Morphological structure influences saccade generation in Chinese reading
AbstractRecent studies have demonstrated that saccadic programming in reading is not only determined by low-level visual factors. High-level morphological effects on saccade have been shown in two morphologically rich languages. In the present study, we examined the underlying mechanism of such morphological influences by comparing the processes of reading three-character Chinese compound words that differ in their structures in terms of morphological decomposition. Consistent with earlier reports, our results showed an effect of morphological structure on saccade. The readers ’ first-fixation location shifted further aw...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 1, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Measuring reading anxiety in college students
AbstractThe goal of the present study was to create a brief reliable scale for measuring reading anxiety in college students, a time when reading demands are particularly high. Results revealed individual differences in reading anxiety in a sample of 402 university students, showing reliable measurements from a 10-item scale and replicated in a sample of 198 undergraduates. Reading anxiety related to reading fluency, reading self-concept, self-perception of reading ability compared to others, reading enjoyment, and reading for pleasure frequency. Furthermore, higher reading anxiety was observed in students with a known lea...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 30, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Verbal fluency as a predictor of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis and co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms
AbstractVerbal fluency tasks have been useful in characterizing the cognitive and language impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, we have a limited understanding of verbal fluency in children and adolescents with comorbid ASD and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The current study investigates whether the verbal fluency task can serve as an assistive diagnostic tool for predicting ASD and comorbid ASD and ADHD (ASD + ADHD) diagnoses and symptoms. Children and adolescents with ASD (n = 34), ASD + ADHD (n = 26), and typical development (TD;n = 65) complete...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 29, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Effects of context and discrepancy when reading multiple documents
AbstractOn a daily basis, most people read about issues of interest from a diversity of sources. Moreover, the information they encounter frequently encompass discrepancies, ranging from minor inconsistencies to straight contradictions. Readers may construct coherent representations from discrepant contents by linking contents to their respective sources and connecting the sources with agree-disagree or other types of connectives. Across research studies, however, college-level readers' attention to sources has been found to vary according to individual, text and task dimensions. The present study tested the assumption tha...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 28, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Exploring literal and inferential reading comprehension among L2 adolescent learners: the roles of working memory capacity, syllogistic inference, and L2 linguistic knowledge
AbstractAdopting a cognitive perspective, this study examined roles of working memory capacity (WMC), first language (L1) syllogistic inferencing, and second language (L2) linguistic knowledge on literal and inferential understanding of L2 reading comprehension in adolescent L2 learners. Participants were 193 Korean ninth-grade learners of English. The results indicated that L2 linguistic knowledge had a paramount role in explaining literal and inferential understanding of L2 reading. Results also showed that greater WMC facilitated L2 literal reading comprehension for L2 learners with lower L2 linguistic knowledge. Better...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 27, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
What do teacher educators know about English spelling?
AbstractTeachers ’ knowledge of literacy has gained considerable interest over the last three.decades, largely with a focus on the basic language constructs of phonological. awareness and phonics. Fewer studies, however, have focused on spelling. Given the. close relationship between reading and spelling and the n ecessity of an explicit. understanding of the phonological, orthographic, and morphological patterns of English. spelling in the science of teaching reading, the current study examines educators’. knowledge of English spelling. Specifically, this pilot investigation focuses on those. who are teach ing the tea...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 21, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The role of verbal patterns in Arabic reading acquisition: insights from cross-modal priming
This study is the first to address the issue of verbal pattern priming among young developing Arabic speakers. Second and fifth graders performed a lexical decision task using cross-modal priming in which target words primed by the same verbal pattern as the target (/tanaffasa/- /tamahhala/ 'breathed-slowed') were compared to words primed with a different verbal pattern than the target while preserving phonological similarity (e.g.,/tana:qa ʃa/ - /tamahhala/'discussed-slowed'). The findings showed facilitation for target words on accuracy rates among fifth graders only. No facilitation in lexical decisions was observed in...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 17, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
How do executive functions explain early Chinese reading and writing?
