In this study, visual-orthographic skills were defined as the ability to recognize whether letters and numerals are correctly oriented. Aims were to investigate whether visual-orthographic skills would contribute independent variance to reading, and whether children with a visual-orthographic deficit would be more impaired readers than similar…

The two experiments reported here investigated the ability of sighted children and children with visual impairment to comprehend text and, in particular, to draw inferences both while reading and while listening. Children were assigned into "comprehension skill" groups, depending on the degree to which their reading comprehension skill was in line…

The present research investigated the relationship between Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) performance, letter-string reading measures of sight vocabulary (SV) and phonetic decoding (PD), and lexical decision. Criterion-based naming rates were obtained from three types of RAN tasks: digits, letters, and letter sounds. Latency measures were obtained…

Background: Although reading abilities play a fundamental role in the acquisition of personal autonomy, up until now studies investigating these abilities in Down syndrome (DS) are aimed at defining educational or rehability acquisition. However, studies describing the relationship between reading and phonological awareness in individuals with DS…

Many students with autism spectrum disorders show good decoding combined with poor comprehension. Twenty adolescent students with autism spectrum disorders participated in a study concerning the effects of three kinds of facilitation on reading comprehension. In a within-subjects design, each students read passages under four conditions: answering…

The current study involved 281 early-school-age twin pairs (118 monozygotic, 163 same-sex dizygotic) participating in the ongoing Western Reserve Reading Project (S. A. Petrill, K. Deater-Deckard, L. A. Thompson, & C. Schatschneider, 2006). Twins were tested in their homes by separate examiners on a battery of reading-related skills including…

In this article, the author describes G. Reid Lyon, the director of the branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development that sponsors studies on reading, whom crisscrossed the country to herald the findings of scientific research on the subject and press for sweeping change in reading instruction. Lyon's presentations on the…

Teaching students how to read is one of the most important tasks in elementary schools. The majority of schools use published basal programs to teach students to read. Several published reviews have indicated that past editions of basal readers did not align with appropriate instruction for beginning level readers. In this study I reviewed five of…

The "Auditory Discrimination in Depth (ADD) Program[R]" (currently called the "Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing (LiPS) Program[R]") is designed to teach students skills to successfully decode words and to identify individual sounds and blends in words. Initial activities engage students in discovering the lip, tongue, and mouth…

Although "Corrective Reading Decoding" has been validated as effective over a wide range of students, there is a lack of information on its effectiveness with older students having intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Thus, the purpose of this investigation was to determine the effectiveness of "Corrective Reading…

This study sought to add to the evidence on predictable texts by asking two questions: (1) What type of reading do predictable texts produce? and (2) How do predictable texts influence sight vocabulary acquisition and decoding? Subjects, six black male students selected from a first-grade classroom in an urban setting, had minimal or no sight…

A study compared the effects of a modified whole language approach with those obtained from a pure whole language approach on the decoding abilities of 20 kindergartners, assessed using Darrell Morris's Early Reading Screening Instrument. Subjects were selected from two similarly composed schools located in Albemarle County, Virginia. Ten students…

First, second, and third grade students were asked to draw inferences after reading stories written by themselves, by peers, and by adults. The 70 subjects were divided into groups of slow-inaccurate, slow-accurate, and fast-accurate readers. After reading each type of story, they responded to six questions requiring text-based inferences.…

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)

A study examined whether children learn phonic decoding skills by reading without direct phonic instruction; compared the effects of a whole language first grade reading program with the effects of a traditional basal reading program; and determined whether there was a difference in decoding and comprehending abilities across levels of ability.…