The research reported here was designed to examine a number of factors that findings from verbal learning studies indicate should affect the recall and transfer of word identification materials. Sight word and phonics-based or rule-based learning were investigated in 112 kindergarteners who were identified as nonreaders. Groups were trained on…

There are basically two different models for the word recognition process. One model postulates that a reader primarily uses sound/symbol cues to recognize a word; a second model states that a reader focuses mainly on whole-word characteristics. To determine which model best fits beginning and adult readers, a multiple regression analysis was…

The purpose of this investigation was to study the effect of controlling the letters used in words both for a training program designed to improve visual discrimination and for a word recognition task. The experiment was designed to investigate the influence of simultaneous and successive discrimination learning with stimuli which varied in…

Research with kindergarten children showed that low imagery words were more difficult to recall than high imagery words. (MKM)

Critiques an experiment by M. Arlin, M. Scott, and J. Webster (see EJ 206 153) in which their pictures as an aid to learning hypothesis contrasts with the focal attention hypothesis supported by research by H. Singer, S. J. Samuels, and J. Spiroff (see EJ 105 648). (MKM)

Reports a study of readers' use of context and letter sound as polysyllabic decoding strategies, and a study of the effect of intervention strategies on subjects who do not effectively use context. Concludes that intervention strategies do not improve the performances of students who are not good users of context. (RS)

Reviews recent investigations that analyze the word-recognition responses of children taught by different methods and reanalyzes the results of W. Wiley's 1928 naturalistic experiment in order to deduce the nature of the process underlying the learning of words. (Author/CS)

The history of teaching people to read is explored from the introduction of the Greek alphabet about 3,000 years ago to the present renewed interest in sound symbol relationships. Greek schoolboys were required to learn first the alphabet in order, next commonly used syllables, and then words. English was first written in the Latin alphabet using…

Reports on an investigation of the effects of teaching first grade children two sets of six words by phonics and sight word methods in three instructional conditions with either a selection or production response. (MKM)

Compares effectiveness of four different methods for acquiring initial reading vocabulary--onset plus vowel, rimes, phoneme segmentation and blending, and simple repetition of whole words. Finds that beginning nonreaders acquired the trained words fastest in the onset and rime conditions, and most slowly in the whole word condition. Finds the same…

A study was conducted to test the thesis that teaching word recognition skills in a manner compatible with the learner's auditory or visual modality preference would facilitate beginning reading instruction. A group of 62 students in two first grade classrooms was studied; one class stressed the presentation of words as whole units, the other…

This study compared the effectiveness of reading instruction at the onset-rime level, phoneme level, and whole word level with 48 first graders. Both phoneme and onset-rime groups were significantly more accurate than whole word groups, and there was a tendency for the onset-rime group to outperform all other groups. (Author/DB)

Three scanning/encoding training conditions were compared with a control condition in transfer tasks involving learning and recognizing six minimally contrasting, single-syllable word-like forms. The scanning/encoding treatments failed to differ from the controls in prereading kindergarteners, which was attributed to the difficulty of the transfer…

Ten auditory and ten visual aptitude measures were administered in the middle of first grade to a sample of 58 low readers. More than half of this low reader sample had scored more than a year below expected grade level on two or more aptitudes. Word recognition measures were administered after four months of sight word instruction and again after…