15382514
Longitudinal Data on the Relations of Morphological and Phonological Training to Reading Acquisition in First Grade: The Case of Arabic Language
The 
purpose of this study was to examine the development of morphological and phonological 
awareness and their impact on later reading skills. Two training programs 
(morphological and phonological awareness) were conducted in kindergarten and 
were compared to no-intervention control group. Phonological and morphological 
tests and other general abilities were measured for 90 children at kindergarten 
as pre and post intervention tests. Tests in reading and spelling were carried 
out at the middle of grade 1. Results showed that the morphological and the 
phonological intervention programs enhanced both phonological and morphological 
awareness, in comparison to the control group, with a small advantage for the morphological 
group. In grade 1, no significant differences were found between the 
intervention groups and the control group in reading and spelling measures. 
Altogether the results of the current study suggest that the intervention 
programs were less effective than expected in the first graders compared to 
results of Carlisle 
(1995) and Lyster 
(2002), 
but support former findings found by Ibrahim et al. (2007). This result may relate in part to the additional visual complexity of 
Arabic orthography. The psycholinguistic implications of these findings 
including a gender effect are discussed.
142782700
Training phonological awareness: a study to evaluate the effects of a program of metalinguistic games in kindergarten
A phonological awareness program was evaluated in a small-scale study using thirty eight children from three intact kindergarten classes at an American school on the outskirts of London. The average age of the children was five years four months. There was one experimental class and two control classes. The experimental class received a Danish training program of metalinguistic games and exercises. One control class used a kindergarten reading and writing program called Success in Kindergarten Reading and Writing which incorporates phonological awareness skills, but in an informal way. The other control class followed the normal kindergarten program. The results showed that the children in the experimental group and the Success in Kindergarten group had significantly greater gains in reading and spelling measures given at the end of the year. They also did better on six of the metalinguistic tests, with the experimental group showing significantly greater gains in all the tests of phoneme awareness than the other two groups. The implications of a formal versus informal phonological awareness training program are discussed.
57101664
Language Problems: A Key to Early Reading Problems
Publisher Summary Memory-processing problems are more than a characteristic of children with learning disabilities (LDs). This chapter provides an overview of the cognitive processes that are involved in reading. It presents an approach to the problem of early reading disability that is being guided by the assumption that reading is first, and foremost, a language skill. Psychologists, educators, and medical doctors have tried to identify the basis of early reading difficulty, and their efforts have always been guided by a rationale of some sort or another that reflects some basic assumptions as to what skilled reading is all about. For this reason, a basic understanding of the assumptions behind the studies and experiments that seek to explain early reading problems is an obvious place to begin. To introduce these assumptions, the chapter describes how the English alphabet functions as written language by mapping onto the structure of spoken English.
142845554
The effects of morphological versus phonological awareness training in kindergarten on reading development
The aim of this study was toinvestigate the long-term effects of twodifferent training programs in kindergarten onreading development. One group received aprogram focusing on the phonological structureof words, while a second group received aprogram focusing on morphology. Both groupsalso had some print exposure focusing onphonological or morphological elementsrespectively. During their last pre-schoolyear, participants received training for 30minutes per week for a total of 17 weeks. Acontrol group received no intervention but wasregularly visited by the researcher and hadextensive print exposure. Both trained groupsshowed improvements in phonological,morphological and reading skills in comparisonto the Control Group. The effects of trainingvaried according to mother's educational level:Children of relatively highly educated mothersentered the pre-school training with betterdeveloped metalinguistic abilities thanchildren of less well educated mothers.Significant interactions between the groups andthe mother's educational level, for some of theschool reading measures, indicated thatdifferent training programs had differenteffects on different groups of children.Children of poorly educated mothers profitedthe most from metaphonological training whilechildren of highly educated mothers profitedthe most from metamorphological training.
144388587
The Effects of Morphological Awareness Training on the Reading and Spelling Skills of Young Dyslexics
This article reports data from a training study of morphological awareness involving 33 dyslexic students in grades 4 - 5. The dyslexic students received 36 lessons of morphological awareness training each of about a quarter of an hour. The training was oral and focused on semantic aspects of morphemes. During the training period, the experimental group gained significantly more than a similar group of untrained controls (n = 27) on one of three measures of morphological awareness. Both groups, however, made equal gains on measures of phonological awareness, phoneme discimination and picture naming. The experimental group progressed significantly more than the controls in reading comprehension and in spelling of morphologically complex words. The results of the study suggest that it is possible to develop dyslexic students' morphological awareness. Furthermore, awareness of morphemes, the smallest meaningful units of language, may support the development of meaning - oriented decoding strategies in reading and spelling.
