Fifty-four students were tested at specific time intervals over 10 years to determine best native language (NL) predictors of oral and written foreign language (FL) proficiency and FL aptitude. All participants completed two years of Spanish, French, or German. Each was administered measures of NL literacy, oral language, and cognitive ability in…

This study examined individual differences among beginning readers of English as a foreign language (EFL). The study concentrated on the effects of underlying first language (L1) knowledge as well as EFL letter and vocabulary knowledge. Phonological and morphological awareness, spelling, vocabulary knowledge, and word reading in Hebrew L1, in…

This article presents an overview of some methods and results from our continuing studies of genetic and environmental influences on dyslexia, and on individual differences across the normal range that have been conducted over the past 25 years in the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center (CLDRC) and in related projects. CLDRC…

Lexical-decision studies with experienced English and French readers have shown that visual-word identification is not only affected by pronunciation inconsistency of a word (i.e., multiple ways to pronounce a spelling body), but also by spelling inconsistency (i.e., multiple ways to spell a pronunciation rime). The aim of this study was to…

A sample of 60 children in Grade 3 was followed over one year. In the first year, an extensive battery of assessments was used including aspects of reading, arithmetic, and working memory. Teachers rated the children on 7-point scales on various motivational dimensions summarized to a total score tentatively called task orientation. In the…

Phonological awareness (PA), phonological memory (PM), and phonological access to lexical storage (also known as RAN), play important roles in acquiring literacy. We examined the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of these phonological processing abilities (PPAs) in 147 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children whose native language was…

Spelling pronunciations are hypothesized to be helpful in building up relatively stable phonologically underpinned orthographic representations, particularly for learning words with irregular phoneme-grapheme correspondences. In a four-week computer-based training, the efficacy of spelling pronunciations and previewing the spelling patterns on…

The phonologically transparent Persian orthography is normally transcribed with two distinct spellings; words spelled with vowels (letters) transcribed as a fixed part of the spelling (transparent) and words spelled with vowels (diacritics) omitted (opaque). Three groups of Persian readers, namely developmental dyslexics (n = 29, mean age = 9.4,…

Using normal adult readers, this study examined the relative involvement of magnocellular and parvocellular processes in reading English phonologically regular pseudowords and irregular words presented in isolation and in contiguity from left to right. The data showed that a low temporal frequency visual measure that implied more parvocellular…

We report on an experiment designed to evaluate processing of derived forms in high-functioning dyslexics, defined as university students with a history of reading difficulties who have age-appropriate reading comprehension skills. We compared high-functioning dyslexics with a group of normal adult readers in their performance on a lexical…

The effects of computer-presented automatization exercises in a group of 14 poor readers were assessed in comparison to a matched control group of 14 poor readers that received computer-presented exercises aimed at the use of context for word identification and comprehension. Training took place three sessions a week for 15 minutes per session and…

For 25 years now, there has been a serious attempt to get at the fundamental cause(s) of dyslexia in our laboratory. A great deal of research has been carried out on the psychological and brain underpinnings of the linguistic dysfunctions seen in dyslexia, but attempts to get at its cause have been limited. Initially, observations were made on the…

The relationship between late-talkers' language development and reading and spelling outcomes was examined in children with and without familial risk for dyslexia. The late-talking subgroups were defined using parent- and test-based assessments of receptive and expressive vocabulary and grammar at 2 and 2.5 years as intake criteria. The language…

Kindergarten children at risk of developing language problems were administered the Florida Kindergarten Screening Battery. A principal components analysis revealed a verbal and a visual-spatial component and subsequent discriminant function analyses a high verbal/low visual-spatial group (LAL: Latent L) and a high visual-spatial flow verbal group…

Study 1 retrospectively analyzed neuropsychological and psychoeducational tests given to N = 220 first graders, with follow-up assessments in third and eighth grade. Four predictor constructs were derived: (1) Phonemic Awareness, (2) Picture Vocabulary, (3) Rapid Naming, and (4) Single Word Reading. Together, these accounted for 88%, 76%, 69%, and…