Studies profoundly deaf children's responses to picture book reading in a preschool environment as compared to responses of hearing children. Finds that in spite of a severe delay in learning language, deaf children's responses to the picture books were similar to those of hearing children. Concludes that deaf children learned a great deal about…

Investigates possible gender bias in the Slosson Intelligence Test (SIT) in relation to reading skills. Administers the SIT and the Diagnostic Reading Scales (DRS) to 66 subjects age 8.5 to 13.5 years. Indicates the SIT was a statistically significant predictor of DRS subtests that assess oral reading, silent reading, and listening comprehension.…

Presents data from a family literacy program, called the Toyota Families for Learning Program, and compares it to data from programs that focus primarily on adults or on children, but not both. Discusses outcomes for adults, and outcomes for children, and finds results to be promising but not definitive. (SR)

Assesses etiology of reading disability as a function of mathematics performance by subjecting data from 168 same-sex twin pairs where at least one member was reading disabled to quantitative genetic analysis. Suggests that genetic factors may be especially salient as a cause of reading disability in children with borderline deficits in…

Discusses aspects of phonological processing and linguistic awareness that may set the stage for initial reading development. Hypothesizes about the distinctness of phonological representations. Distinguishes phonological representations of high distinctness from other representations by many features. Compares the distinctness hypothesis to the…

Investigates the order of acquisition of phonological sensitivity skills among preschool and kindergarten children. Supports a developmental conceptualization of phonological sensitivity. Discusses findings in relation to their implications for improving assessment, early literacy instruction, and prevention of reading difficulties. (SG)

Discusses how the differing views held by teachers and immigrant parents and their children affect early reading instruction, secondary content reading, and reading involving technology. Demonstrates that immigrant students and their parents hold different beliefs about reading and schooling than those held by many teachers. Concludes it is…

Examines the effect of strategic reading instruction in conditions not previously studied: two third-grade classrooms of Navajo learners. Notes that one class received instruction designed to foster the use of reading strategies and the second class did not. Suggests that strategy instruction positively affected the behavior of the students in the…

Investigates word identification in Arabic and basic cognitive processes in reading-disabled (RD) and normal level readers of the same chronological age, and in younger normal readers at the same reading level. Indicates significant deficiencies in morphology, working memory, and syntactic and visual processing, with the most severe deficiencies…

Finds that engaged reading occurred in a fourth-grade classroom when students and teachers used interpretive tools to select, connect, and organize information in the text to construct meaningful interpretations and that there were cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational components to the engagement observed. (PA)

Compares the effectiveness of two oral reading practices on second graders' reading growth: shared book reading and round-robin reading. Concludes that the shared book experience was superior to round-robin reading in reducing young children's oral reading errors, improving their reading fluency, and improving their reading comprehension. (PA)

Explores the professional decision making of preservice elementary teachers regarding reasons given for selecting children's literature for classroom use. Finds that such decisions were influenced by concerns with how the literature could be employed in the classroom, the extent to which the teachers personally connected to the literature, and…

Finds that the number of books and the amount of time treatment group children read and/or were read to by family members significantly increased over no-treatment comparison children, especially for boys. (RS)

Explains why the Clinton administration's answer to illiteracy, embodied in the "America Reads Challenge," in the United States is not a solution and only diverts accountability from the failure of the public-education system. It argues that phonics is the best way to teach reading and provides the principles of reading instruction. (GR)

Investigates the amount of classroom time devoted to actual text reading and writing or talking about what was read during the reading period in elementary classrooms. Finds that students spent only half as much time learning about reading and writing as actually reading and writing. (RS)