Variations in the use of simple and context-sensitive grapheme-phoneme correspondences in English and German developing readers.

Learning to read in most alphabetic orthographies requires not only the acquisition of simple grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) but also the acquisition of context-sensitive GPCs, where surrounding letters change a grapheme's pronunciation. We aimed to explore the use and development of simple GPCs (e.g. a ➔ /æ/) and context-sensitive GPCs (e.g. [w]a ➔ /ɔ/, as in "swan" or a[l][d] ➔ /o:/, as in "bald") in pseudoword reading. Across three experiments, English- and German-speaking children in grades 2-4 read aloud pseudowords, where vowel graphemes had different pronunciations according to different contexts (e.g. "hact", "wact", "hald"). First, we found that children use context-sensitive GPCs from grade 2 onwards, even when they are not explicitly taught. Second, we used a mathematical optimisation procedure to assess whether children's vowel responses can be described by assuming that they rely on a mix of simple and context-sensitive GPCs. While the approach works well for German adults (Schmalz et al. in Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 26, 831-852, 2014), we found poor model fits for both German- and English-speaking children. Additional analyses using an entropy measure and data from a third experiment showed that children's pseudoword reading responses are variable and likely affected by random noise. We found a decrease in entropy across grade and reading ability across all conditions in both languages. This suggests that GPC knowledge becomes increasingly refined across grades 2-4.

Phonics training for English-speaking poor readers.

BACKGROUND: The reading skills of 16% of children fall below the mean range for their age, and 5% of children have significant and severe reading problems. Phonics training is one of the most common reading treatments used with poor readers, particularly children. OBJECTIVES: To measure the effect of phonics training and explore the impact of various factors, such as training duration and training group size, that might moderate the effect of phonics training on literacy-related skills in English-speaking poor readers. SEARCH METHODS: We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, 12 other databases, and three trials registers up to May 2018. We also searched reference lists of included studies and contacted experts in the field to identify additional studies. SELECTION CRITERIA: We included studies that used randomisation, quasi-randomisation, or minimisation to allocate participants to a phonics intervention group (phonics training only or phonics training plus one other literacy-related skill) or a control group (no training or non-literacy training). Participants were English-speaking poor readers with word reading one standard deviation below the appropriate level for their age (children, adolescents, and adults) or one grade or year below the appropriate level (children only), for no known reason. Participants had no known comorbid developmental disorder, or physical, neurological, or emotional problem. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: We used standard methodological procedures expected by Cochrane. MAIN RESULTS: We included 14 studies with 923 participants in this review. Studies took place in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA. Six of the 14 included studies were funded by government agencies and one was funded by a university grant. The rest were funded by charitable foundations or trusts. Each study compared phonics training alone, or in conjunction with one other reading-related skill, to either no training (i.e. treatment as usual) or alterative training (e.g. maths). Participants were English-speaking children or adolescents, of low and middle socioeconomic status, whose reading was one year, one grade, or one standard deviation below the level expected for their age or grade for no known reason. Phonics training varied between studies in intensity (up to four hours per week), duration (up to seven months), training group size (individual and small groups), and delivery (human and computer). We measured the effect of phonics training on seven primary outcomes (mixed/regular word reading accuracy, non-word reading accuracy, irregular word reading accuracy, mixed/regular word reading fluency, non-word reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling). We judged all studies to be at low risk of bias for most risk criteria, and used the GRADE approach to assess the quality of the evidence.There was low-quality evidence that phonics training may have improved poor readers' accuracy for reading real and novel words that follow the letter-sound rules (standardised mean difference (SMD) 0.51, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.13 to 0.90; 11 studies, 701 participants), and their accuracy for reading words that did not follow these rules (SMD 0.67, 95% CI 0.26 to 1.07; 10 studies, 682 participants). There was moderate-quality evidence that phonics training probably improved English-speaking poor readers' fluency for reading words that followed the letter-sounds rules (SMD 0.45, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.72; 4 studies, 224 participants), and non-word reading fluency (SMD 0.39, 95% CI 0.10 to 0.68; 3 studies, 188 participants), as well as their accuracy for reading words that did not follow these rules (SMD 0.84, 95% CI 0.30 to 1.39; 4 studies, 294 participants). In addition, there was low-quality evidence that phonics training may have improved poor readers' spelling (SMD 0.47, 95% CI -0.07 to 1.01; 3 studies, 158 participants), but only slightly improve their reading comprehension (SMD 0.28, 95% CI -0.07 to 0.62; 5 studies, 343 participants). AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: Phonics training appears to be effective for improving literacy-related skills, particularly reading fluency of words and non-words, and accuracy of reading irregular words. More studies are needed to improve the precision of outcomes, including word and non-word reading accuracy, reading comprehension, spelling, letter-sound knowledge, and phonological output. More data are also needed to determine if phonics training in English-speaking poor readers is moderated by factors such as training type, intensity, duration, group size, or administrator.