18018028
The use of morphological knowledge in spelling derived forms by learning-disabled and normal students
Currently popular systems for classification of spelling words or errors emphasize the learning of phoneme-grapheme correspondences and memorization of irregular words, but do not take into account the morphophonemic nature of the English language. This study is based on the premise that knowledge of the morphological rules of derivational morphology is acquired developmentally and is related to the spelling abilities of both normal and learning-disabled (LD) students. It addresses three issues: 1) how the learning of derivational morphology and the spelling of derived words by LD students compares to that of normal students; 2) whether LD students learn derived forms rulefully; and 3) the extent to which LD and normal students use knowledge of relationships between base and derived forms to spell derived words (e.g. “magic” and “magician”). The results showed that LD ninth graders’ knowledge of derivational morphology was equivalent to that of normal sixth graders, following similar patterns of mastery of orthographic and phonological rules, but that their spelling of derived forms was equivalent to that of the fourth graders. Thus, they know more about derivational morphology than they use in spelling. In addition, they were significantly more apt to spell derived words as whole words, without regard for morphemic structure, than even the fourth graders. Nonetheless, most of the LD spelling errors were phonetically acceptable, suggesting that their misspellings cannot be attributed primarily to poor knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences.
43497641
The role of morpheme recognition and morphological awareness in dyslexia
This paper begins by presenting theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to support the idea that morpheme analysis strategies play a part in word recognition in reading, and in dyslexia in particular. The results of two studies are presented which indicate that dyslexic adolescents use recognition of root morphemes as a compensatory strategy in reading of both single words and coherent text. Furthermore, the evidence is reviewed that the use of morpheme recognition as a strategy in reading to some extent depends on the linguistic awareness of morphemes in spoken language. Finally, results from a pilot study of the effects of morphological awareness training of dyslexic students are presented which suggest that it may be possible to improve the awareness of morphology independently of phoneme awareness, and that such a training may have positive effects on reading of coherent text and on the accurate spelling of morphologically complex words.
144437074
Spelling Proficiency and Sensitivity to Word Structure.
Abstract The connection between spelling and pronunciation in many English words is somewhat remote. To spell accurately, a writer may need to appreciate that the orthography maps regularities of more than one kind. Two experiments explored the possibility that young adults who differ in spelling ability also differ in sensitivity to morphophonemic structure and word formational principles that underlie the regularities of English spelling. In the first, an analysis of misspellings showed that poor spellers were less able than good spellers to exploit regularities at the surface phonetic level and were less able to access the underlying morphophonemic structure of words. A second experiment used pseudowords to extend these findings and to confirm that spelling competence involves apprehension of generalizations that can be applied to new instances.
34505589
Morphological spelling strategies: developmental stages and processes.
The spelling of many words in English and in other orthographies involves patterns determined by morphology (e.g., ed in past regular verbs). The authors report a longitudinal study that shows that when children first adopt such spelling patterns, they do so with little regard for their morphological basis. They generalize the patterns to grammatically inappropriate words (e.g., sofed for soft). Later these generalizations are confined to the right grammatical category (e.g., keped for kept) and finally to the right group of words (regular verbs). The authors conclude that children first see these spelling patterns merely as exceptions to the phonetic system and later grasp their grammatical significance. The study included two new measures of grammatical awareness, both involving analogies, that predicted success with spelling inflectional morphemes in later sessions.
59651209
Morphological Knowledge and Writing Ability
The development of morphological knowledge and its relationship to writing ability will be examined in this chapter. Such an examination is warranted because, in spelling, the child needs to understand the internal structure of words. Specifically, the child needs to understand that words have a morphophonemic structure, that is, that phonemic elements combine to form morphemes, which combine to form inflected and derived versions of words. Previous work has suggested that although an implicit understanding of the morphophonemic structure of words may be sufficient for spoken language proficiency, written language proficiency demands both an implicit and an explicit understanding of morphophonemic structure (Liberman, 1971, 1973, 1983; Liberman, et ai, 1974; Mattingly, 1972).
142830295
Word recognition and basic cognitive processes among reading-disabled and normal readers in Arabic
This study investigated word identification inArabic and basic cognitive processes inreading-disabled (RD) and normal readers of thesame chronological age, and in younger normalreaders at the same reading level. The studyfocused on the word identification processes ofphonological decoding and orthographicprocessing and the cognitive processes ofsyntactic and morphological awareness, workingmemory, and visual processing. RD children werecompared with normal readers on a battery oftests developed in Arabic on the basis of thoseavailable in English and Hebrew. The presentresults revealed deficiencies among the RD childrenin phonological decoding, in contrast torelative strengths in orthographic processing. These data were consistent with English-languagefindings. The analysis of basiccognitive processes indicated significantdeficiencies in morphology, working memory, andsyntactic and visual processing, with the mostsevere deficiencies observed for phonologicalawareness. The results are discussed in lightof international RD findings and the nature ofArabic orthography.
