In the Simple View of Reading proposed by Hoover and Gough (1990), reading comprehension is conceived as the product of word decoding and listening comprehension. It is claimed that listening comprehension or the linguistic processes involved in the comprehension of oral language strongly constrain the process of reading comprehension. In several…

Children in grades one to four completed two sentence construction tasks: (a) Write one complete sentence about a topic prompt (sentence integrity, Study 1); and (b) Integrate two sentences into one complete sentence without changing meaning (sentence combining, Study 2). Most, but not all, children in first through fourth grade could write just…

Explores the role of phonological and syntactic awareness of 9- to 11-year-old Spanish-speaking learners of French in four components of second-language reading. Finds (1) phonological tasks in L2 better explain decoding; (2) word recognition through the visual route is best explained by corresponding ability in L1; (3) sentence comprehension is…

Reports three experiments investigating the use of analogies in spelling acquisition. Observes comparable use of analogies in children with comparable lexical knowledge independently of their grade level or alphabetic skills. Suggests that children establish specific orthographic knowledge from the beginning of literacy acquisition and use this…

Studies the relationship between decoding and comprehension in the oral and written modalities. Shows that poor decoders scored lower than average and good decoders on all comprehension tasks. Suggests a high degree of interdependence between listening comprehension, reading comprehension and decoding. Interprets results in favor of the…

Investigates the degree to which native speech perception is superior to non-native speech perception. Shows that language specific speech perception is a linguistic rather than an acoustic phenomenon. Discusses results in terms of early speech perception abilities, experience with oral communication, cognitive ability, alphabetic versus…

Investigates the effects of two specific Hebrew nominal word structures and word length on the latency and accuracy of grade school children's reading of words. Reports and analyzes the differences in the reading of the two morphological structures and word lengths to draw conclusions about their effects on reading performance. Indicates that…

Presents two studies using Verstaen et al.'s method that occasionally replicates null phonemic masking effects, but challenges their interpretation. Reflects an inherent instability in the perception of homophones. Demonstrates that this instability is directly due to reliance on phonology, rather than to its control. (SG)

Investigates the development of morphological awareness in Chinese and English. Indicates that morphological awareness develops with grade level and is strongly related to reading ability. Notes that Chinese students' acquisition of derivational morphology seems to lag behind that of compounding rules, which might reflect the nature of Chinese…

Investigates word identification in Arabic and basic cognitive processes in reading-disabled (RD) and normal level readers of the same chronological age, and in younger normal readers at the same reading level. Indicates significant deficiencies in morphology, working memory, and syntactic and visual processing, with the most severe deficiencies…

Outlines two theoretical positions regarding the developmental origins of the phoneme as a unit for lexical representation and processing--the accessibility and emergent positions. Employs a Lexical Restructuring Model, which focuses on the role of vocabulary growth. Notes that this restructuring is viewed as an important precursor to the explicit…

Notes that poor readers are known to do consistently worse than their normal reading peers on tasks of phonological processing. Discusses an increasing body of evidence, which points to deficits in speech perception as a source of subtle, but ramifying effects in reading impaired children and adults. Explains poor readers' difficulties in…

Investigates the interaction of lexical and non-lexical processes in spelling through lexical priming of non-lexical spelling in Polish. Explains that orthographic choice for nonwords was assessed under free and primed spelling conditions for both adults and children using direct and associative priming. Finds that lexical orthography influences…

Discusses empirical evidence supporting the idea that both skilled reading and learning to read capitalize on underlying phonological representations. Explains that phonological dyslexia is related to some anomaly in speech perception capabilities, making it difficult to both develop efficient conscious segmentation abilities and…

Compares the spelling development of two novel English phonemes among 35 Cantonese-speaking primary level children learning English as a second language (ESL) and 37 English-speaking (L1) children. Notes that performance of ESL children was very close to that of L1 children by end of grade 2. Suggests an interactive relationship between a general…