Who are the noisiest neighbors in the hood? Using error analyses to study the acquisition of letter-position processing.

This research examines the acquisition of letter-position processing. Study 1 investigated letter-position processing in Grades 1-6 and adult readers, using the occurrence of specific error types as the outcome measure. Between Grades 1 and 2, there was a shift from making more other-word to making more letter-position errors. This shift was a function of reading proficiency, not of years of reading instruction. Based on the multiple-route model of reading development (Grainger, Lété, Bertand, Dufau, & Ziegler, 2012), we argue that the fact that children make fewer other-word errors (i.e., mostly letter-identity errors) opens up the opportunity for them to make "the more advanced" letter-position errors. Finally, skilled adult readers still made fewer letter-position errors than typical readers in Grade 6, suggesting that the acquisition process is not finalized by the end of primary school. In Study 2, we directly compared letter-position processing with letter-identity processing. Thirty children in Grade 3 and 30 children in Grade 4 read aloud words with and without higher-frequency distractors. Children more often misread a word with a higher-frequency distractor than without such a distractor and this effect was stronger for below-average than for above-average readers. Converging with the results of Study 1, we found that a letter-position distractor is more disruptive than a letter-identity distractor. These results confirm that the acquisition of letter-position processing lags behind of that of letter-identity processing. The results are discussed within the framework of the Lexical Tuning Hypothesis (Castles, Davis, Cavalot, & Forster, 2007), which stresses the importance of feedback between letter (identity and position) coding and (developing) orthographic representations. (PsycINFO Database Record

A Computational Model of the Self-Teaching Hypothesis Based on the Dual-Route Cascaded Model of Reading.

The self-teaching hypothesis describes how children progress toward skilled sight-word reading. It proposes that children do this via phonological recoding with assistance from contextual cues, to identify the target pronunciation for a novel letter string, and in so doing create an opportunity to self-teach new orthographic knowledge. We present a new computational implementation of self-teaching within the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model of reading aloud, and we explore how decoding and contextual cues can work together to enable accurate self-teaching under a variety of circumstances. The new model (ST-DRC) uses DRC's sublexical route and the interactivity between the lexical and sublexical routes to simulate phonological recoding. Known spoken words are activated in response to novel printed words, triggering an opportunity for orthographic learning, which is the basis for skilled sight-word reading. ST-DRC also includes new computational mechanisms for simulating how contextual information aids word identification, and it demonstrates how partial decoding and ambiguous context interact to achieve irregular-word learning. Beyond modeling orthographic learning and self-teaching, ST-DRC's performance suggests new avenues for empirical research on how difficult word classes such as homographs and potentiophones are learned.

Phonetic radicals, not phonological coding systems, support orthographic learning via self-teaching in Chinese.

