The benefit to memory of spacing presentations of material is well established but lacks an adequate explanation and is rarely applied in education. This paper presents three experiments that examined the spacing effect and its application to education. Experiment 1 demonstrated that spacing repeated presentations of items is equally beneficial to memory for a wide range of ages, contrary to some theories. Experiment 2 introduced 'clustered' presentations as a more relevant control than massed, reflecting the fact that massed presentation of material is uncommon in education. The scheduling of clustered presentations was intermediate between massed and distributed, yet recall was no different than for massed. Experiment 3, a classroom-based study, demonstrated the benefit of distributed over clustered teaching of reading through modification of the scheduling of everyday lessons. Thus, the effectiveness of teaching may be improved by increasing the degree to which lessons are distributed.The benefit for memory of distributed (over massed) presentation of to-be-remembered material is robust. Spaced presentation of material leads to better retentions than does blocked presentation. However the principle of distributing learning has not been widely applied in education. Dempster (1988) argued that a major factor limiting such application is the lack of direct classroom-relevant demonstrations of its efficacy. Indeed, it is questionable whether or not the contrast between distributed and massed presentation of material is relevant to education at all. Massed presentation, in the sense of repeated presentations of to-be-learnt stimuli, or more generally, concentrated teaching of a topic in a single session, is rarely found in the classroom. Of more interest is the question of whether different degrees of distribution are influential in learning. The experiments reported in this paper begin to address the need to bridge laboratory studies (Experiments 1 and 2) and classroom-based studies (Experiment 3). At the same time a more important comparison than between massed and distributed presentation is investigated, namely between different degrees of distribution.

BackgroundIt is well established that phonological awareness, print knowledge and rapid naming predict later reading difficulties. However, additional auditory, visual and motor difficulties have also been observed in dyslexic children. It is examined to what extent these difficulties can be used to predict later literacy difficulties.MethodAn unselected sample of 267 children at school entry completed a wide battery of tasks associated with dyslexia. Their reading was tested 2, 3 and 4 years later and poor readers were identified (n = 42). Logistic regression and multiple case study approaches were used to examine the predictive validity of different tasks.ResultsAs expected, print knowledge, verbal short‐term memory, phonological awareness and rapid naming were good predictors of later poor reading. Deficits in visual search and in auditory processing were also present in a large minority of the poor readers. Almost all poor readers showed deficits in at least one area at school entry, but there was no single deficit that characterised the majority of poor readers.ConclusionsResults are in line with Pennington's (2006) multiple deficits view of dyslexia. They indicate that the causes of poor reading outcome are multiple, interacting and probabilistic, rather than deterministic.

Debates concerning the types of representations that aid reading acquisition have often been influenced by the relationship between measures of early phonological awareness (the ability to process speech sounds) and later reading ability. Here, a complementary approach is explored, analyzing how the functional utility of different representational units, such as whole words, bodies (letters representing the vowel and final consonants of a syllable), and graphemes (letters representing a phoneme) may change as the number of words that can be read gradually increases. Utility is measured by applying a Simplicity Principle to the problem of mapping from print to sound; that is, assuming that the ''best'' representational units for reading are those which allow the mapping from print to sounds to be encoded as efficiently as possible. Results indicate that when only a small number of words are read whole-word representations are most useful, whereas when many words can be read graphemic representations have the highest utility.

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A fiercely contested debate in teaching reading concerns the respective roles and merits of reading schemes and real books. Underpinning the controversy are different philosophies and beliefs about how children learn to read. However, to some extent debates have largely been rhetoric-driven, rather than research-driven. This article provides a theoretical perspective derived from instructional psychology and explores the assumptions that have been made about the use of real books and reading schemes, which have tended to polarise arguments about their respective strengths and limitations. It analyses the structures of adult literature, children's real books, and reading schemes, and examines the demands that they make on children's sight vocabulary and phonic skills. The critical high-frequency words and grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) are identified that will enable children to read the majority of phonically regular and irregular words that they encounter which, perhaps surprisingly, occur more often in real books than structured reading schemes. Learning additional sight words or GPCs is of limited value due to their relatively low occurrence in written English and, thus, potentially minimal impact on children's reading. Finally, the implications of this research for teaching reading are considered, particularly the complementary roles of real books and teaching methods derived from instructional psychology. In the past they have been viewed as diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. BackgroundA long-running debate in teaching reading concerns whether children learn best through the use of 'reading schemes' or 'real books'. Underpinning the controversy are different philosophies and beliefs about how children learn to read, in particular about the roles of phonic and whole language approaches to teaching reading and their impact on children's progress. The tensions between the two were recognised over 30 years ago in the Bullock Report (Department of Education and Skills [DES], 1975) which commented: