Investigated how working memory differences between learning-disabled and nondisabled children reflect a specific or generalized deficit and whether limitations in enhancement of learning-disabled student's working memory performance are attributable to process or storage functions. Results suggest that learning-disabled suffer generalized working…

Presents a review of the resources, conclusions, and limitations of the data on trends in reading ability in America between 1840 and 1990. Shows that, contrary to popular belief, today's students read better than yesterday's. (SR)

Three to five-year-olds' visual discrimination and phonetic sound awareness were assessed, their knowledge about storybook reading and writing was investigated, and their play with blocks was observed. Found that children's reading and writing behaviors advanced with age, and that children at different reading and writing levels showed different…

A study involving 48 undergraduates found a link between motion detection and letter-position encoding and a positive relationship, albeit a nonlinear one, between motion detection threshold and the likelihood of making letter errors. This result held when age, IQ, reading age, and phonological awareness were taken into account. (CR)

Uses longitudinal data on sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth to investigate the influence of father presence on behavioral and cognitive outcomes for children. Results indicate that children who live in one-parent families exhibit more behavioral problems and have lower mathematics and reading ability than children in…

A Dutch intervention program proved to be successful with 109 10-year-old children with dyslexia and 29 children with reading problems and cognitive deficits or psychiatric symptoms. The children with pure dyslexia profited most. Differences in treatment outcomes were related to the absolute level of word reading and age at intake. (Author/CR)

A study involving 205 children from the Danish island of Bornholm found significant paths from early language abilities at age 3 through expressive and receptive language in kindergarten via language awareness in kindergarten and word decoding in grade 2 to sentence reading in grades 3 and 4. (Author/CR)

A follow-on study was conducted on first-grade and third-grade children who were tested on a word identification measure of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test. Results found decoding strategy was highly correlated with concurrent reading test scores. Use of phonetic decoding was a strong positive predictor and whole word decoding a negative…

This study examined informal phonological awareness measures as predictors of first-grade broad reading ability with 91 former Head Start students. Regression analyses indicted that three phonological awareness tasks (invented spelling, categorization, and blending) were the most predictive of standardized reading measures obtained at the end of…

Language and reading outcomes at age 13 were examined in 22 children who were late talkers as toddlers. Compared to 14 controls, children who were late talkers had significantly poorer vocabulary, grammar, reading/spelling, and verbal memory skills, although they performed in the average range on most language and academic tasks. (Contains…

A study examined phonological awareness in 17 children with Down syndrome (ages 9-14). Children demonstrated measurable levels of phonological awareness. Significant positive correlations were found among phonological awareness and reading and spelling competence, and ability to spell non-words and non-verbal measures. (Contains references.)…

Investigated the contribution of two working-memory systems (the articulatory loop and the central executive) to the performance differences between learning-disabled and skilled readers. Found that, compared to skilled readers, learning-disabled readers experienced constraints in the articulatory and long-term memory system, and suffered…

Investigates what skills are best able to account for orthographic analogy use during early reading and tests the finding that there is no independent association between reading ability and orthographic analogy use. Suggests that phonemic awareness and reading experience best account for analogy use, while orthographic analogy use contributes to…

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…

The Stroop paradigm was used to examine the role of phonological activation in semantic access and its development in reading Chinese characters. Subjects (age 7-23 years) of different reading ability were asked to name the display color of Chinese characters. The characters were displayed in four different colors: red, yellow, blue and green.…