Beginning readers outperform older disabled readers in learning to read words by sight

Abstract

Advanced and novice readers in 1st grade and older disabled readers were given nonword reading and spelling tasks. In addition, they practiced learning to read simplified phonetic spellings of 16 words for several trials (e.g., 'messenger' spelled MESNGR, 'stupid' spelled STUPD). Following Reitsma's (1983) procedure, three days later subjects read originally learned spellings mixed with altered spellings in which single letters were added or deleted or replaced by phonetically equivalent or non-equivalent letters (e.g., MESNGR altered to MESNJR; STUPD altered to STUP). Subjects' latencies to read original and altered spellings as the practiced words were measured. In ANCOVs equating the groups for reading level, disabled readers read as many nonwords and spelled as many words as beginning readers, indicating equivalent alphabetic knowledge. However, disabled readers took significantly more trials to learn to read the 16 target words, indicating deficient sight word learning processes. In the latency task, all three groups read original words faster than some types of modified spellings, indicating that subjects were reading the words by lexical access and that they were sensitive to some letter alterations. Beginning readers were affected by letter changes in medial as well as initial and final positions of words whereas disabled readers were affected only by initial and final letter alterations. From results we conclude that beginning readers acquire more complete grapho-phonic connections than disabled readers when they store sight words in lexical memory. Disabled readers' difficulties appear to arise from faulty word learning processes that impair the quality of lexical representations stored in memory.

R u txting? Is the Use of Text Speak Hurting Your Literacy?

“…However, a decline in spelling performance for commonly used words may not occur at all. As reading researchers have noted (e.g., Ehri & Saltmarsh, 1995;Reitsma, 1983), even beginning readers need as few as three or four practices to retain letter information about specific words in memory. As a result, the information about specific words (such as you're or too) is quickly learned and provided it is encoded properly into LTM, it is not likely to be forgotten.…”

The influence of graphotactic knowledge on adults’ learning of spelling

“…Indeed, studies show that adults and children often remember the initial letters of words better than the subsequent letters (e.g., Jensen, 1962;Kooi, Schutz, & Baker, 1965;Treiman, Berch, & Weatherston, 1993). There is also evidence that letters at the edges of words, especially the initial letter, play a special role in reading for both children and adults (e.g., Ehri & Saltmarsh, 1995;Rayner, White, Johnson, & Liversedge, 2006;White, Johnson, Liversedge, & Rayner, 2008). For example, Rayner et al (2006) showed that, compared to a control condition in which words were spelled correctly, reading speed decreased more when a letter at the beginning of a word was switched with its neighbor (e.g., oculd for could) than when a letter in the middle or at the end of a word was switched (e.g., cuold or coudl for could).…”

Literacy Instruction for Secondary Students With Disabilities

“…The intervention was referred to as "graphosyllabic analysis" and resulted in improvements in the decoding of novel words, in the ability to segment words into syllables, and in the ability to identify subtle misspellings of common words where the erroneous letters were embedded in the middle of the words. This last outcome is important in that students with reading disabilities have been shown to attend primarily to the beginning and endings of words, causing them to make mistakes when sounding out polysyllabic words (Ehri & Saltmarsh, 1995).…”