ERIC Number: EJ817094
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0034-0553
EISSN: N/A
The Influence of Reading Skills on the Missing-Letter Effect among Elementary School Students
Saint-Aubin, Jean; Klein, Raymond M.
Reading Research Quarterly, v43 n2 p132-146 Apr-Jun 2008
When skilled readers search for a target letter while reading for comprehension, they miss the target letter more often when it is embedded in high-frequency function words than in less frequent content words. The magnitude of this "missing-letter-effect" (MLE) was investigated among 180 first- to fifth-grade students as a function of their reading skills as assessed with the reading subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT-3). Results revealed that good readers from grades 1 to 4 showed a larger missing-letter effect than poor readers with all tested materials. In addition, the size of the missing-letter effect was correlated with reading skills even after controlling for grade level. For fifth graders, the relation between the size of the missing-letter effect and reading skills was restricted to the contrast involving the function word "the". Overall, results support the attentional-disengagement model of the missing-letter effect as well as other models of this effect and general models of reading. (Contains 2 tables and 3 figures.)
Descriptors: Reading Skills, Form Classes (Languages), Elementary School Students, Achievement Tests, Models, Decoding (Reading), Comparative Analysis, Foreign Countries, Attention
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education; Grade 1; Grade 2; Grade 3; Grade 4; Grade 5
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Wide Range Achievement Test
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A