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Visual attention span, the number of orthographic units that can be processed at a glance, has been shown to predict reading performance in orthographically opaque languages (i.e., French and English), independent from phonological awareness. Whether this relation is also found in Dutch, a more transparent orthography, was examined in two studies. Two unresolved issues are addressed. First, whether the contribution of visual attention span to reading was independent of rapid naming. Participants were 117 second graders and 111 fifth graders. Visual attention span was a significant predictor of both beginning and advanced word reading fluency, after controlling for rapid naming. Second, we examined the relation of visual attention span with spelling performance in a sample of 255 fourth graders. Visual attention span was a unique predictor of both orthographic knowledge and spelling performance. Based on the results we discuss the possibility of a slightly different interpretation of visual attention span.

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UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Developmental changes in the relations between RAN, phonological awareness, and reading in Spanish children

Throughout reading development, a gradual shift is seen in the processes underlying word identification from serial decoding toward parallel processing or sight word reading. It has been argued that this shift can be detected in the correlations between serial and discrete naming of alphanumeric symbols (digits and letters) and words. In the current study, we examined the relations between alphanumeric symbol naming and reading of monosyllabic and multisyllabic words and nonwords in two languages that differ in orthographic consistency: English and Dutch. A sample of 92 English-speaking Canadian children and 101 Dutch children, all in Grade 5, were assessed on discrete and serial naming of digits and letters and on serial and discrete naming of monosyllabic and multisyllabic words and nonwords. Results showed that discrete naming of alphanumeric symbols closely resembled discrete reading of monosyllabic words, suggesting that these words are processed in parallel in both languages. Both serial and parallel reading processes were found to underlie identification of multisyllabic words as well as monosyllabic nonwords. However, differences between the two languages emerged when processing multisyllabic nonwords. Whereas English-speaking children relied more on parallel reading processes to read multisyllabic nonwords, Dutch-speaking children processed these items serially. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Although a diagnosis of dyslexia is often made during elementary school, severe and persistent literacy difficulties of a considerable group of students are only noticed during secondary school. The question arises whether the literacy(‐related) deficits of these late identified students with dyslexia differ from those of early diagnosed students. To address this question, 10th Grade Dutch secondary school students with early ( n = 35) and late ( n = 19) identified dyslexia and their peers with average to good literacy abilities ( n = 24) were compared on literacy skills and underlying cognitive skills. At the group level, both students with an early and late diagnosis performed more poorly than their typical peers, but they did not differ from each other on (pseudo‐)word reading, spelling and underlying cognitive correlates (phonemic awareness, rapid automatized naming and visual attention span). The early and late group contained comparable percentages of students performing poorly on most measures. There were, however, more students in the early group who showed deficits in phonemic awareness. Our results indicate that students with early and late diagnosed dyslexia are highly comparable. Suggestions for fitting interventions are discussed.

Although research on cognitive correlates of spelling has been conducted, these studies generally do not distinguish between different types of targets that need to be spelled. Arguably, the contributions of these skills differ for words opposed to pseudowords and for targets that can be spelled on the basis of phoneme-to-grapheme conversion (phonologically consistent) and those that cannot (phonologically inconsistent, relying on orthographic knowledge). We assessed these issues in early spelling. A total of 83 first graders and 58 second graders completed word and pseudoword dictation tasks, containing phonologically consistent and inconsistent items. They also completed tasks reflecting potential cognitive correlates of spelling: phoneme awareness, rapid automatized naming, visual attention span and word reading. Dictation outcomes demonstrated that more spelling errors were made in inconsistent than in consistent items. The effect of lexicality differed across grades: More errors were made in spelling words than pseudowords in Grade 1, whereas the opposite pattern was found in Grade 2. Phoneme awareness and rapid naming, but not visual attention span, were found to be significant correlates of spelling outcomes. However, the cognitive correlates captured only a limited amount of variance in spelling errors. Moreover, these effects mostly disappeared once word reading was entered as a predictor. These findings indicate that research into predictors of spelling should distinguish between words and pseudowords, consistent and inconsistent items, and should consider more spelling-based rather than reading-based correlates of spelling performance. Keywords Consistency • Phoneme awareness • Rapid automatised naming • Spelling • Visual attention span • Word type Elise de Bree and Madelon van den Boer have contributed equally to this work.

Fluent reading is characterized by rapid and accurate identification of words. It is commonly accepted that such identification relies on the availability of orthographic knowledge. However, whether this orthographic knowledge should be seen as an accumulation of word-specific knowledge in a lexicon acquired through decoding or as a well-developed associative network of sublexical units is still under debate. We studied this key issue in reading research by looking at the serial and/or parallel reading processes underlying word and nonword reading. Participants were 314 Dutch 2nd, 3rd, and 5th graders. The children were administered digit, word, and nonword naming tasks. We used latent class analyses to distinguish between readers who processed the letter strings serially or in parallel, based on the correlation patterns of word and nonword reading with serial and discrete digit naming. The 2 classes of readers were distinguished for both word and nonword reading. The validity of these classes was supported by differences in sensitivity to word and nonword length. Interestingly, the different classes seemed to reflect a developmental shift from reading all letter strings serially toward parallel processing of words, and later of nonwords. The results are not fully in line with current theories on the representation of orthographic knowledge. Implications in terms of models of the reading process are discussed.