Training and transfer-of-learning effects in disabled and normal readers: evidence of specific deficits

Two experiments were conducted to assess the specificity of training and transfer deficits in disabled readers, aged 7 to 9 years. Forty-eight children (reading disabled, age-matched normal controls, and reading-level-matched normal controls) participated in both a reading and a nonreading (music) acquisition paradigm. Children received instruction in grapheme-phoneme and symbol-note correspondence patterns, respectively. Posttraining tests (one day and one week) following rule training compared performance on trained exemplar items with performance on untrained transfer items. Results revealed that normal readers were able to transfer their rule knowledge in both the reading and nonreading (music) acquisition paradigms, while disabled readers were proficient only in the music task, and thus demonstrated transfer deficits specific to learning printed language. Transfer was optimally facilitated for all readers when training procedures included not only presentation of exemplars, but also cues for rule derivation and explicit statement of pattern invariances.     

Verbal encoding effects on the visual short-term memory of learning disabled and normal readers.

Investigated the hypothesis that reading difficulties of learning disabled children are attributable to deficiencies in verbal encoding. Adopting a probe-type serial memory task, 60 normal and learning disabled readers matched on CA (9 yrs old), IQ, and sex were compared on recall performance after pretraining of named and unnamed stimulus conditions. The named condition for normal readers was superior in terms of recall performance. Consistent with the findings of F. Vellutino et al (1972, 1973, 1975), no difference was found in recall of nonverbal stimuli between normal and learning disabled readers. These data suggest that primary reading deficits in learning disabled children are related to verbal encoding deficiencies (visual–verbal integration) and not to deficiencies of visual memory, as suggested by the perceptual deficit hypothesis. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speech perception, vocabulary, and the development of reading skills in english among Korean- and English-speaking children.

This study examined the roles of speech perception and phonological processing in reading and spelling acquisition for native and nonnative speakers of English in the 1st grade. The performance of 50 children (23 native English speakers and 27 native Korean speakers) was examined on tasks assessing reading and spelling, phonological processing, speech perception, and receptive vocabulary at the start and end of the school year. Korean-speaking children outperformed native English speakers on each of the literacy measures at the start and end of 1st grade, despite differences in their initial phonological representations and processing skills. Furthermore, speech perception and phonological processing were important contributors to early literacy skills, independent of oral language skills, for children from both language groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spoken word recognition in reading disabled children.

This study compared spoken word recognition in 39 reading disabled and 61 normally achieving children on a speech gating task and examined the relationships among speech recognition, phonemic awareness, and reading. Children listened to increasingly longer segments of the speech input from word onset and guessed the identity of the target word. Words were either high or low frequency arid had few or many similarly sounding word neighbors in the listener's lexicon. Reading disabled children needed more of the speech input than normally achieving peers to identify target words with few similarly sounding neighbors. The amount of speech input for recognition predicted the youngest children's reading performance, after variance due to measures of phonemic awareness and receptive vocabulary were accounted for. The argument is developed that spoken word recognition may be developmentally delayed in those with reading disabilities and may play a causal role in these children's failure to acquire adequate alphabetic knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The nonword-reading deficit of disabled readers: A developmental interpretation.

This article presents empirical evidence challenging the received wisdom that a nonword-reading deficit is a characteristic trait of disabled readers. On the basis of 2 large-scale empirical studies using the reading-level match design, we argue that a nonword-reading deficit is the consequence of normal developmental differences in word-specific knowledge between disabled readers and younger normal readers (both groups being matched on real-word reading). The first study shows that the nonword-reading deficit varies as a function of age and reading level and that this deficit is not typical for disabled readers. The second study demonstrates that a nonword-reading deficit crucially depends on the sensitivity of the matching word reading task to detect age-related differences in word-specific knowledge between disabled and normal readers. We clarify how these findings can be interpreted within the current framework of the phonological deficit hypothesis and discuss implications for theories of reading development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual selective attention and reading efficiency are related in children

We investigated the relationship between visual selective attention and linguistic performance. Subjects were classified in four categories according to their accuracy in a letter cancellation task involving selective attention. The task consisted in searching a target letter in a set of background letters and accuracy was measured as a function of set size. We found that children with the lowest performance in the cancellation task present a significantly slower reading rate and a higher number of reading visual errors than children with highest performance. Results also show that these groups of searchers present significant differences in a lexical search task whereas their performance did not differ in lexical decision and syllables control task. The relationship between letter search and reading, as well as the finding that poor readers-searchers perform poorly lexical search tasks also involving selective attention, suggest that the relationship between letter search and reading difficulty may reflect a deficit in a visual selective attention mechanisms which is involved in all these tasks. A deficit in visual attention can be linked to the problems that disabled readers present in the function of magnocellular stream which culminates in posterior parietal cortex, an area which plays an important role in guiding visual attention.     

