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Increasing phonological awareness of children with special needs is of vital importance, as it helps them to face different problems they face. Therefore, this study assessed the efficacy of implem...

Purpose To explore Swedish clinical practice regarding assessment of suspected Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) in children. Methods A web-based questionnaire, regarding assessment of SSD in children 4;6-6;11 (years; months), was distributed to Swedish speech-language pathologists (SLPs) through social media and online forums. The questions concerned the frequency and manner of assessment for seven assessment components, chosen based on a review of international recommendations for SSD assessment. Results A total of 131 SLPs responded to the questionnaire. The results show that Swedish SSD assessment practices vary with regards to the frequency and manner of assessment for many components. Speech output is frequently assessed while speech perception, phonological awareness and oral-motor function are assessed less frequently. A variety of manners of assessment, for example, standardised tests, non-standardised material, and informal assessment procedures, such as observation, are utilized by respondents. Conclusions Swedish SSD assessment practices are variable. The present paper reveals areas for development within SLP practice and education programmes, and provides a new perspective on present praxis with regards to the assessment of suspected SSD in Sweden.

This study examined whether the phonological awareness (PA) deficit in Arabic speaking dyslexic children could be impacted by the presence vs. absence of verbal working memory (WM) as function of t...

The present study investigated the relative importance of verbal memory, rapid naming, receptive language and phonological awareness for Turkish children from low-versus middle and high-socio econo...

Research with English-speaking populations has shown that there is a relationship between developmental language disorder (DLD) and emergent literacy skills in children. A small number of Arabic studies have indirectly investigated this relationship in typically developing (TD) children, and children with reading difficulties, and demonstrated the important role of morphosyntactic skills in Arabic reading acquisition. However, none of the previous work has examined the relationship between oral language and emergent literacy skills in children with and without DLD. The aims of this study are twofold: to investigate the language and emergent literacy skills of Saudi Arabic children with DLD aged between 4;0- 6;11 years of age; to compare their performance to age and socioeconomic status matched TD children, and to investigate the relationship between language and emergent literacy skills in both groups. A comprehensive Arabic language and emergent literacy battery was administered. Findings demonstrated that the TD group significantly outperformed the DLD group on most emergent literacy tasks. The DLD group was significantly less accurate than the TD group on syllable segmentation, and phoneme awareness skills. There were significant associations between oral language skills and emergent literacy skills in the DLD group. In the TD group, vocabulary knowledge and syntactic skills were associated with some emergent literacy skills. Syntactic skills were found to have moderately significant relationship with all emergent literacy skills in both groups. This might suggest the important role of morphosyntactic skills to literacy development in Arabic. Overall, findings were consistent with existing literature, and demonstrated strong relationships between oral language and emergent literacy skills in the Arabic language.

Although the link between developmental dyslexia and visual-spatial deficit has been recurrently highlighted, the relationship between visual-spatial abilities and reading performance is still a co...

This study examined the impact of the lexical distance (spoken, modern standard Arabic-MSA, shared, and pseudo-words) on phonological awareness (PA) and naming speed (RAN). The data from this longi...

There is resounding evidence of the existence of direct precursors of written language, most specifically phonological awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, and oral comprehension. The initial d...

This study examined a literacy program that targeted students most at risk of reading difficulties in kindergarten and first grade of 12 Swedish schools. The program used multi-sensory learning met...

This study aims to investigate the nature of phonological awareness in young L3 learners, and the extent to which it changes over time as L2 and L3 learning progresses. Two groups of 12 closely mat...

Aim Some school age children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) struggle with literacy development, yet, the individual differences are major and not well understood. Moreover, literacy attainment is multi-faceted and literacy skills and difficulties manifest in more than one way. The aim of this study was to describe this variability and to identify language/cognitive predictors of different literacy skills. Methods We assessed different literacy skills (word reading accuracy, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling), along with a set of language/cognitive predictor skills (listening comprehension, rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness and nonverbal cognitive ability), in 12-year-old children with ASD without intellectual disability recruited from a longitudinal study in Sweden. Results There was great heterogeneity (from floor to ceiling levels) in literacy skills, with a statistically increased prevalence of poor reading comprehension and reading fluency compared with population norms. In regression analyses, it was shown that concurrent language/cognitive predictor skills (e.g. phonological awareness) were differentially associated with literacy subskills. Moreover, a longitudinal analysis showed that preschool language problems were associated with poor word reading accuracy and spelling in middle school. Conclusions The results confirm previous findings as well as provide new knowledge regarding profiles of literacy (difficulties) in children with ASD; interestingly, the identified predictors of literacy skills in ASD resembled those identified as important in general reading (and dyslexia) research, which might indicate that similar kinds of support and training would be beneficial.

Research Findings: This study used data from a large-scale kindergarten entry assessment (KEA) to understand how well two state screening measures, administered at school entry, predicted the first...

Reading comprehension relies on the integration of phonological, semantic, syntactic and pragmatic language abilities and early reading success is attributed to several interrelated factors. The cu...