According to the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 1995), phonological decoding is fundamental to acquiring orthographic representations of novel written words. However, phonological decoding is not straightforward in non-alphabetic scripts such as Chinese, where words are presented as characters. Here, we present the first study investigating the role of phonological decoding in orthographic learning in Chinese. We examined two possible types of phonological decoding: the use of phonetic radicals, an internal phonological aid, andthe use of Zhuyin, an external phonological coding system. Seventy-three Grade 2 children were taught the pronunciations and meanings of twelve novel compound characters over four days. They were then exposed to the written characters in short stories, and were assessed on their reading accuracy and on their subsequent orthographic learning via orthographic choice and spelling tasks. The novel characters were assigned three different types of pronunciation in relation to its phonetic radical - (1) a pronunciation that is identical to the phonetic radical in isolation; (2) a common alternative pronunciation associated with the phonetic radical when it appears in other characters; and (3) a pronunciation that is unrelated to the phonetic radical. The presence of Zhuyin was also manipulated. The children read the novel characters more accurately when phonological cues from the phonetic radicals were available and in the presence of Zhuyin. However, only the phonetic radicals facilitated orthographic learning. The findings provide the first empirical evidence of orthographic learning via self-teaching in Chinese, and reveal how phonological decoding functions to support learning in non-alphabetic writing systems.

Automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition in bilingual children: A cross-language masked priming study in grades 3 and 5.

Previous masked priming research has shown automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition in monolingual skilled adult readers. Activation also occurs across languages in bilingual adult readers, suggesting that the activation of phonological representations is not language specific. Less is known about developing readers. First, it is unclear whether there is automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition among children in general. Second, no empirical data exist on whether the activation of phonological representations is language specific or not in bilingual children. The current study investigated these issues in bilingual third and fifth graders using cross-language phonological masked priming in a lexical decision task. Targets were French words, and primes were English pseudowords of three types: (a) phonological primes, which share phonological information with the target beginning (e.g., dee-DIMANCHE [Sunday], pronounced /di:/-/dimãʃ/); (b) orthographic control primes, which control for letters shared by the phonological prime and target (e.g., d) and their position (e.g., doo-DIMANCHE, pronounced /du:/-/dimãʃ/); and (c) unrelated primes, which share no phonological or orthographic information with the target beginning (e.g., pow-DIMANCHE, pronounced /paʊ/-/dimãʃ/). Significant phonological priming was observed, suggesting that (a) phonological representations are rapidly and automatically activated by print during visual word recognition from Grade 3 onward and that (b) the activation of phonological representations is not language specific in bilingual children.

Two distinct parsing stages in nonword reading aloud: Evidence from Russian.

Word reading partly depends on the activation of sublexical letter clusters. Previous research has studied which types of letter clusters have psychological saliency, but less is known about cognitive mechanisms of letter string parsing. Here, we take advantage of the high degree of context-dependency of the Russian orthography to examine whether consonant-vowel (CV) clusters are treated as units in two stages of sublexical processing. In two experiments using a nonword reading task, we use two orthogonal manipulations: (a) insertion of a visual disruptor (#) to assess whether CV clusters are kept intact during the early visual parsing stage, and (b) presence of context-dependent grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs; e.g., л[а] → /l/; л[я] → /lj/), to assess whether CV clusters remain intact or are split during the print-to-speech conversion stage. The results suggest that although CV clusters are initially processed as perceptual units in the early visual parsing stage, letters and not CV clusters drive print-to-speech conversion.

A Special Font for People with Dyslexia: Does it Work and, if so, why?

In 2008 Christian Boer, a Dutch artist, developed a special font ("Dyslexie") to facilitate reading in children and adults with dyslexia. The font has received a lot of media attention worldwide (e.g., TheGuardian.com, Slate.com, TheAtlantic.com, USA Today, and io9.com). Interestingly, there is barely any empirical evidence for the efficacy of Dyslexie. This study aims to examine if Dyslexie is indeed more effective than a commonly used sans serif font (Arial) and, if so, whether this can be explained by its relatively large spacing settings. Participants were 39 low-progress readers who were learning to read in English. They were asked to read four different texts in four different font conditions that were all matched on letter display size (i.e., x-height), but differed in the degree to which they were matched for spacing settings. Results showed that low-progress readers performed better (i.e., read 7% more words per minute) in Dyslexie font than in standardly spaced Arial font. However, when within-word spacing and between-word spacing of Arial font was matched to that of Dyslexie font, the difference in reading speed was no longer significant. We concluded that the efficacy of Dyslexie font is not because of its specially designed letter shapes, but because of its particular spacing settings. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Density and length in the neighborhood: Explaining cross-linguistic differences in learning to read in English and Dutch.