1575155
The representation of Hebrew words: Evidence from the obligatory contour principle
The Hebrew root morpheme typically consists of three consonants. Hebrew allows a gemination of a root consonant, but constrains its location [McCarthy, J. (1979). Formal problems in semitic phonology and morphology. Cambridge, MA; MIT Ph.D. dissertation. Distributed by Indiana University Linguistics Club. Garland Press, New York, 1985]. A gemination of a root-consonant is permitted at the end of the root (e.g., [mss]), but not at its beginning (e.g., [ssm]). Two experiments examined readers' sensitivity to the structure of the root morpheme by obtaining ratings for nonwords derived from nonroots. Root-initial gemination (e.g., [ssm]) was judged unacceptable compared to root-final gemination (e.g., [mss]) or no gemination controls (e.g., [psm]). The sensitivity to root structure emerged regardless of the position of the root in the word. These results have several implications. (1) Our findings demonstrate morphological decomposition. Hebrew speakers' ratings reflect a phonological constraint on the location of geminates. Being the domain of this constraint, the root morpheme must form a separate constituent in the representation of Hebrew words. (2) The rejection of root-initial gemination supports the psychological reality of the Obligatory Contour Principle, a pivotal constraint in autosegmental phonology. (3) A sensitivity to the location of geminates presupposes a distinction between the representation of geminate and nongeminate bigrams. Such a distinction, however, requires the implementation of a symbol. Our findings converge with numerous linguistic evidence in suggesting that the representation of constituency structure is necessary to account for linguistic generalizations.
144154341
Morpho-Phonemic Similarity within and between Languages: A Factor to be Considered in Processing Arabic and Hebrew
The goal of the present study was to explore the pattern of lexical connections between translation equivalents represented in the cognitive system of an Arabic-Hebrew bilingual. To achieve this goal, repetition priming effects (reaction times (RTs) and accuracy measures) were compared between translation equivalents in the two forms of Arabic, Spoken Arabic (SA) and Literary Arabic (LA), with those between translation equivalents in Hebrew and LA, in native Arabic students living in Israel. While these students master Hebrew as well as they master LA, they consider it as a second language. LA targets were preceded by cognate and non-cognate translation equivalents in SA or Hebrew either immediately (Lag 0) or separated by four unrelated words (Lag 4), in a lexical decision task. The participants were requested to make a word/non-word decision regardless of language. Across languages, morpho-phonemic similarities augmented the repetition priming effects. At Lag 0 this effect was larger when the primes were in Hebrew than when they were in SA. At Lag 4, however, the priming effect between Hebrew and LA was significantly reduced (and even absent for non-cognates). In contrast, the priming effect between Spoken and Literary Arabic was only slightly attenuated. The conclusion was that, despite the intensive daily use and psychological proximity, Spoken and Literary Arabic are represented as first and second languages in the cognitive system of the native Arabic reader, entertaining distinct lexica. However, the strength of the lexical associations between translation equivalents is influenced by the frequency of concomitant use.
145218595
Deficits in phoneme segmentation are not the core problem of dyslexia: Evidence from German and English children.
A widely held assumption about dyslexia is that difficulties in accessing the constituent
 phonemes of the speech stream are responsible for specific reading and spelling difficulties. In
 consistent orthographies, however, the acquisition of accurate phonological recoding and
 phonemic awareness was found to pose much less difficulty than in English, and even dyslexic
 children were found to exhibit high levels of performance in phonemic segmentation (Wimmer,
 1993). Nevertheless, using a rather complex phonological awareness and manipulation task
 (spoonerisms: MAN–HAT → HAN–MAT), Landerl, Wimmer, and Frith
 (1997) found support for the original position on phonological awareness deficit, as both German
 and English dyslexic children showed poor performance. In the present studies, the spoonerism
 responses of Landerl et al. were reanalyzed such that children were given credit for partially
 correct responses (e.g., a response of HAN for MAN–HAT). Such partially correct
 responses were taken to indicate full segmentation of both stimulus words at the
 onset–rime level. The effect of this rescoring was that the error rate dropped from
 76% to 26% for the English dyslexic children and from 63% to 15%
 for the German dyslexic children. Even higher performance levels, although not perfect as for the
 age-matched control children, were found on a nonword spelling task in both groups. A second
 study examined the segmentation of consonant clusters in younger German dyslexic children and
 found performance levels of about 90% correct when memory problems were ruled out.
 We argue that, at least in the context of a consistent orthography (and a phonics-based teaching
 approach), deficits in phoneme awareness are only evident in the early stages of reading
 acquisition, whereas rapid naming and phonological memory deficits are more persistent in
 dyslexic children.
17414799
The cognitive basis of diglossia in Arabic: Evidence from a repetition priming study within and between languages
This study examined diglossia and its cognitive basis in Arabic. Repetition priming effects were compared within spoken Arabic (SA), as well as with the effects found when the primes were in either literary Arabic (LA) or Hebrew. In experiment 1, using lexical decisions for auditory presented words, a significant priming effect was found at lag 0 when the primes were in LA and in Hebrew. Furthermore, large repetition priming effects were found at relatively long lags (lag 8–12) within SA. This effect was absent when the repetition involved translation equivalents using either Hebrew or LA. The results showing that lexical decisions for words in SA were not influenced by previous presentations of translation equivalents in LA, in addition to the findings from a former study on semantic priming effects, suggest that the status of LA is similar to that of Hebrew and is consistent with the typical organization of L2 in a separate lexicon. Thus, learning LA appears to be, in some respects, more like learning a second language than like learning the formal register of one’s native language.