This study examines the impact of a systematic teaching programme of phonological awareness (PA) skills on children’s pre-reading skills where English is taught as Second Language in a school in Be...

The writing of Chinese is non-alphabetic, but children in China learnIn Beijing, 182 students in grades two through four (ages ranged between 91 and 135 months) were tested for PA (syllable manipulation and onset-rime oddity tasks) and Pinyin knowledge (Pinyin symbol naming and syllable reading tasks). ANOVAs were used to examine their developmental trajectories. Partial correlations and linear regressions were used to examine the relationships between PA and Pinyin knowledge.Syllable awareness has already reached the ceiling level by grade two, while onset-rime awareness is still developing across grades. The ability to name Pinyin symbols decreases over time, while the ability to read syllables written in Pinyin stays invariant across grades. PA and Pinyin knowledge are significantly correlated, and the results of linear regression indicated that the relationship between PA and Pinyin syllable reading is bi-directional.This study suggests that Mandarin PA development shows features characteristic of a non-alphabetic language with Pinyin knowledge playing a crucial role. Implications for theory and practice of Mandarin-speaking children's literacy development are discussed.

This study explored the impact of a supplemental reading intervention delivered in English in Grade 1 on the performance of at-risk children educated in French Immersion schools. The intervention c...

This paper presents an overview of evidence from psychological research, which enables us to understand the processes involved in word reading, how children develop word reading skills and how to t...

Learning to read is an expectation rather than an exception in society today. Despite this, some children experience reading difficulties. The purpose of this article is to review recent and semina...

Multiple studies and systematic reviews have shown that music instruction improves phonological awareness (PA) and early literacy skills in children, although findings vary. In meta-analyses, the r...

We examined the relations between working memory, emergent literacy skills (e.g., phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, rapid-automatized naming), word reading, and listening comprehensio...

Individual telephone interviews with 11 Australian beginning teachers who were newly appointed, or seeking a teaching position, were used to explore their perceptions of their preparation to teach ...

This study explores how music training impacts the development of inhibition control, phonological processing, and gross and fine motor skills in preschoolers. In a randomized controlled trial, 160...

This study evaluated the impact of a low-intensity strategy designed to facilitate maintenance of reading skill gains made during Tier 2 intervention. A subsample of kindergarten, second grade, and...

The present study examined phonological processing skills (phonological memory, phonological awareness, and rapid automatised naming, RAN) in relation to early Chinese reading and early Chinese mat...

This study aims to identify the predictors of Chinese reading and literacy skills among Chinese school children in Taiwan. Participants recruited in the study were 182 Grade 1 elementary school stu...

Neljäs kirjoittaja Doris Kofler, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano We investigated the predictive power of cognitive skills and background variables of 769 first and second grade children learning to read two orthographically different languages Finnish and German in three countries Finland, Germany and Italy. Main results from stepwise regression models showed that in all countries word reading at first grade was best predicted by letter-sound-connection, as found in other transparent orthographies. In Italy and Finland also phoneme blending, a demanding phoneme awareness skill, was a good predictor. Surprisingly, in Germany initial phoneme identification which is a basic phone awareness skill, and mother's occupation predicted first grade reading. At second grade in Finland and Germany the strongest predictors of word reading were rapid naming, in Finland also short-term-memory and in Germany and Italy reading level at the first grade. Results indicate that both orthographical and educational differences in the three countries can account for different predictors in reading.

This research examined differences between dyslexic, poor and normal readers who learn in the same educational framework, across various linguistic and meta-linguistic skills in Hebrew as the first...

This study examines the link between phonological and morphological awareness and reading comprehension among special-education children who attend self-contained special education classes in regul...

This study aimed at examining the contribution of various linguistic components to reading comprehension (RC) in the seventh and ninth grades and to compare this contribution between two gr...

There is considerable concern regarding our nation’s literacy skills. Research has repeatedly shown that the literacy trajectory is well established very early in the school career. Early childhood...

In this pilot study, we evaluated the effects of the online computer-based training programme ‘Lexilogy-Greek’ on the reading and spelling performance of young poor readers and spellers. The training is based on psycholinguistic principles that emphasise the importance of acquiring efficient phonological as well as morphological knowledge in remediating reading and spelling difficulties. Our sample consisted of fifteen 5th and 6th grade primary school children. Reading and spelling were tested at three points, with a no-intervention period and subsequently an intervention period in between these time points. We adopted a single group repeated measurement design, and tested for intervention effects using repeated measures ANOVAs. The results revealed substantial treatment effects on spelling, word reading fluency and text reading fluency.

Reading success has a significant impact on social, academic and vocational engagement. While there have been many advances in Brazilian educational policy, and a reduction in rates of absolute ill...

In the present study, we examined relations between children’s language and literacy learning opportunities, initial skills, and maternal education. We assessed children’s (n = 1,751 in 461 early c...

We evaluated the impact of teaching complex grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPC) derived from the Simplicity Principle to at-risk poor readers in Grade 2 classrooms, using a two-arm dual site mat...

Listening comprehension (LC) is considered an important but complex skill that predicts later reading comprehension in various languages. In this study, we aimed at understanding the relationship o...

