Students with moderate intellectual disabilities (MoID) typically are not taught decoding skills because they have difficulty mastering critical blending skills. In response to this skill deficit among students with MoID, an "Initial Phonics" instructional sequence was created that included student development of rapid and automatic retrieval of…

This longitudinal investigation on Dutch children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) aimed at determining the predictive value of statistically uncorrelated language proficiencies on later reading and spelling skills in Dutch. Language abilities, tested with an extensive test battery at the onset of formal reading instruction, were…

Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we investigated the N400 (an ERP component that occurs in response to meaningful stimuli) in children aged 8-10 years old and examined relationships between the N400 and individual differences in listening comprehension, word recognition and non-word decoding. Moreover, we tested the claim that the N400…

This is a study of word decoding in adolescents with Down syndrome and in adolescents with Intellectual Deficits of unknown etiology. It was designed as a replication of studies of word decoding in English speaking and in Hebrew speaking adolescents with Williams syndrome ([0230] and [0235]). Participants' IQ was matched to IQ in the groups with…

At the minimum, one of every four middle school students will struggle to cope with the grade-level textbooks they are typically assigned to read. Few reading programs used in middle schools have any research evidence that they actually improve student reading proficiencies. Only three programs had even modest evidence of a positive effect, and…

Irish has significant State support, but lacks a research base to support the teaching of Irish reading. Current approaches to teaching Irish reading are presented, and outcomes summarised. Issues of consistency and complexity in Irish orthography are discussed in light of an analysis of a corpus of early reader texts, and the formulation of rules…

The study examined how cognitive and motivational factors predicted reading skill and whether intrinsic reading motivation would explain significantly more variance in low ability readers' reading performance. One hundred and eleven children (aged 9-11) completed assessments of reading comprehension skill, verbal IQ, decoding skill and intrinsic…

Consensus documents on reading research provide clear direction for effective practice in reading instruction and intervention in general, but systematic study of reading development instruction and intervention with those diagnosed with ASDs is lacking. The current study had as its purpose to evaluate the effects of a manipulative letter…

In present-day knowledge societies, readers cannot understand complex issues without constructing meaning across multiple information sources. To what extent they are able to do so may depend on both characteristics of reading tasks and characteristics of readers themselves. In this study, 184 undergraduates read multiple texts about the complex…

Visual-attentional theories of dyslexia predict deficits for dyslexic children not only for the perception of letter strings but also for non-alphanumeric symbol strings. This prediction was tested in a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm with letters, digits, and symbols. Children with dyslexia showed significant deficits for letter and digit…

This study investigates the literacy skills of 193 students across grades three, five, seven, and nine in one private English medium school in Kerala, India. Students were assessed on their ability to read phonologically regular and irregular words, fluency with grade-level text, vocabulary knowledge, and comprehension skill. Results showed that…

Associations among children's writing and alphabetic skills were examined in a sample of 502 prekindergarten children who were at risk of academic failure because they came from poor families, spoke a language other than English at home, or had an identified disability. In this sample of children at risk of school failure, 16% had an identified…

Decodable books based on previous classroom instruction are the most frequently used texts for 1st grade reading instruction in public schools, yet no empirical studies exist demonstrating their efficacy or their benefits for beginning readers. This study attempts to address this gap in the research literature by analyzing the reading behaviors of…

Today, effective and creative teacher designed instruction is being replaced by scripted reading programs. These programs are changing the role of the teacher in the classroom from professionals to mere transmitters of knowledge. The idea that the role of the teacher had changed became evident while conducting a study with elementary school…

This study examined factors related to reading comprehension in adolescents who spoke English as a first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). Measures of decoding, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension were administered to 31 L1 and 44 L2 speakers. English L2 adolescents scored significantly lower than their L1 peers on…