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)     

Analysis of specific deficits: Evidence of transfer in disabled and normal readers following oral-motor awareness training.

In an analysis of training procedures designed to address specific phonological deficits in disabled readers, 24 6- to 8-year-olds (reading disabled, age-matched controls, reading-level-matched controls) participated in both a reading and music acquisition paradigm. Children received instruction in grapheme-articulation and symbol-note correspondence patterns and, in the reading task, were taught to connect printed letter clusters with underlying oral-motor activity. Posttest results revealed that all groups of children were successful in the music task and in transferring sublexical segments representing trained reading rules, but disabled and young, normal readers were less able to read complete real and nonsense words. Disabled readers who demonstrated deficits specific to word identification learning revealed their ability to profit from rule-based instruction in symbol-to-note correspondence patterns and print-to-articulation relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movement efficiency in normal and reading disabled elementary school children: effects of varying luminance and wavelength

BACKGROUND: This investigation examines the question of whether decreasing wavelength of light and/or reducing luminance benefits oculomotor efficiency in normal and reading disabled (RD) children. METHODS: Two groups of children were identified as normal or disabled readers using standardized reading tests. After suitable practice, eye movements were objectively measured with the Visagraph II as each of the subjects silently read a series of three different selections at their independent reading level with clear (control), gray, and blue filters. Four variables were measured for each subject. Data were analyzed using a repeated measure ANOVA and post hoc tests. RESULTS: The standardized reading tests significantly differentiated average from poor readers using grade scores and percentiles. Initially, with clear filters, eye movement scores of normal readers were superior to disabled readers for fixations regressions, and rate of reading. Among the RDs--but not the normals--the three variables improved with the blue filter when compared with the clear filter, number of fixations and regressions were significantly lower, and rate was significantly higher. Gray filters yielded no significant changes. Improvement with the blue filters normalized the three variables in that there were no significant differences between normal and disabled readers. CONCLUSION: This investigation confirms a link between wavelength of light and eye movement efficiency in reading. Blue filters resulted in a significant improvement in the number of fixations and regressions and rate of reading in RD children. The outcome broadens the concept of transient system deficit established in previous research to include the effect on oculomotor efficiency. The educational implications of this study are of special interest to optometrists.     

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)     

Cognitive control factors in speech perception at 11 months.

The development of speech perception during the 1st year reflects increasing attunement to native language features, but the mechanisms underlying this development are not completely understood. One previous study linked reductions in nonnative speech discrimination to performance on nonlinguistic tasks, whereas other studies have shown associations between speech perception and vocabulary growth. The present study examined relationships among these abilities in 11-month-old infants using a conditioned head-turn test of native and nonnative speech sound discrimination, nonlinguistic object-retrieval tasks requiring attention and inhibitory control, and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (L. Fenson et al., 1993). Native speech discrimination was positively linked to receptive vocabulary size but not to the cognitive control tasks, whereas nonnative speech discrimination was negatively linked to cognitive control scores but not to vocabulary size. Speech discrimination, vocabulary size, and cognitive control scores were not associated with more general cognitive measures. These results suggest specific relationships between domain-general inhibitory control processes and the ability to ignore variation in speech that is irrelevant to the native language and between the development of native language speech perception and vocabulary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The structure of precocious reading ability.

The purpose of this study was to describe the cognitive correlates of precocious reading achievement and to identify the structure of individual differences in reading subskill patterns that are compatible with precocious achievement. Several oral reading tasks and selected subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised were administered to 87 postkindergarten children whose Peabody Individual Achievement Test reading comprehension scores ranged from the second- to the fifth-grade level. Parents provided information about the children's reading histories. Factor analysis of 11 reading subskill scores yielded results consistent with a hierarchical modification of the hypothesized model. Three specific factors—Speed, Decoding Rule Use, and Graphic Precision—varied independently of superordinate differences in General Ability. Verbal ability, letter-naming speed, and forward and backward digit span each correlated moderately with one or more reading factors. Many aspects of the results were consistent with findings from studies of average, disabled, and autistic/hyperlexic readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What is phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness was hypothesized to be composed of at least 3 component skills—IQ, verbal short-term memory, and speech perception. In addition, 4 linguistic manipulations within 3 phonological awareness tasks were theorized to affect item difficulties. Multiple measures of IQ, verbal short-term memory, speech perception, and phonological awareness were administered to 136 3rd and 4th graders. Application of structural equation modeling revealed that IQ, speech perception, and verbal short-term memory each contributed unique variance to the phonological awareness construct. All 4 experimental linguistic manipulations influenced phonological awareness item difficulties as well. Results underscore the importance of speech perception for phonological awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adaptive computer use for a person with visual impairment