This study investigated the direct and indirect associations of different executive function skills with Chinese word reading and writing. A total of 213 Cantonese-speaking kindergarteners (97 girls, mean age = 73.3 months) participated in this study. Their working memory, inhibition control, cognitive flexibility, orthographic knowledge, morphological awareness, word reading, and word writing were assessed. The results showed that working memory significantly explained word reading and writing thr ough orthographic knowledge, and morphological awareness, respectively. Beyond that, working memory still predicted word...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 14, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Multilingual writing development: Relationships between writing proficiencies in German, heritage language and English
AbstractWriting, as a highly complex strategic literacy skill alongside reading, is an essential prerequisite for learning and determines a student ’s educational success. In diverse contexts, a student’s linguistic repertoire may involve multiple languages, which may serve as mutual resources in his or her multilingual writing skill development. Drawing on the data from a German panel study, “Multilingual Development: A Longitudinal Pers pective”, the current research used the longitudinal writing competence data of 965 German-Russian and German-Turkish secondary students regarding their majority language (German)...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 14, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Collaborative writing of argumentative syntheses by low-performing undergraduate writers: explicit instruction and practice
AbstractIn writing argumentative syntheses from multiple and contradictory sources, students must contrast and integrate different perspectives on a topic or issue. This complex task of source-based argumentation has been shown to be effective for learning, but it has also been shown to be quite challenging. Because of the challenges, educational interventions have been developed to facilitate performance through such means as explicit instruction of strategies and students ’ engagement in collaborative writing. Whereas these interventions have been beneficial for many writers, some students continue to perform poorly. T...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 12, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
A better start literacy approach: effectiveness of Tier 1 and Tier 2 support within a response to teaching framework
This study examined the impact of the BSLA for children with varied language profiles and across schools from diverse socioeconomic communities. Additionally, a controlled analysis of the impact of Tier 2 teaching within a response to teaching framework was undertaken. Participants included 402 five-year-old children from 14 schools in New Zealand. A randomised delayed treatment design was uti lised to establish the effect of Tier 1 teaching. Analyses showed a significant Tier 1 intervention effect for phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, non-word reading and non-word spelling. There was no difference in intervention...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 12, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Tender Shoots: a parent book-reading and reminiscing program to enhance children ’s oral narrative skills
AbstractTender Shoots is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) for parents aimed at improving preschool children ’s oral language skills relevant for later reading. Parents of 72 preschool children (M = 50 months) were randomly assigned to either a Rich Reading and Reminiscing (RRR) condition, a Strengthening Sound Sensitivity (SSS) condition, or an Activity-Based Control (ABC) condition. RRR and SSS conditions involved dyads conversing about the same 12 books over 6 weeks, with RRR focuse d on the meaning of the story in relation to children’s own experiences, and SSS focused on soundplay. Children’s oral narrat...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 8, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Orthographic knowledge: a predictor or an outcome of word reading and spelling in bilingual children?
We examined both the temporal order between orthographic knowledge and each of word reading and word spelling—effectively, which predicts which by including autoregressive controls— and cross-linguistic transfer between English and French for our emerging bilingual part icipants. Seven-three children (36 males) were followed from Grades 1 to 3 in a French immersion program in which instruction was entirely in French. We conducted cross-lagged panel models of orthographic knowledge, word reading, and spelling that included controls of phonological awareness, non-ver bal ability. In terms of temporal order, word reading ...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 3, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The effect of communicative purpose and reading medium on pauses during different phases of the textualization process
AbstractMultiple factors simultaneously interact during the writing process. The effect of these interacting factors must be considered if writing is studied as a dynamic and complex process that constantly changes. Based on that premise, the study aims to determine how the interaction between the reading medium and the communicative purpose of a writing task affects the pauses during different stages of the writing process. At the same time, it seeks to determine how this interaction is related to the writer's competence. Using a 2-by-2 experimental design, undergraduate students (n = 66) read documents (print or di...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 3, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Characteristics of preschoolers' early spelling in Hebrew
AbstractBefore formal instruction, preschoolers represent words in print in various degrees of conventionality. Unlicensed letters are letters that have no connection to the word that the child is aiming to write; they are neither licensed by phoneme-grapheme rules nor by orthographical representations in the mental lexicon. In the current paper, we explore the characteristics of unlicensed letters in the written products of Hebrew-speaking children. Specifically, we examined the role of statistical learning in predicting specific categories of unlicensed letters in preschoolers ’ spelling, focusing on letters that are p...
Source: Reading and Writing - May 30, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
