Children with specific language impairments (SLI) have difficulties in producing written text. It was hypothesised that the constraints on writing in children with SLI were similar to typically developing younger children with the same level of vocabulary knowledge. Twenty-three children with SLI (aged 10:5) were matched with 23 children for…

The aim of this study was to determine if phonological processing deficits in specific reading disability (SRD) and specific language impairment (SLI) are the same or different. In four separate analyses, a different combination of reading and spoken language measures was used to divide 73 children into three subgroups: poor readers with average…

We present a meta-analysis of cross-linguistic transfer of oral language (vocabulary and listening comprehension), phonology (decoding and phonological awareness) and reading comprehension. Our findings show a small meta-correlation between first (L1) and second (L2) oral language and a moderate to large correlation between L1 and L2 phonological…

The present study examines the effect of activating the connection between meaning and phonology in spelling exercises in second-grade spellers (n=41; 8 years and 3 months). In computer-based exercises in a within-subject design, semantic and neutral descriptions were contrasted and provided either before the process of spelling or in feedback.…

The research question here was whether whole-word shape cues might facilitate reading in dyslexia following reports of how normal-reading children benefit from using this cue when learning to read. We predicted that adults with dyslexia would tend to rely more on orthographic rather than other cues when reading, and therefore would be more…

Phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatised naming (RAN) skills in relation to reading acquisition were examined using two languages, one with a deep orthography (English) and the other with a shallow orthography (Korean). Participants were 50 Korean American children who spoke English as a dominant language (DL) and were learning to read…

Particularly in primary school, good performance on copy tasks is an important working technique. With respect to writing skills, copying is a very basic process on which more complex writing abilities are based. We studied the copying ability of second and fourth graders across four types of symbols which vary with respect to their semantic and…

The paper reports the results of a randomised control trial investigating the use of computer-aided instruction (CAI) for practising phonological awareness skills with beginning readers. Two intervention groups followed the same phonological awareness programme: one group undertook practice exercises using a computer and the other group undertook…

This study explores whether two computer-based literacy interventions--a "synthetic phonics" and an "analytic phonics" approach produce qualitatively distinct effects on the early phonological abilities and reading skills of disadvantaged urban Kindergarten (Reception) children. Participants (n=53) were assigned by random allocation to one of the…

Much attention has been paid to the delay in writing acquisition caused by irregularities of Russian orthography, but little is known about their effect on reading acquisition. Results of the present longitudinal reading acquisition study of Russian first graders suggest that phonological recoding is the dominant strategy in the initial phase of…

Skilled readers were trained to recognise either the oral (n=44) or visual form (n=40) of a set of 32 novel words (oral and visual instantiation, respectively). Training involved learning the "meanings" for the instantiated words and was followed by a visual lexical decision task in which the instantiated words were mixed with real English words…

Forty-eight adults were trained on monosyllabic pseudowords and their meanings and then tested in vocal spelling. The orthographic inconsistency of the rime (e.g. "orn, awn" for "glorn") and the number of learning trials affected accuracy and response latency in the vocal spelling test. In addition, orthographic typicality as assessed by neighbour…

This study examined word identification, phonological recoding efficiency, familiar word reading efficiency, orthographic choice for familiar words and serial naming speed as potential correlates of orthographic learning following silent reading in third-grade children. Children silently read a series of short stories, each containing six…

Two groups of undergraduate students, matched for reading skill but differing in spelling ability, participated in three experiments with the aim of exploring the causes of differences in spelling skill in this population. In the first experiment participants were presented with a range of tasks to investigate the possibility that the poor…

This study explores the long-term effectiveness of two differing models of early intervention for children with reading difficulties: Reading Recovery and a specific phonological training. Approximately 400 children were pre-tested, 95 were assigned to Reading Recovery, 97 to Phonological Training and the remainder acted as controls. In the short…