The role of instruction in learning to read: Preventing reading failure in at-risk children.

First and 2nd graders (N?=?285) receiving Title 1 services received 1 of 3 kinds of classroom reading programs: direct instruction in letter–sound correspondences practiced in decodable text (direct code); less direct instruction in systematic sound–spelling patterns embedded in connected text (embedded code); and implicit instruction in the alphabetic code while reading connected text (implicit code). Children receiving direct code instruction improved in word reading at a faster rate and had higher word-recognition skills than those receiving implicit code instruction. Effects of instructional group on word recognition were moderated by initial levels of phonological processing and were most apparent in children with poorer initial phonological processing skills. Group differences in reading comprehension paralleled those for word recognition but were less robust. Groups did not differ in spelling achievement or in vocabulary growth. Results show advantages for reading instructional programs that emphasize explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle for at-risk children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preventing reading failure in young children with phonological processing disabilities: Group and individual responses to instruction.

The relative effectiveness of 3 instructional approaches for the prevention of reading disabilities in young children with weak phonological skills was examined. Two programs varying in the intensity of instruction in phonemic decoding were contrasted with each other and with a 3rd approach that supported the children's regular classroom reading program. The children were provided with 88 hr of one-to-one instruction beginning the second semester of kindergarten and extending through 2nd grade. The most phonemically explicit condition produced the strongest growth in word level reading skills, but there were no differences between groups in reading comprehension. Word level skills of children in the strongest group were in the middle of the average range. Growth curve analyses showed that beginning phonological skills, home background, and ratings of classroom behavior all predicted unique variance in growth of word level skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Treating the core deficits of developmental dyslexia: Evidence of transfer of learning after phonologically- and strategy-based reading training programs.

Individuals with dyslexia have difficulty generalizing from word identification training. This study compared 2 forms of word identification training to promote transfer of learning by children with dyslexia. 62 children were randomly assigned to 1 of the training programs or to a study skills control program. One program trained phonological analysis and blending skills and provided direct instruction of letter–sound correspondences; the other trained the acquisition, use, and monitoring of 4 metacognitive decoding strategies. Results provided clear evidence of transfer of learning after treatment of the core reading deficits of these children. Both training approaches were associated with large positive effects, transfer on several measures, and generalized achievement gains. The phonological program resulted in greater generalized gains in the phonological domain and the strategy program in broader-based transfer for real words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transfer among phonological tasks in kindergarten: Essential instructional content.

The construct of phonological awareness was explored by examining the effects of instructional treatments on the development of specific and generalized phonological skills for kindergarten children. Sixty-six children with low phonological manipulation skills were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatments or a control condition: (a) auditory blending and segmenting with limited letter–sound correspondences; (b) a global array of phonological tasks, with letter–sound correspondences; or (c) only letter–sound instruction. Children in both treatments showed improved phonological abilities, which transferred to a reading analog task. Treated children achieved a level of phonological awareness comparable to that of higher skilled children. The combination of blending and segmenting instruction encouraged generalized phonological awareness; however, the ability to blend and segment accounted for more variance in reading analog scores than did other phonological tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of two types of phonological awareness training on word learning in kindergarten children.

The effects of 2 types of oral-language training programs on development of phonological awareness skills and word learning ability were examined. One of the training programs provided explicit instruction on both analytic (segmenting) and synthetic (blending) phonological tasks; the other program trained synthetic skills only. Effects of these programs were contrasted with a language-experience control group that received no phonologically oriented training. 48 kindergarten children participated in small-group training sessions 3 times per week for 7–8 wks. Children who received both analytic and synthetic training improved significantly on both types of skills, whereas children receiving the synthetic skills training alone improved only on blending skills. Only children receiving training on both types of tasks showed a positive training effect for the word learning or reading analog task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Efficacy of supplemental phonics-based instruction for low-skilled kindergarteners in the context of language minority status and classroom phonics instruction.