143406167
Reading in a root–based–morphology language: the case of Arabic
The reading process in Arabic as a function of vowels and sentence context is reviewed. Reading accuracy and reading comprehension results are reviewed in the light of cross–cultural reading, in order to develop a more comprehensive reading theory. Phonology, morphology and sentence context are considered key variables in explaining the reading process in Arabic orthography. Phonology (in the form of short vowels) affects reading accuracy as well as reading comprehension, regardless of reading level, age, material and reading conditions. Initial visual–orthographic processing identifies the morphology (i.e. the triliteral/quadriliteral roots of Arabic words) which then enables access to the mental lexicon. Sentence context is also essential in reading Arabic orthography regardless of the reader’s level, age, material and reading condition. The phonology, morphology and sentence context of Arabic are presented in two suggested reading models for poor/beginner Arabic readers and for skilled Arabic readers.
145218828
Bilingual is as bilingual does: Metalinguistic abilities of Arabic-speaking children
The study explores the effects of the relationship between exposure to two languages in childhood and metalinguistic abilities. Arabic-speaking children who had been exposed to both spoken and literary Arabic were compared to Russian–Hebrew bilinguals and Hebrew monolinguals. All of the children were in kindergarten or first grade. The tests included language arbitrariness, phonological awareness, and vocabulary. As compared to the Hebrew monolinguals, the Russian–Hebrew bilinguals revealed the following pattern: higher performance on arbitrariness and phonological awareness tasks and lower performance on the vocabulary measure. The results of the Arab children mimicked those of the Russian–Hebrew bilinguals and differed from those of the Hebrew monolinguals. We conclude that exposure to literary Arabic requires the same intensive language analyses as those demanded of children exposed to languages as different as Russian and Hebrew.
39810441
Is Literary Arabic a Second Language for Native Arab Speakers?: Evidence from Semantic Priming Study
The mother tongue of the absolute majority of native Arabic speakers is Spoken Arabic (SA), which is a local dialect that does not have a written form. For reading and writing, as well as for formal communication Literary Arabic (LA) is used. For the literate Arabs, these two languages are extensively inter-twined in every day life. Consequently, it is possible that, despite the difference between them, LA is not processed like a regular second language by the cognitive system of the native Arabic speakers but rather as an enhancement of the spoken lexicon. In the present study we examined this possibility comparing semantic priming effects in auditory lexical decision within SA (L1), with the effects found across languages with LA or in Hebrew (L2). Hebrew is doubtlessly a second language for native Arabic speakers. In this study we have manipulated semantic priming. In Experiment 1 the targets were in Spoken Arabic and the primes in any of the three languages. The semantic priming effect was twice as large within L1 as between languages and there was no difference between Hebrew and LA. In Experiment 2, all primes were in SA whereas the targets were in any of the three languages. The priming effects in that experiment were doubled relative to the previous experiment, but the inter-language relationships were the same. For both language pairings, the semantic priming was larger when the primes were presented in SA (and the targets in either Hebrew or LA) than when the primes were presented in one of the second languages and the targets in SA. The conclusion is that, despite the intensive daily use adult native Arabic speakers make of SA and LA, and despite their shared origin, the two languages retain their status as first and second languages in the cognitive system.
145278743
The impact of phonemic and lexical distance on the phonological analysis of words and pseudowords in a diglossic context
The study examined the impact of the phonemic and lexical distance between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and a spoken Arabic vernacular (SAV) on phonological analysis among kindergarten (N = 24) and first grade (N = 42) native Arabic-speaking children. We tested the effect of the lexical status of the word (SAV, MSA, and pseudo-word), as well as the linguistic affiliation of the target phoneme (SAV vs. MSA), on initial and final phoneme isolation. Results showed that, when words were composed of SAV phonemes only, the lexical status of the word did not affect phoneme isolation. However, when MSA and pseudo-words encoded both SAV and MSA phonemes, kindergarteners found MSA words significantly more difficult to analyze. Comparing children’s ability to isolate SAV versus MSA phonemes revealed that all children found MSA phonemes significantly more difficult to isolate. Kindergarteners found MSA phonemes that were embedded within MSA words even more difficult to isolate. Results underscore the role of the lexical status of the stimulus word, as well as the linguistic affiliation of the target phoneme in phonological analysis in a diglossic context. Characterizing the construct of phonological awareness and explicating its role in the acquisition of reading skill have been the subject of extensive theoretical and empirical attention for the last couple of decades. The evidence that this pursuit has produced establishes a strong empirical basis for the role of children’s phonological awareness in the acquisition of basic reading processes in an alphabetic orthography (for reviews, see Adams, 1990; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). As such, reading is grafted onto oral language skills. Therefore, a basic prerequisite to word decoding is to become aware of the phonological structure of words. Models of reading that highlight the role of oral language skills in the acquisition of basic reading processes (Gough, Hoover, & Peterson, 1996; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990) are grounded in the premise that, by the time children begin to read in their first language (L1), they have already acquired that language in its oral mode. A second premise, and one that follows from the former,
16861091
Processing phonological and semantic ambiguity: evidence from semantic priming at different SOAs.
Disambiguation of heterophonic and homophonic homographs was investigated in Hebrew using semantic priming. Ambiguous primes were followed by unambiguous targets at 100 ms, 250 ms, and 750 ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Lexical decision for targets related to the dominant phonological alternatives of heterophonic homographs were facilitated at all SOAs. Targets related to subordinate alternatives were facilitated only at SOAs of 250 ms or longer. When the primes were homophonic homographs, semantic relationship facilitated lexical decision of targets at all SOAs regardless of the dominance of the meaning to which the targets were related. These data can be accounted for by assuming multiple lexical entries for heterophonic homographs, single lexical entries for homophonic homographs, and phonological mediation of accessing meanings. Language-specific factors probably account for the long-lasting activation of subordinate meanings.