A single-subject research design that used multiple baselines across behaviors compared traditional adaptations (e.g., the use of readers) to adapted computer technologies for typical reading activities performed by an adult with severe visual impairment. A Macintosh IIci equipped with software that translated information displayed on the monitor into synthesized speech was paired with a page scanner and optical character recognition software to convert scanned images of printed text into computer documents. These computer technologies were applied to three reading behaviors: proofreading of word-processed documents, reading of printed research articles, and reading of common printed materials such as letters and instruction sheets. The findings demonstrated that the use of adapted computer technology, rather than traditional methods, increased the subject's reading efficiency and frequency. The increased functional independence that occurred as a result of the computer technology improved the subject's patterns of adaptation in reading-related tasks and improved the quality of her life.     

Vision and attention. II: Is visual attention a mechanism through which a deficient magnocellular pathway might cause reading disability?

Recent research in reading disability has discovered that at least some reading-disabled subjects have deficits in their magnocellular (M) visual pathways. However, the mechanism by which M pathway deficits affect reading has not been addressed. Abnormal attention has long been known to be associated with reading-disabled individuals, and new research in visual attention has determined that transient visual attention is dominated by M-stream inputs. The purpose of this study was to determine whether visual attention might be the mechanism through which a faulty M pathway could produce visual deficits in reading-disabled subjects. Spatiotemporal attentional response functions were measured using the Line Motion Illusion and compared in normal and disabled readers. Specific abnormalities in the visual attention mechanisms of disabled readers were found which might suggest mechanisms by which reading could be affected by a deficient M stream.     

Lateral symmetry in the tactual perception of roughness.

Investigated whether tactual roughness perception is differentially lateralized in the cerebral hemispheres in 3 experiments with 76 18–31 yr old university students. Left- vs right-hand performance in the perception of roughness was assessed using 4 paradigms: unimanual 3-alternative forced choice (3-AFC), dichhaptic 3-AFC, comparative same–different judgment, and magnitude estimation. Results show that Ss consistently performed tactual roughness-perception tasks to an approximately equal degree with the left and right hands in all 4 experimental paradigms. Based on the assumption that equal perceptual performance by the left vs right hand indicates relative equality of the cerebral hemispheres, it is concluded that the tactual perception of roughness is laterally symmetrical in the left and right hemispheres. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of texture in Braille reading and of implications for theoretical and methodological issues in tactual roughness perception. (French abstract) (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading disability: The role of language deficiencies.

This article summarizes the role of language deficiencies in reading disability, focusing on two areas that appear particularly critical to reading skill: language processing abilities and the awareness of phonological structure. The distinguishing characteristics of disabled readers are shown to be consistent with theoretical and experimental findings about skilled reading. These characteristics also provide direction for the remediation of reading problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation of phonological awareness to reading disability in children and adults.

Research has shown that for young children, success at learning to read is related to the extent to which they are aware of the phonological structure of spoken language. We determined that this relation is also evident in older children (third graders) and in adults who have had considerable reading instruction. Differences in phonological awareness, measured on three tasks, accounted for much of the variance between good readers and poor readers at both age levels. In contrast, no correspondence was found between reading ability and performance on a nonspeech task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental issues in Chinese children's character acquisition.

Measures of phonological processing, speech perception, and Chinese character recognition were administered to 109 Hong Kong Chinese 3- and 4-year-olds. A model predicting phonological awareness from vocabulary, verbal short-term memory, and speech perception was supported. Both phonological awareness and letter naming predicted unique variance in character recognition after controlling for other phonological processing and vocabulary skills, similar to previous studies of Western readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resilient readers? University students who are poor recoders but sometimes good text comprehenders.

The authors screened 194 university students to determine whether some could comprehend text well despite very poor recoding skills, measured by pseudoword reading. Most of the 17 poorest recoders had never been identified as reading disabled. We classified 6 poor recoders as "resilient readers" because their text comprehension scores were average or above, relative to the sample as a whole. They were indistinguishable from 6 matched typical readers on measures of text comprehension derived from oral-reading think-aloud protocols. There was no evidence that the resilient readers relied on superior verbal ability or working memory to compensate for poor recoding. The resilient readers were poor at spelling, reading isolated words, and reading text rapidly, but they showed adequate phonemic awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)