This study tested the efficacy of supplemental phonics instruction for 84 low-skilled language minority (LM) kindergarteners and 64 non-LM kindergarteners at 10 urban public schools. Paraeducators were trained to provide the 18-week (January–May) intervention. Students performing in the bottom half of their classroom language group (LM and non-LM) were randomly assigned either to individual supplemental instruction (treatment) or to classroom instruction only (control). Irrespective of their language status, treatment students (n = 67) significantly outperformed controls (n = 81) at posttest in alphabetics, word reading, spelling, passage reading fluency, and comprehension (average treatment d = 0.83); nevertheless, LM students tended to have lower posttest performance than non-LM students (average LM d = ?0.30) and were significantly less responsive to treatment on word reading. When we examined the contribution of classroom phonics time to student outcomes, we found that the treatment effect on spelling was greater for students in lower phonics classrooms, whereas the treatment effect on comprehension was greater for those in higher phonics classrooms. Finally, when we examined LM students alone, we found that pretest English receptive vocabulary positively predicted most posttests and interacted with treatment only on phonological awareness. In general, pretest vocabulary did not moderate kindergarten LM treatment response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effective Reading Comprehension Instruction: Examining Child x Instruction Interactions.

This study examined the effect of 3rd-grade language arts instruction on growth in children's reading comprehension skills and the degree to which the impact of instruction depended on the language and reading skills children brought to the classroom. Classrooms were observed in the fall, winter, and spring, and language arts activities were coded using multiple dimensions of instruction. Overall, the effect of instruction depended on children's fall reading comprehension scores. Children with average to low fall reading comprehension scores achieved greater growth in classrooms with more time spent on teacher-managed reading comprehension instructional activities but demonstrated less growth in classrooms with more time spent on child-managed reading comprehension activities. Research and classroom instruction implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repeated reading intervention: Outcomes and interactions with readers' skills and classroom instruction.

This study examined effects of a repeated reading intervention, Quick Reads, with incidental word-level scaffolding instruction. Second- and third-grade students with passage-reading fluency performance between the 10th and 60th percentiles were randomly assigned to dyads, which were in turn randomly assigned to treatment (paired tutoring, n = 82) or control (no tutoring, n = 80) conditions. Paraeducators tutored dyads for 30 min per day, 4 days per week, for 15 weeks (November-March). At midintervention, most teachers with students in the study were formally observed during their literacy blocks. Multilevel modeling was used to test for direct treatment effects on pretest-posttest gains as well as to test for unique treatment effects after classroom oral text reading time, 2 pretests, and corresponding interactions were accounted for. Model results revealed both direct and unique treatment effects on gains in word reading and fluency. Moreover, complex interactions between group, oral text reading time, and pretests were also detected, suggesting that pretest skills should be taken into account when considering repeated reading instruction for 2nd and 3rd graders with low to average passage-reading fluency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Training the word recognition skills of reading disabled children: Treatment and transfer effects.

54 disabled readers were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 word recognition and spelling training programs or to a problem solving and study skills training program. One word-training program taught orthographically regular words by whole word methods alone; the other trained constituent grapheme–phoneme correspondences. The word-training groups made significant gains in word recognition accuracy and speed and in spelling. Significant transfer was observed on uninstructed spelling content but not on uninstructed reading vocabulary. In general, the word-training programs were equally effective for instructed content, but the whole-word group was superior on some transfer measures at posttest. Although the results demonstrate that dyslexic readers can be instructed successfully, the children did not profit differentially from letter-sound over whole-word training in the present context. We speculate that severely disabled readers may require either a more extended period of letter–sound instruction to reliably adopt an alphabetic decoding strategy or additional specific training in phonological awareness and subsyllabic segmentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Print exposure as a predictor of word reading and reading comprehension in disabled and nondisabled readers.

