Beyond decoding: Phonological processing during silent reading in beginning readers.

Abstract

In this experiment, the extent to which beginning readers process phonology during lexical identification in silent sentence reading was investigated. The eye movements of children aged seven to nine years and adults were recorded as they read sentences containing either a correctly spelled target word (e.g., girl), a pseudohomophone (e.g., gerl), or a spelling control (e.g., garl). Both children and adults showed a benefit from the valid phonology of the pseudohomophone, compared to the spelling control during reading. This indicates that children as young as seven years old exhibit relatively skilled phonological processing during reading, despite having moved past the use of overt phonological decoding strategies. In addition, in comparison to adults, children's lexical processing was more disrupted by the presence of spelling errors, suggesting a developmental change in the relative dependence upon phonological and orthographic processing in lexical identification during silent sentence reading.

Phonological processing during silent reading in teenagers who are deaf/hard of hearing: an eye movement investigation

“…As literacy skill increases, a beginning reader must progress from phonological decoding (the conscious, effortful process of sounding out words, either overtly or covertly) to phonological recoding (the subconscious activation of abstract phonological codes) (Frost, ). Preliminary evidence for phonological recoding in children as young as 7 years old during silent sentence reading was reported by Blythe, Pagan, and Dodd (). Children showed a pseudohomophone advantage—faster reading of pseudohomophones than matched spelling controls—that was equivalent to the effect observed in the skilled adult readers.…”

Developmental eye-tracking research in reading: Introduction to the special issue

“…However, the first studies on this issue are starting to accrue. Using the boundary paradigm, Tiffin-Richards and Schroeder (2015) compared children's and adults' parafoveal preprocessing of phonological and orthographic information in German (see Blythe, Pagan, & Dodd, 2015, for a similar study investigating phonological effects in foveal processing in English). They found that children but not adults showed phonological parafoveal preview benefits.…”

Orthography and speech production in children with good or poor reading skills

“…For instance, Roelofs (2006) found that spelling only influences production in reading tasks but not object naming tasks. According to Blythe, Pagan, and Dodd (2014), both children and adults are influenced by phonology even in silent reading. This finding lends further support to the concept of the interactivity between phonology and orthography.…”