the colors of stimuli that either matched or did not match items that were being concurrently held in memory. Results indicated a developmental trend toward the color being named faster when the stimulus matched the item held in memory. (Author/HOD)

A discrete-trial reaction time methodology was employed measuring speeds of skilled and less skilled readers in naming colors, pictures, numbers, letters, and words. Less skilled nondyslexic children don't exhibit a general name retrieval deficit; rather, research shows phonological analysis skills are integral in early reading acquisition.…

The effect of orthographic structure on the word search performance of good and poor third-grade readers is examined. (MP)

Investigates the use of graphic and contextual information in word recognition and the extent to which good and poor readers are flexible in their ability to trade off one type of information for another when the situation warrants. (HOD)

Fourth and sixth graders and adults read words preceded by either a congruous, incongruous, or no-sentence context, and then completed another task where they named the color of the target word. Results suggested that context effects are mediated by automatic processes which decrease in importance with age and reading ability. (Author/JMB)

Finds a significant correlation between Reaction Time (RT) and reading ability; however, the zero-order correlation between RT and word recognition ability was largely due to variance shared with phonological awareness and general cognitive ability. Concludes RT explained almost no unique variance after phonological sensitivity and general…

A longitudinal study of growth in reading ability employed two new indicators of print exposure that use a checklist-with-foils logic and that have very brief administration times. Subjects, 52 boys and 46 girls from 4 different fourth- and fifth-grade classes in a religiously-affiliated private school, completed the Title Recognition Test (TRT)…

Reports on a study that investigated the nature of the relationship between reading ability and performance on intelligence tests. Reveals a number of findings. (FL)

In this study, we investigated the relationships between rapid naming of letters, digits and colours, and reading ability and executive function. We gave fifty-six grade three and four children rapid automatised naming tasks using letters and digits as stimuli, executive function measures including the Stroop task, a working memory task and the…

Fourth and fifth graders marked on a checklist the titles and authors of children's books which they recognized. This measure of exposure to print was correlated with children's growth in reading ability as measured by standardized tests. Individual differences in growth in reading were significantly related to the measure. (BC)

Two studies investigated the use of graphic and contextual information in word recognition, and the extent to which good and poor fourth grade readers were flexible in their ability to trade off one type of information for another as situations warranted. The subjects orally read stories containing ten altered words, with a single letter…

Reports that although the traditional domain of developmental lag models has been dyslexia, this type of model is actually more helpful as an aid to understanding the normal achievement variations found among nondyslexic children. (FL)

The speed and accuracy of skilled and less skilled first-grade readers were assessed in the fall and spring. Children read random lists of words and coherent paragraphs. Poor decoding skills, rather than an inability to use content to facilitate word recognition, caused the poor performance of less skilled readers. (Author/BS)