39835269
Identity Avoidance in the Hebrew Lexicon: Implications for Symbolic Accounts of Word Formation
Hebrew frequently exhibits geminates in the root but strictly constrains their location: Root-initial gemination is rare (e.g., ssm), whereas root-final gemination (e.g., smm) is frequent. Four experiments demonstrate that Hebrew speakers generalize this constraint to novel roots. When speakers are encouraged to form a triliteral root from a biconsonantal input (e.g., sm), they frequently reduplicate the root's final radical (e.g., smm), but not its initial radical (e.g., ssm). Likewise, the rejection of novel root foils with root initial geminates is easier than roots with final geminates. In both cases, speakers' performance is inexplicable by the statistical structure of the Hebrew language. Speakers' ability to freely generalize the constraint on root structure suggests that their linguistic competence appeals to mental variables.
30302390
How Initial Fixation Position Influences Visual Word Recognition: A Comparison of French and Arabic
The position the eye initially fixates in a written word influences the ease with which this word is recognized. Prior research has shown that the function relating ease of word recognition and initial fixation position in the word is not symmetric. Word recognition is generally superior when the initial fixation is left rather than right of the center of the word. This asymmetry in the function relating initial fixation position to word identifiability could be due to (a) hemispheric specialization, (b) reading habits, or (c) variations in lexical constraint. The present experiments tested these alternative explanations by comparing the effects of initial fixation position in prefixed and suffixed words in French and Arabic. The results show that, contrary to both the hemispheric specialization and reading habit hypotheses, the average initial fixation curves for Arabic are asymmetric neither to the left nor to the right but depend on the morphological structure of the stimuli, thus lending support to the lexical constraint hypothesis.
26515267
Prosodic sensitivity and morphological awareness in children's reading.
This study examined the relationships among prosodic sensitivity, morphological awareness, and reading ability in a sample of 104 8- to 13-year-olds. Using a task adapted from Carlisle (Applied Psycholinguistics, 9 (1988) 247-266), we measured children's ability to produce morphological derivations with differing levels of phonological complexity between stem and derivation: No Change, Phonemic Change, Stress Change, and Both Phonemic and Stress Change. A 3 (Grade) x 4 (Derivation Type) analysis of variance showed that children perform significantly more poorly on both types of derivations that involve stress changes than on phonemic change and no change derivations. Regression analyses showed that both prosodic sensitivity and morphological awareness, especially in derivations that require manipulation of stress, are significant predictors of reading ability after controlling for age, verbal and nonverbal abilities, and phonological awareness.
39842985
The Contribution of Morphological and Semantic Relatedness to Repetition Priming at Short and Long Lags: Evidence from Hebrew
The effect of morphological repetition at lag 0 and at lag 15 on lexical decision was investigated in Hebrew with three types of relation between prime and target. In the semantic-plus-morphological condition (SM), the prime and the target in each pair were two semantically related derivatives of the same root. In the “pure morphological” condition (M), the prime and the target derived from the same root, but their semantic association was very low, or nonexistent. In the semantic priming condition (S), primes and targets were semantically associated but were not morphologically related. The pure semantic relationship produced a significant facilitation at lag 0 that disappeared completely at lag 15. The pure morphological relation produced (smaller but) significant facilitation at lag 0 that was not attenuated at lag 15. When prime and target were semantically as well as morphologically related, the facilitation at lag 0 was similar to semantic priming, whereas at lag 15 it was similar to the pure morphological effect. Significant repetition effects at both lags were also found with non-words that shared the same (nonsensical) root and differed with respect to real derivational affixes. The differential time course for facilitation due to semantic and morphological relatedness suggests distinct underlying processes, although at lag 0 it is possible that semantic relatedness may augment the morphological repetition effect. Morphological repetition probably facilitates the retrieval of lexical information that, under certain circumstances, is necessary for lexical decision.
59989364
Morphological and orthographic effects on hemispheric processing of nonwords: A cross-linguistic comparison
We tested the effects of morphological and orthographic differences between English, Hebrew, and Arabic on the functioning of the two cerebral hemi- spheres. University students who were native speakers of each of the three languages performed a lateralized consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) identification task. The stimuli were presented vertically in three conditions: left visual field (LVF), right visual field (RVF), and bilaterally (BVF). Three dependent measures were used: (1) exposure duration of the stimuli in order to achieve a 50% error rate, (2) total num- ber of errors in each presentation condition and (3) the difference between errors on the first letter and errors on the last letter, a qualitative measure of sequential pro- cessing. Arabic readers required longer exposure durations of the syllables in order to achieve a 50% error rate than Hebrew readers, who in turn, required longer exposure durations than native English readers. Readers of all three languages evinced left hemisphere specialization for this linguistic task and a bilateral advantage. The quali- tative patterns revealed that the Arabic and Hebrew speakers showed the same hemi- spheric difference pattern, that was different from the one shown by English readers, and that Arabic readers showed a qualitative pattern suggesting higher levels of sequential processes in both hemisphere than readers of Hebrew and English. We interpret this as reflecting the adaptation of hemispheric abilities to reading languages that differ in morphological structure and orthography.
