US government mandates to implement intensive phonics instruction in elementary classrooms invoke an alleged scientific superiority of this approach over more meaning-centered models. But curiously absent from this scientific enterprise is a study of the phonics system itself. Advocates of intensive phonics have not demonstrated that the commonly…

Suggesting that the ability to identify words depends as much on contextual information available when one is reading for meaning as on decoding skills, this paper challenges traditional, mechanistic skills approaches to reading instruction. In addition, it contends that comprehending (relating written material to what one already knows) is a…

This report summarizes studies of perceptual, decoding, and lexical stages of processing in reading. Using a letter identification task, it was found that subjects who were low in overall reading ability scan a visual image more slowly than do high ability readers and are slower in identifying letters when they do not occur in a familiar sequence.…

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the nature of the reading process through an understanding of the general nature of sensory processing mechanisms which reorganize and restructure input signals for central recognition, and an understanding of how the grammar of the language functions in defining the set of possible sentences in…

No difference was found in recall of nonverbal stimuli between normal and learning disabled readers, suggesting that primary reading deficits in learning disabled children are related to verbal encoding deficiencies (visual-verbal integration) and not to deficiencies of visual memory, as suggested by the perceptual deficit hypothesis. (Author/GDC)

This article discusses ways of analyzing errors made in oral reading; interpreting mistakes in the correct way enables the teacher to understand why the reader is making them and to help overcome the reading difficulties they indicate. (JD)

Shows how older, largely context-free models of reading and its instruction became changed into a multidimensional, context-dependent orientation toward written language and the reading process and concludes with suggestions for using a variety of contextual strategies to increase reading comprehension. (HOD)

Examines the relationships among accuracy and latency of word recognition and comprehension by nonfluent readers and whether component letter or holistic processing was used in word recognition by these same readers. (HOD)

The results of experiments conducted with college-age subjects point to analogy and generalization as the most likely mechanisms for transferring spelling/sound correspondences in the absence of knowledge of the existence of the correspondences. (GT)

Bilingual subjects' decoding of texts in mixed language requires no more time than their decoding of material in homogeneous language. Bilingual speakers appear not to command two separate lexical lists, but only one basic internal dictionary consisting of the lexical items they have learned for both languages. (DB)

Two experiments showed increased use of orthographic rime correspondence in nonword reading tasks from second to fourth grade, with no further increase from fourth to sixth grade. The use of orthographic rime correspondences in reading ambiguous non-words was more strongly associated with word-level reading skills than was the use of…

Fourteen adults who stuttered and 14 adults who did not participated in a self-paced word-by-word reading experiment. Results indicated that the two groups were not different with respect to speed of word identification but that persons who stuttered retrieved semantic information more slowly than those who did not stutter. (Author/PB)

A study examined test-retest reliability, practice effects, and relations among normed measures of word identification and spelling and experimental measures of achievement and reading-related cognitive processing in 78 children (ages 6-8) with reading disabilities. There were strong relations between normed measures of decoding and spelling and…

After reviewing previous research on the acquisition of vocabulary through contextual clues, research carried out with 429 students in the upper grades of an Italian elementary school is discussed. (12 references) (CFM)