Two experiments examined underlying cognitive processes that may explain why it is harder to learn to read in English than in more transparent orthographies such as German and Dutch. Participants were English and Dutch readers from Grades 3 and 4. Experiment 1 probed the transition from serial to more parallel processing, as measured by the word length effect for words and pseudowords. English children took longer to make the transition to more parallel reading strategies for words than Dutch children. In contrast, Dutch children continued to use more serial reading strategies for pseudowords. Experiment 2 investigated children's sensitivity to the orthographic overlap between words, as measured by the size of orthographic neighborhood effects for words and pseudowords. Children reading Dutch showed greater sensitivity to the overlap between both words and pseudowords than English children. Cross-linguistic differences in the transition from serial to parallel reading strategies are discussed within the framework offered by the self-teaching hypothesis and the orthographic depth hypothesis. Finally, it is argued that differences between the two languages in the effect of orthographic neighborhood size are a result of cross-linguistic differences in orthographic density and not cross-linguistic differences in orthographic transparency.

Getting to the bottom of orthographic depth.

Orthographic depth has been studied intensively as one of the sources of cross-linguistic differences in reading, and yet there has been little detailed analysis of what is meant by orthographic depth. Here we propose that orthographic depth is a conglomerate of two separate constructs: the complexity of print-to-speech correspondences and the unpredictability of the derivation of the pronunciations of words on the basis of their orthography. We show that on a linguistic level, these two concepts can be dissociated. Furthermore, we make different predictions about how the two concepts would affect skilled reading and reading acquisition. We argue that refining the definition of orthographic depth opens up new research questions. Addressing these can provide insights into the specific mechanisms by which language-level orthographic properties affect cognitive processes underlying reading.

Tracking orthographic learning in children with different profiles of reading difficulty.

Previous studies have found that children with reading difficulties need more exposures to acquire the representations needed to support fluent reading than typically developing readers (e.g., Ehri and Saltmarsh, 1995). Building on existing orthographic learning paradigms, we report on an investigation of orthographic learning in poor readers using a new learning task tracking both the accuracy (untimed exposure duration) and fluency (200 ms exposure duration) of learning novel words over trials. In study 1, we used the paradigm to examine orthographic learning in children with specific poor reader profiles (nine with a surface profile, nine a phonological profile) and nine age-matched controls. Both profiles showed improvement over the learning cycles, but the children with surface profile showed impaired orthographic learning in spelling and orthographic choice tasks. Study 2 explored predictors of orthographic learning in a group of 91 poor readers using the same outcome measures as in Study 1. Consistent with earlier findings in typically developing readers, phonological decoding skill predicted orthographic learning. Moreover, orthographic knowledge significantly predicted orthographic learning over and beyond phonological decoding. The two studies provide insights into how poor readers learn novel words, and how their learning process may be compromised by less proficient orthographic and/or phonological skills.

Phonological decoding or direct access? Regularity effects in lexical decisions of Grade 3 and 4 children.

Learning to read fluently involves moving from an effortful phonological decoding strategy to automatic recognition of familiar words. However, little is known about the timing of this transition, or the extent to which children continue to be influenced by phonological factors when recognizing words even as they progress in reading. We explored this question by examining regularity effects in a lexical decision task, as opposed to the more traditionally used reading-aloud task. Children in Grades 3 and 4 made go/no-go lexical decisions on high- and low-frequency regular and irregular words that had been matched for consistency. The children showed regularity effects in their accuracy for low-frequency words, indicating that they were using phonological decoding strategies to recognize unfamiliar words. The size of this effect was correlated with measures of reading ability. However, we found no regularity effects on accuracy for high-frequency words or on response times for either word type, suggesting that even 8-year-old children are already relying predominantly on a direct lexical strategy in their silent reading of familiar words.

Phonics training for English-speaking poor readers.

BACKGROUND: Around 5% of English speakers have a significant problem with learning to read words. Poor word readers are often trained to use letter-sound rules to improve their reading skills. This training is commonly called phonics. Well over 100 studies have administered some form of phonics training to poor word readers. However, there are surprisingly few systematic reviews or meta-analyses of these studies. The most well-known review was done by the National Reading Panel (Ehri 2001) 12 years ago and needs updating. The most recent review (Suggate 2010) focused solely on children and did not include unpublished studies. OBJECTIVES: The primary aim of this review was to measure the effect that phonics training has on the literacy skills of English-speaking children, adolescents, and adults whose reading was at least one standard deviation (SD), one year, or one grade below the expected level, despite no reported problems that could explain their impaired ability to learn to read. A secondary objective was to explore the impact of various factors, such as length of training or training group size, that might moderate the effect of phonics training on poor word reading skills. SEARCH METHODS: We searched the following databases in July 2012: CENTRAL 2012 (Issue 6), MEDLINE 1948 to June week 3 2012, EMBASE 1980 to 2012 week 26, DARE 2013 (Issue 6), ERIC (1966 to current), PsycINFO (1806 to current), CINAHL (1938 to current), Science Citation Index (1970 to 29 June 2012), Social Science Citation Index (1970 to 29 June 2012), Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science (1990 to 29 June 2012), Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities (1990 to 29 June 2012), ZETOC, Index to Theses-UK and Ireland, ClinicalTrials.gov, ICTRP, the metaRegister of Controlled Trials, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, DART Europe E-theses Portal, Australasian Digital Theses Program, Education Research Theses, Electronic Theses Online System, Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. Theses Canada portal, www.dissertation.com, and www.thesisabstracts.com. We also contacted experts and examined the reference lists of published studies. SELECTION CRITERIA: We included studies that use randomisation, quasi-randomisation, or minimisation to allocate participants to either a phonics intervention group (phonics alone, phonics and phoneme awareness training, or phonics and irregular word reading training) or a control group (no training or alternative training, such as maths). Participants were English-speaking children, adolescents, or adults whose word reading was below the level expected for their age for no known reason (that is, they had adequate attention and no known physical, neurological, or psychological problems). DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two review authors independently selected studies, assessed risk of bias, and extracted data. MAIN RESULTS: We found 11 studies that met the criteria for this review. They involved 736 participants. We measured the effect of phonics training on eight outcomes. The amount of evidence for each outcome varied considerably, ranging from 10 studies for word reading accuracy to one study for nonword reading fluency. The effect sizes for the outcomes were: word reading accuracy standardised mean difference (SMD) 0.47 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.06 to 0.88; 10 studies), nonword reading accuracy SMD 0.76 (95% CI 0.25 to 1.27; eight studies), word reading fluency SMD -0.51 (95% CI -1.14 to 0.13; two studies), reading comprehension SMD 0.14 (95% CI -0.46 to 0.74; three studies), spelling SMD 0.36 (95% CI -0.27 to 1.00; two studies), letter-sound knowledge SMD 0.35 (95% CI 0.04 to 0.65; three studies), and phonological output SMD 0.38 (95% -0.04 to 0.80; four studies). There was one result in a negative direction for nonword reading fluency SMD 0.38 (95% CI -0.55 to 1.32; one study), though this was not statistically significant.We did five subgroup analyses on two outcomes that had sufficient data (word reading accuracy and nonword reading accuracy). The efficacy of phonics training was not moderated significantly by training type (phonics alone versus phonics and phoneme awareness versus phonics and irregular word training), training intensity (less than two hours per week versus at least two hours per week), training duration (less than three months versus at least three months), training group size (one-on-one versus small group training), or training administrator (human administration versus computer administration). AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: Phonics training appears to be effective for improving some reading skills. Specifically, statistically significant effects were found for nonword reading accuracy (large effect), word reading accuracy (moderate effect), and letter-sound knowledge (small-to-moderate effect). For several other outcomes, there were small or moderate effect sizes that did not reach statistical significance but may be meaningful: word reading fluency, spelling, phonological output, and reading comprehension. The effect for nonword reading fluency, which was measured in only one study, was in a negative direction, but this was not statistically significant.Future studies of phonics training need to improve the reporting of procedures used for random sequence generation, allocation concealment, and blinding of participants, personnel, and outcome assessment.