The relation of print exposure, measured by a revised version of A. E. Cunningham and K. E. Stanovich's (1990) Title Recognition Test (TRT), to word reading and reading comprehension was examined in disabled and nondisabled readers, Grades 5–9. In disabled readers, the TRT was a significant predictor of word reading when phonological skill was accounted for but not when orthographic ability was added to the regression equation, suggesting that the TRT overlaps considerably with orthographic skill. The TRT significantly predicted nondisabled readers' word reading after both phonological and orthographic skills were accounted for. The TRT contributed significantly to reading comprehension once variance was partialed from higher order reading processes for disabled readers only. The TRT's power to predict comprehension may be ascribed to the effects of print exposure on automaticity of word recognition, knowledge, or familiarization with text structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The cognitive and linguistic foundations of early reading development: A Norwegian latent variable longitudinal study.

The authors present the results of a 2-year longitudinal study of 228 Norwegian children beginning some 12 months before formal reading instruction began. The relationships between a range of cognitive and linguistic skills (letter knowledge, phoneme manipulation, visual–verbal paired-associate learning, rapid automatized naming (RAN), short-term memory, and verbal and nonverbal ability) were investigated and related to later measures of word recognition in reading. Letter knowledge, phoneme manipulation, and RAN were independent longitudinal predictors of early reading (word recognition) skills in the regular Norwegian orthography. Early reading skills initially appeared well described as a unitary construct that then showed rapid differentiation into correlated subskills (word decoding, orthographic choice, text reading, and nonword reading) that showed very high levels of longitudinal stability. The results are related to current ideas about the cognitive foundations of early reading skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills.

Three bodies of research that have developed in relative isolation center on each of three kinds of phonological processing: phonological awareness, awareness of the sound structure of language; phonological recoding in lexical access, recoding written symbols into a sound-based representational system to get from the written word to its lexical referent; and phonetic recoding in working memory, recoding written symbols into a sound-based representation system to maintain them efficiently in working memory. In this review we integrate these bodies of research and address the interdependent issues of the nature of phonological abilities and their causal roles in the acquisition of reading skills. Our review supports a causal role for phonological awareness in learning to read, and suggests the possibility of similar causal roles for phonological recoding in lexical access and phonetic recoding in working memory. Most researchers have neglected the probable causal role of learning to read in the development of phonological skills. It is no longer enough to ask whether phonological skills play a causal role in the acquisition of reading skills. The question now is which aspects of phonological processing (e.g., awareness, recoding in lexical access, recoding in working memory) are causally related to which aspects of reading (e.g., word recognition, word analysis, sentence comprehension), at which point in their codevelopment, and what are the directions of these causal relations? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Informed Strategies for Learning: A program to improve children's reading awareness and comprehension.

Examined the role of awareness about their own cognitive skills on the learning and development of 87 3rd graders and 83 5th graders. Half of the Ss were given an experimental curriculum—informed strategies for learning (ISL)—designed to increase Ss' awareness and use of effective reading strategies. The remainder of the Ss were used as controls. Results show that Ss who participated in ISL made larger gains than did controls on cloze and error detection tasks. No differences between groups were found on 2 standardized tests of reading comprehension. Findings demonstrate that metacognition can be promoted through direct instruction in classrooms and that increased awareness can lead to better use of reading strategies. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gastrointestinal manifestations in pediatric AIDS

Current debate over the influence of phonological awareness on early reading development is polarised around small-unit (phoneme) processing and large-unit (onset-rime) processing. These opposing theories were contrasted by assessing the impact of pre-school phonological skills on reading amongst children experiencing their first year of formal instruction by a mixed method. Those beginning readers who could decode nonwords were found to have accomplished this by employing their letter-sound knowledge rather than by making analogies based on familiar rime units. Children displayed this pattern of performance regardless of their pre-school rhyming skills. Further investigations revealed that explicit awareness of onset and rime units was poor, even amongst children whose implicit rhyming skills were excellent. This evidence, together with the children's knowledge of orthographic units, was consistent with the view that letter-sound correspondences rather than onset or rime units formed the basis of their first attempts to utilise phonology in reading. The findings are discussed with reference to instructional influences on early reading and phonological awareness.     