The purpose of this study was to develop a deeper understanding of a group of South African English Second Language (ESL) Foundation Phase teachers' understanding of, skills in, and training needs ...

This study examined whether visual-spatial attention could predict Chinese reading achievement longitudinally beyond some well-established reading precursors. A total of 257 second- and third-grade...

In this study, we examined the mechanism for the relationship between morphological awareness and Chinese character reading in a group of Hong Kong primary school children when they were in grade t...

This study examined changes in reading motivation and reading achievement among Hebrew-speaking first graders following an intervention program designed to increase intrinsic reading motivation. Th...

This study examines the relationship between German second language (L2) learners’ awareness of the German lexical stress assignment system and their ability to accurately assign stress to cognate words with predictable lexical stress. Participants were 31 adult L2 German learners from three groups: native English speakers with a range of German proficiency levels (N = 10), native French speakers with intermediate German proficiency (N = 10), and native French speakers with advanced German proficiency (N = 11). They produced target items in a carrier phrase and then indicated both which syllable they stressed and where stress is supposed to fall. Finally, they provided a rule for assigning stress to each word. Stress production accuracy was similar across the groups, regardless of L1 or L2 proficiency. Participants’ ability to verbalize where they had placed stress was a significant predictor of stress assignment accuracy. They produced relatively few rules overall, and the rules they produced wer...

Dyslexia diagnosis and intervention in the first language (L1) has a long history, whereas the foreign and second language (L2) learning aspects of dyslexia have largely been neglected. Thu...

Relations between participation in Imagination Library, a book distribution program that serves children from birth through age 5, and children’s literacy outcomes in kindergarten were examined. Ch...

The phonological awareness (PA) skills represent a major milestone in the development of reading abilities for preschool children. The purpose of this research study was to examine the deve...

We investigated the double-deficit hypothesis (DDH) in samples of U.S. (N = 489), Australian (N = 264), and Scandinavian (N = 293) children followed from preschool to grade 2. Children were...

Dyslexia is one of the most common reading disabilities everywhere, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Studies have shown that rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonological awareness (PA) are factors associated with dyslexia. Arabic is a language with unique orthographic features making it different from English and other European languages. There are limited studies of the effects of RAN and PA on reading achievement in Arabic. This article reports an investigation into the effects of RAN and PA on the reading ability of Arabic-speaking children with no reported history of intellectual, speech, language, or hearing disabilities. A cohort of 615 third-grade students at five public schools in the UAE were tested on the Arabic Reading Ability Scale (ARAS) and those with the lowest 20% of scores were then subjected to a PA test and a RAN test. Those with no RAN or PA deficit were found to achieve the highest mean Arabic reading score, followed in descending order by the RAN deficit, PA deficit and double-deficit groups. Taken together, the results confirm that phonological skills and naming-speed skills make distinct contributions to reading ability and that deficits in these two areas are particularly pronounced among individuals with dyslexia.

The authors compared the discourse of 100 Israeli preschool teachers with a group of children during three book-sharing contexts: reading, reconstruction, and telling. During telling and reconstruc...

What is the time course of activation of phonological information in logographic writing systems like Chinese, in which meaning is prioritized over sound? We used a manipulation of phonological regularity to examine foveal and parafoveal phonological processing of Chinese phonograms at lexical and sublexical levels during Chinese sentence reading in 2 eye-tracking experiments. In Experiment 1, using an error disruption task during silent reading, we observed foveal lexical phonological activation in second-pass reading. In Experiment 2, using the boundary paradigm, both parafoveal lexical and sublexical phonological preview benefits were found in first-fixation duration in oral reading, whereas only lexical phonological benefits were found in gaze duration during silent reading. Thus, phonological information had earlier and more pronounced parafoveal effects in oral reading, and these extended to sublexical processing. These results are compatible with the view that oral reading prioritizes parafoveal phonological processing in Chinese.

Effective teaching strategies to modify classroom instruction for students who are deaf or hard of hearing are presented. The authors share principles that guide these instructional strategies and ...

The homeschool framework differs significantly from the traditional school setting. Earlier research has shown differences between homeschooled and other children in language skills, but no study h...

From a psycholinguistic perspective of view, there are many cognitive differences that matter to individuals’ second language acquisition (SLA). Although many computer-assisted tools have been developed to capture and narrow the differences among learners, the use of these strategies may be highly risky because changing the environments or the participants may lead to failure. In this paper, we propose an artificial neural network (ANN) based computational model to simulate the environment to which students are exposed. The ANN computational model equips English teachers with the ability to quickly find the predicting factors to learners’ overall English competences and also provides teachers with the ability to find abnormal students, based on reviewing their individualized ANN trajectories. Finally, by observing the compound effects of cognitive factors using the same evaluation scale, new hypotheses about the mutual relationships among the phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory and long-term memory abilities of their students can be generated. Our experimental ANNs suggested three detailed corresponding conclusions for the participants’ English teachers. These results provide teachers with guidance in designing and applying cognitive ability-related intervention strategies in their L2 pedagogical activities.