17911695
The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills.
Three bodies of research that have developed in relative isolation center on each of three kinds of phonological processing: phonological awareness, awareness of the sound structure of language; phonological receding in lexical access, receding written symbols into a sound-based representational system to get from the written word to its lexical referent; and phonetic receding in working memory, recoding written symbols into a sound-based representational system to maintain them efficiently in working memory. In this review we integrate these bodies of research and address the interdependent issues of the nature of phonological abilities and their causal roles in the acquisition of reading skills. Phonological ability seems to be general across tasks that purport to measure the three kinds of phonological processing, and this generality apparently is independent of general cognitive ability. However, the generality of phonological ability is not complete, and there is an empirical basis for distinguishing phonological awareness and phonetic recoding in working memory. Our review supports a causal role for phonological awareness in learning to read, and suggests the possibility of similar causal roles for phonological recoding in lexical access and phonetic recoding in working memory. Most researchers have neglected the probable causal role of learning to read in the development of phonological skills. It is no longer enough to ask whether phonological skills play a causal role in the acquisition of reading skills. The question now is which aspects of phonological processing (e.g., awareness, recoding in lexical access, recoding in working memory) are causally related to which aspects of reading (e.g., word recognition, word analysis, sentence comprehension), at which point in their codevelopment, and what are the directions of these causal relations?
142643408
Morphological analysis, phonological analysis and learning to read French: a longitudinal study
This paper presents a longitudinal study, from kindergarten to secondgrade, which aims to examine the relationship between morphologicalanalysis, phonological analysis and learning to read. Three phonologicalawareness tasks, five derivational and four inflectional subtests wereadministered to fifty children at each of the three levels. Evolution ofperformance was analyzed through the three years. Data showed that withthe exception of two subtests, performance increased from kindergarten tofirst grade and from first grade to second grade, without reaching ceilingperformance in second grade, at least for morphological subtests. Linksbetween morphological and phonological analyses were very strong: inparticular, syllable segmentation was highly correlated with themorphological subtests in kindergarten while phonemic segmentation wascorrelated with morphological subtests in first and second grade. Therewere also strong links between morphological analysis and reading.Regression analyses showed that while phonological awarenessexplained a major part of variance in first grade, both phonologicaland morphological scores explained significant part of variance of bothdecoding and comprehension reading scores in second grade. Thus, thislongitudinal study contributes to the evidence of a link between bothphonological and morphological analysis and learning to read French.
146534241
Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Acquisition
The ability to read is a traditional criterion of academic achievement and is basic to success in almost every aspect of the school curriculum. It is a prerequisite skill for nearly all jobs and the primary key to lifelong learning. Despite its importance, however, it is well documented that not all children attending school attain full literacy in their native language. With regard to monolingual English-speaking children it is estimated that somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of school children having no apparent visual, hearing, or mental deficits encounter unusual difficulty of one kind or another in learning to read [Downing and Leong, 1982]. A significant number of children never learn to read efficiently or effectively. For those of us who can read, it is hard to understand why anyone should have trouble acquiring the skill, since once acquired reading seems so easy and natural. But even the average child does not learn to read easily. Citing the results of standardized reading achievement tests as evidence, Gough and Hillinger [1979] argue that “children almost never learn to read without instruction and even when given explicit, devoted, daily instruction, the average child learns to read very slowly, and with great difficulty” [p.4].
142589896
Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum
One of the most popular programs available more than 250,000 copies soldEasy and fun activities that take only 15-20 minutes a dayIncludes a flexible assessment test that allows group screeningMeets new federal requirements for scientifically based reading researchDeveloped by leading experts in reading instructionPhonemic Awareness in Young Children complements any prereading program. From simple listening games to more advanced exercises in rhyming, alliteration, and segmentation, this best-selling curriculum helps boost young learners' preliteracy skills in just 15-20 minutes a day. Specifically targeting phonemic awareness now known to be an important step to a child's early reading acquisition this research-based program helps young children learn to distinguish individual sounds that make up words and affect their meanings.With a developmental sequence of activities that follows a school year calendar, teachers can chose from a range of activities for their preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade classrooms. Plus, the curriculum includes an easy-to-use assessment test for screening up to 15 children at a time. This assessment not only helps to objectively estimate the general skill level of the class and identify children who may need additional testing but may also be repeated every 1-2 months to monitor progress. All children benefit because the curriculum accommodates individualized learning and teaching styles.Here is everything a teacher needs: Teaching objectivesLesson plans and sample scriptsActivity adaptationsTroubleshooting guidelinesSuggested kindergarten and first-grade schedulesInformal, group screeningA featured book in our Launching Literacy Kit!How Our Early Childhood Products Align with the Head Start Child Development and Early Learning Outcomes Framework "
30762443
Naming of object-drawings by dyslexic and other learning disabled children
Abstract On the Oldfield-Wingfield Picture-Naming Test, sensitive to subtle chronic dysphasia in adults, dyslexic children name fewer pictures correctly. Even when correct on words with less than 30 per million frequency of occurrence, they perform more slowly than do nondyslexic subjects suffering from minimal brain dysfunction (MBD) or normal controls. However, there is no evidence for “perceptual impairment” underlying dyslexic subjects' low scores and prolonged latencies, as the distribution of their errors is similar to that of normal children. Rather it is the nondyslexic MBD group which produces a high percentage of wrong names, suggestive of mistaking the pictured stimuli for other, visually similar, objects.
