The effects of a word identification game aimed at enhancing decoding efficiency in poor readers were tested. Following a pretest–posttest–retention design with a waiting control group, 62 poor‐reading Dutch second graders received a five‐hour tablet intervention across a period of five weeks. During the intervention, participants practiced reading words and pseudowords while doing semantic categorization and lexical decision exercises in a gaming context. Prior to, directly after, and five weeks following the intervention, word‐decoding efficiency was assessed using a standardized read‐aloud test consisting of six lists of untrained words and pseudowords with three levels of difficulty: consonant‐vowel‐consonant items, consonant cluster items, and disyllabic items. Significant increases as a result of the brief gaming intervention were found for decoding efficiency on all six word lists. The game, which included repetition, immediate corrective feedback, and a semantics task, elicited transfer and retention effects.

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The direct, retention, and transfer effects of repeated word and pseudoword reading were studied in a pretest, training, posttest, retention design. First graders (48 good readers, 47 poor readers) read 25 CVC words and 25 CVC pseudowords in ten repeated word reading sessions, preceded and followed by a transfer task with a different set of items. Two weeks after training, trained items were assessed again in a retention test. Participants either received phonics feedback, in which each word was spelled out and repeated; word feedback, in which each word was repeated; or no feedback. During the training, both good and poor readers improved in accuracy and speed. The increase in speed was stronger for poor readers than for good readers. The good readers demonstrated a stronger increase for pseudowords than for words. This increase in speed was most prominent in the first four sessions. Two weeks after training, the levels of accuracy and speed were retained. Furthermore, transfer effects on speed were found for pseudowords in both groups of readers. Good readers performed most accurately during the training when they received no feedback while poor readers performed most accurately during the training with the help of phonics feedback. However, feedback did not differentiate for reading speed or for effects after the training. The effects of repeated word reading were found to be stronger for poor readers than for good readers. Moreover, these effects were found to be stronger for pseudowords than for words. This indicates that repeated word reading can be seen as an important trigger for the improvement of decoding skills.

In masked onset priming (MOPE) there is an overlap between prime and target in the onset. This has been shown to lead to faster word recognition of the target in adults in naming tasks but not in lexical decision tasks. To take a developmental stance, the present study investigated MOPE of various onsets in 30 adults and 74 second graders in a lexical decision task. For adults we found no effects for MOPE in lexical decision, which is congruent with the literature. However, results revealed priming effects for the beginning readers: accuracy scores were higher and response times were shorter for both words and pseudowords when there was an overlap of the onset between prime and target. The effects that we found may reflect either sublexical processing or speech planning, leaving it for future research to reach a firm conclusion with regard to underlying processes. Based on our findings, it can tentatively be assumed that beginning readers are susceptible to MOPE in lexical decision because of the fact that their word identification is far from automated.