Dyslexic and typical-reading children use vowel digraphs as perceptual units in reading.

Digraphs are graphemes that are composed of two letters like the "ou" in "soup". We hypothesized that the serial-reading strategy of dyslexic readers might interfere with the processing of digraphs. We used a letter-detection task to compare the processing of vowel digraphs in dyslexic and typical-reading children. Both groups were found to be slower in detecting a letter within a vowel digraph than in detecting a letter of a single-letter grapheme. The slower response to target letters embedded in a digraph was position independent in both groups. We also found that dyslexic children did not differ from typical-reading children in the detection of letters in words. These results indicate that typical-reading and dyslexic children process vowel digraphs as perceptual units and that dyslexic children do not show impairments in this early visual process.

Variability in the word-reading performance of dyslexic readers: effects of letter length, phoneme length and digraph presence.

The marked word-length effect in dyslexic children suggests the use of a letter-by-letter reading strategy. Such a strategy should make it more difficult to infer the sound of digraphs. Our main aim was to disentangle length and digraph-presence effects in word and pseudoword reading. In addition, we examined differences in intra-individual variability between dyslexic and normal readers. Word and pseudoword naming tasks were administered to 24 dyslexic readers individually matched to chronological-age and reading-age controls. As expected, dyslexic and younger children displayed stronger length effects. In contrast to our expectations, the dyslexic and younger children were faster in reading (pseudo)words with a digraph than in reading (pseudo)word of similar letter length but without a digraph. Normal readers were equally fast on both types of (pseudo)words. However, considering phoneme-length effects, digraph presence caused an additional delay in all reading groups, but only for pseudowords. In addition, this effect was stronger for the dyslexic and younger readers. Finally, dyslexic readers' intra-individual variability in reading was larger than the variability in both groups of normal readers. Proportionally, the largest difference in variability with the normal readers was found on the short words.

Size does not matter, frequency does: sensitivity to orthographic neighbors in normal and dyslexic readers.

This study examined the influence of the number of orthographically similar candidates, neighborhood size, on the word and pseudoword naming performance of normal, dyslexic, and beginning readers. Participants were 23 Dutch dyslexic fourth-graders matched to 23 fourth-grade chronological age controls and 17 second-grade reading age controls. Unexpectedly, neighborhood size had similar effects in all groups: It did not affect word naming and facilitated the naming of pseudowords. However, the presence of a high-frequency neighbor had different effects. In contrast to normal readers, words with a high-frequency neighbor were named more slowly by beginning and dyslexic readers. These findings suggest a dissociation between global and specific effects of neighbor words. Nevertheless, both findings seem to be compatible with the view that orthographic representations of beginning and dyslexic children are not (yet) sufficiently specified.

Does phonological recoding occur during silent reading, and is it necessary for orthographic learning?

Two studies were conducted to test the central claim of the self-teaching hypothesis (i.e., phonological recoding is necessary for orthographic learning) in silent reading. The first study aimed to demonstrate the use of phonological recoding during silent reading. Texts containing pseudowords were read silently or aloud. Two days later, target spellings were recognized more often than their homophone spellings. In both reading conditions, homophone alternatives were named faster than nonexposed pseudowords, suggesting that phonological recoding had occurred. The second study aimed to suppress phonological recoding to demonstrate its necessity for orthographic learning. Lexical decisions were performed in a standard condition, with concurrent articulation, or with tapping. One day later, target spellings were recognized less often after lexical decisions with concurrent articulation. Target and homophone naming speed was not affected by lexical decision condition. The results support the use of phonological recoding during silent reading and specify its role in orthographic learning.