4736119
Dynamic Testing in Selection for an Educational Programme: Assessing South African Performance on the Raven Progressive Matrices
This article describes the research results of an investigation into the use of dynamic testing for the selection of candidates for an educational programme. The selection of students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds for mathematics-, science-, and technology-based programmes is a problem for which most South African higher education institutions still have to find adequate solutions. Dynamic testing procedures are often seen as more fair to use for selection than single-session tests in situations of unequal educational opportunity. The possibility that a selection instrument using a dynamic testing process could add significantly to the selection effectiveness already achieved in a South African mathematics and science foundation year using single-session tests was investigated. The performance of a group of educationally disadvantaged black South African students on the Raven Progressive Matrices is compared to that of other groups reported in research literature. Considering the disadvantaged nature of the South African group, the group performed well on the Raven test when compared with data from other countries.
11458882
Phoneme segmentation training: Effect on reading readiness
Recent evidence suggests that the ability to segment words into phonemes is significantly related to reading success, and that training in phoneme segmentation appears to have a positive influence on beginning reading. In this study, we evaluated the effect on reading readiness of phoneme segmentation training in kindergarten. Ninety nonreaders with PPVT-R standard scores of 78 or higher were randomly selected from six kindergarten classrooms and assigned to one of three treatment conditions: a) phoneme segmentation group; b) language activities group (control group I); and c) no intervention (control group II). The phoneme segmentation group received seven weeks of instruction in segmentation and in letter names and sounds. Also for seven weeks, the language activities group received the identical instruction in letter names and sounds and additional language activities. Prior to the intervention, the three groups did not differ in age, sex, race, PPVT-R phoneme segmentation, letter name and letter sound knowledge, or reading ability. After the intervention, the phoneme segmentation group outperformed both control groups on phoneme segmentation and reading measures. This study provides additional strong support for including phoneme segmentation training in the kindergarten curriculum. Clinical suggestions for teachers are included.
5741920
What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation.
All Hebrew words are composed of 2 interwoven morphemes: a triconsonantal root and a phonological word pattern. the lexical representations of these morphemic units were examined using masked priming. When primes and targets shared an identical word pattern, neither lexical decision nor naming of targets was facilitated. In contrast root primes facilitated both lexical decisions and naming of target words that were derived from these roots. This priming effect proved to be independent of meaning similarity because no priming effects were found when primes and targets were semantically but not morphologically related. These results suggest that Hebrew roots are lexical units whereas word patterns are not. A working model of lexical organization in Hebrew is offered on the basis of these results.
25246252
Changing models across cultures: associations of phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness with vocabulary and word recognition in second graders from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States.
Using data provided by approximately 100 second graders each from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States, we investigated relations among phonological awareness, morphological structure awareness, vocabulary, and word recognition. Our results indicate that across languages, phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness are similarly associated with one another and with vocabulary knowledge; however, phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness have different associations with word recognition in different scripts among second graders. Specifically, phonological awareness may be more important for reading in English and Korean than for reading in Chinese. In contrast, morphological structure awareness may be more important for reading in Chinese and Korean than for reading in English at this grade level.
22907335
The interaction between phonological processing, syntactic awareness, and naming speed in the reading and spelling performance of first-grade children
The performance of 267 first-grade children was examined on tasks assessing phonological processing, syntactic awareness, and naming speed. The children were also given several measures of word and pseudoword reading, reading comprehension, and pseudoword and dictation spelling. A series of hierarchical analyses indicated that three variables (phonological awareness, syntactic awareness, and naming speed) were still predictors of reading and spelling performance after variance in the others had been controlled for. The results, which confirm that syntactic awareness can account for variance in written language after phonological ability had been controlled for, support the hypothesis concerning the relationships between naming-speed processes and written language, and challenge the unitary phonological theory of reading difficulty.
12406684
The characteristics of arabic orthography slow its processing.
The present study was designed to evaluate whether the complexity of Arabic orthography increases its perceptual load, thus slowing word identification. Adolescent Arabic speakers who mastered Hebrew as a second language completed oral and visual versions of the Trail Making Test (TMT; J. E. Parington & R. G. Lieter, 1949) in both languages. Oral TMT required declaiming consecutive numbers or alternation between numbers and letters. Visual TMT required connecting Arabic or Indian numbers and alternation between letters and numbers. Performance in Hebrew and Arabic oral TMT did not differ. Performance was significantly slower in Arabic visual TMT. These results indicate that Arabic speakers process Arabic orthography (1st language) slower than Hebrew orthography (2nd language) and suggest that this is due to the complexity of Arabic orthography.