Effects of integrated instruction on motivation and strategy use in reading.

Effects of instructional context on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have been examined with a variety of studies. This quasi experiment compared students receiving an instructional intervention designed to increase intrinsic motivation with students receiving traditional instruction. Concept-oriented reading instruction (CORI) integrated reading and language arts with science inquiry. It emphasized learning goals, real-world interaction (hands-on science activities), competence support (strategy instruction), autonomy support (self-directed learning), and collaboration. Traditional classrooms had the same content objectives and comparable teachers but different pedagogy. Children in CORI classrooms scored higher on motivation than did children in traditional classrooms, with effect sizes of 1.94 for curiosity and 1.71 for strategy use. Grade-level differences were found for recognition and competition. The results show that classroom contexts can be constructed to influence motivational outcomes positively. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multiple lexical codes in reading: Evidence from eye movements, naming time, and oral reading.

The role of semantic, orthographic, and phonological codes in word recognition and text integration in reading was investigated in 4 experiments. Participants read sentences containing words that had multiple semantic codes (e.g., calf), multiple semantic and orthographic codes (e.g., brake-break), or multiple semantic and phonological codes (e.g., tear). Converging evidence from fixation time, naming time, and oral reading indicated that phonological, semantic, and orthographic information about words are sources of early constraint in word processing. Evidence was also found that indicated that phonological codes play an important role in text integration in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extended text and the writing proficiency of students in urban elementary schools.

The effect of extended text writing on the writing proficiency of elementary students in urban schools was investigated. 39 4th- and 5th-grade classrooms were observed and categorized according to the ratio of extended text to exercises written by students and according to the level of student engagement. Analyses revealed that students in classrooms characterized by extended text outperformed students in classrooms characterized by exercises both in the quality of the content of their writing and in correct use of writing conventions, after adjustment for pretest differences at both the student and classroom levels. The effect of extended text instruction was consistent for both students of ethnic minority (African American, Mexican American, and Native American) status and students of White European ancestry. No differences were found on a multiple-choice test of language skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional Reactions to the Outcomes of Decisions: The Role of Counterfactual Thought in the Experience of Regret and Disappointment

Children's phonological sensitivity is a strong predictor of the development of reading skills. Recent evidence indicates that phonological sensitivity and reading are reciprocally related. That is, phonological sensitivity facilitates the development of early reading and early reading facilitates the development of phonological sensitivity. Whereas evidence for this reciprocal relation has come from studies with school-age children, this study examined the relation between phonological sensitivity and letter knowledge in 97 middle-income 4- and 5-year-old children in a 1-year longitudinal study. Multiple regression analyses revealed that phonological sensitivity predicted growth in letter knowledge, and letter knowledge predicted growth in phonological sensitivity when controlling for children's age and oral language abilities. These results indicate that the reciprocal relation between reading and phonological sensitivity is present relatively early in the development of literacy skills, prior to the onset of formal reading instruction.     

Phonological processing skills and the Reading Recovery Program.

Sought to determine whether the Reading Recovery Program would be more effective if systematic instruction in phonological recoding skills were incorporated into the program. First-grade at-risk readers were divided into 3 matched groups of 32 children each; a modified Reading Recovery group, a standard Reading Recovery group, and a standard intervention group. The children in the modified Reading Recovery group received explicit code instruction involving phonograms. Results indicated that, although both Reading Recovery groups achieved levels of reading performance required for discontinuation of the program, the modified Reading Recovery group reached these levels of performance much more quickly. Results further indicated that the children selected for Reading Recovery were particularly deficient in phonological processing skills and that their progress in the program was strongly related to the development of these skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)