20032286
FEMALES' SUPERIORITY ON PHONOLOGICAL AND LEXICAL PROCESSING
_____________ Gender differences in Arabic spelling accuracy of 288 Arabic speaking students from grade 1 to grade 9 were assessed. The spelling errors of these students were analyzed according to the paradigm of Abu-Rabia and Taha (2004). The results showed that generally across all ages/grades girls made fewer spelling errors, especially in the phonological and semiphonological spelling errors categories. The results are discussed in light of the international language research findings. ______________ Introduction Cognitive gender differences have attracted the attention of psychological scholars. Many studies have tested the specific differences between males and females, and the first comprehensive literature review was published by Maccoby and Jacklin (1974). They focused in their review on three major differences between males and females: a) females have better verbal skills, b) males have better mathematical abilities, c) males have better spatial skills. Since the review of Maccoby and Jacklin (1974), many studies conducted to test cognitive abilities and gender have indicated differences on verbal performance and verbal cognitive processing (Halpern, 1992; Emanuelsson & Svensson, 1990). The current study tested the spelling ability of students in grades 1 to 9 students. The purpose was to test gender differences in phonological and lexical processing across grades through spelling and spelling error categories. The spelling method of Abu-Rabia and Taha (2004) was used to test phonological and lexical gender differences in spelling. Literature Review Verbal abilities are expressed in different verbal skills, basic academic skills, reading and writing. Wagemaker (1996) found that girls performed significantly better than boys on reading. The subjects were 9-14 years of age. These results were consistent in different countries. This superiority of females in verbal skills was also evident in dyslexic populations. In Miles, Haslum and Wheeler’s (1998) sample of 269 dyslexic readers, 223 were males and only 46 were females, a 4.51 to 1 ratio favoring females. Many scholars argue that the acquisition of reading is related to efficient phonological processing and that processing deficits are the basis of reading disability (Olson, 1994; Snowling, 2001). Thus we can argue that superiority of females over males in verbal skills means that they are better phonological processors than males. Norrelgen, Lacerda and Forssberg (2000) did not find significant differences between males and females on phonological processing.
42161035
A Cognitive-Process Taxonomy for Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities
Females and males show different average patterns of academic achievement and scores on cognitive ability tests. Females obtain higher grades in school, score much higher on tests of writing and content-area tests on which the questions are similar to material that was learned in school, attain a majority of college degrees, and are closing the gap in many careers that were traditionally male. By contrast, males score higher on standardized tests of mathematics and science that are not directly tied to their school curriculum, show a large advantage on visuospatial tests (especially those that involve judgments of velocity and navigation through three-dimensional space), and are much more knowledgeable about geography and politics. A cognitive-process taxonomy can shed light on these differences.
143158840
Sex and cognition
In this fact-driven book, Doreen Kimura provides an intelligible overview of what is known about the neural and hormonal bases of sex differences in behavior, particularly differences in cognitive ability. Kimura argues that women and men differ not only in physical attributes and reproductive function, but also in how they solve common problems. She offers evidence that the effects of sex hormones on brain organization occur so early in life that, from the start, the environment is acting on differently wired brains in girls and boys. She presents various behavioral, neurological, and endocrinological studies that shed light on the processes giving rise to these sex differences in the brain.
1514862
From primed to learn: the saturation of repetition priming and the induction of long-term memory.
Although practice can make perfect, it is not clear how much practice is needed to trigger long-lasting performance gains on a given task. Here, using a letter enumeration task, we show that the transition of experience dependent performance gains to a relatively stable form, as well as the triggering of delayed, long-lasting, between session gains (both effects are considered manifestations of consolidation processes) is amount-of-practice dependent. We then show (a) that consolidation processes, once triggered, can proceed without further practice as a function of time and (b) that the triggering of consolidation processes is related to repetition priming effects--performance gains in processing a previously experienced item. However, we show that repetition priming effects saturate after a limited number of consecutive repetitions and reflect an initial, but potentially reversible, response to the repeated experience. Moreover, we show that one critical parameter determining the occurrence of repetition priming (but not skill learning) is the presence of interference (by a somewhat different set of items) prior to the primer presentation. Thus, our results suggest that the saturation of repetition priming effects, rather than priming per se, may be critical to the induction of slow learning processes and consolidation.
36682398
The predictive value of the leveling off of within session performance for procedural memory consolidation.
In addition to performance gains accrued concurrently with a given training experience (within-session gains) robust, delayed (between-session) performance gains may slowly evolve in the absence of any additional practice in a variety of tasks. The latter is regarded as a behavioral manifestation of skill memory consolidation. It is not known, however, how much practice is necessary for the triggering of these consolidation effects. Here, using an enumeration task, we show that the triggering of delayed gains could be robustly predicted from each individual's performance curve. Delayed performance gains evolved consistently only when practice continued to the point at which within-session performance leveled off (saturation). No delayed gains were found when training was stopped before this individually determined point. Our results support the notion that the triggering of consolidation processes depends on the saturation of a distinct, early phase of learning rather than on the absolute number of task repetitions, and suggest the possibility that training and rehabilitation protocols could be optimized on an individual basis.