Search

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether morphological awareness measured before children are taught to read (Kindergarten in Israel) predicts reading accuracy and fluency in the middle of first grade, at the very beginning of the process of learning to read pointed Hebrew -- a highly transparent orthography, and whether this contribution remains after controlling for phonemic awareness. In a longitudinal design, 680 Hebrew-speaking children were administered morphological and phonemic awareness measures at the end of the preschool year (before they were taught to read) then followed up into first grade when reading was tested in mid-year. The results indicated that even at this early point in learning to read a transparent orthography, preschool morphological awareness contributes significantly to both reading accuracy and reading fluency, even after partialling out age, non-verbal general ability, and phonemic awareness. The current results extend the Functional Opacity argument (Share, 2008) which proposes that at the initial stages of reading acquisition, when children still have incomplete mastery of some aspects of the spelling-sound system, non-phonological sources of information about word identity such as morphology can assist in the decoding process. The practical implications of these results with regard to early reading instruction are discussed.

Purpose: We previously reported evidence of true double dissociation between reading accuracy and reading rate in a large unselected sample of Hebrew-speaking fourth graders and a large clinical sample of adult Hebrew-speakers with dyslexia. The present study aimed to replicate and extend these findings to Arabic, which is structurally similar to Hebrew but has distinct linguistic and orthographic features. Method and results: In a nationally representative 4th grade sample (N = 236), we show that (1) around one third of children with dyslexia had impaired reading rate but intact accuracy whereas another third had impaired accuracy but intact rate, (2) there was a double dissociation with respect to additional (validation) measures of reading accuracy and rate (pseudowords and text), and (3) the accuracy-only and rate-only disability subtypes displayed distinct and non-overlapping cognitive-linguistic profiles. Conclusion: This evidence converges on the conclusion that accuracy-only and rate-only dyslexic subtypes represent true or "hard" subtypes in an absolute and not merely relative sense. We also found that the accuracy-only subgroup represents a group with broad language weaknesses, primarily phonological but also non-phonological. Finally, we discuss the resemblance between the present rate-accuracy typology and Wolf and Bowers' double-deficit typology.

The science of reading has made genuine progress in understanding reading and the teaching of reading, but is the science of reading just the science of reading English? Worldwide, a majority of students learn to read and write in non-European, nonalphabetic orthographies such as abjads (e.g., Arabic), abugidas/alphasyllabaries (e.g., Hindi), or morphosyllabaries (e.g., Chinese). Over a decade ago, I argued that the extreme inconsistency of English spelling-sound correspondence had confined the science of reading to an insular, Anglocentric research agenda addressing theoretical and applied issues with limited relevance for a universal science of reading. Here, I ask if the science of reading has moved forward. Acknowledging some limited progress over the past decade, it is evident that even today, mainstream reading research remains entrenched in Anglocentrism, Eurocentrism, and another form of ethnocentrism that I call alphabetism. Even the two dominant theoretical frameworks for describing cross-script diversity, orthographic depth and psycholinguistic grain size theory, give little or no consideration to non-European alphabets or nonalphabetic scripts, promoting a one-dimensional view of script variation (i.e., spelling-sound consistency). Consideration of the full spectrum of the world's languages and writing systems reveals multiple dimensions of writing system complexity, each liable to create obstacles for the developing reader. If the science of reading is to contribute meaningfully to assessment, diagnosis, instruction, and intervention for all readers around the world, then we must extricate our field from entrenched ethnocentrism and embrace global diversity.

The following semi-autobiographical essay tells a cautionary tale about the entrenched Anglocentrism, Eurocentrism, and Alphabetism in reading and reading disabilities (dyslexia) research. Having been born, raised, and educated in an entirely monolingual English-speaking environment, I later migrated to a country where non-European languages (Hebrew and Arabic) were the linguae francae and, furthermore, written in a non-alphabetic script. Over the period of a decade or so, I gradually, and sometimes painfully, came to understand that I needed to revise or discard many of my Anglophone insights into reading and reading disabilities. The culmination of this "awakening" came with the writing of my Anglocentricities critique (Share, 2008), where I argued that the extreme ambiguity of English spelling-sound correspondence had confined reading science to an insular, Anglocentric research agenda addressing theoretical and applied issues with limited relevance for the majority of the world's literacy learners. I subsequently extended this argument to Eurocentricism and Alphabetism -- the misguided belief that alphabets are inherently superior to non-alphabetic writing systems (Share, 2014). More recently, together with Peter T. Daniels, a linguist specializing in writing systems, I have been exploring writing system diversity and its implications for learning to read around the world (Daniels & Share, 2018). I hope my story will help raise awareness of the need to move our field a step closer toward embracing global diversity. [This is a William M. Cruickshank Memorial Lecture delivered at the 2019 Conference of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities.]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential contribution of decoding efficiency to the development of reading comprehension among skilled adult native Arabic speakers. In addition, we tried to investigate the influence of Arabic vowels on reading accuracy, reading speed, and therefore to reading comprehension. Seventy-five Arabic native speakers read fully pointed, unpointed and pseudowords lists of Arabic and silent reading comprehension of pointed and unpointed paragraphs were tested. Reading speed and accuracy measures revealed a slowest and less accurate in reading pseudowords, and fastest and most accurate in reading unpointed words with pointed word naming speed and accuracy in between. Subjects who were fast and accurate in reading isolated words were also fast and accurate in reading all varieties of printed words. Pearson correlation procedures indicated that silent reading comprehension of pointed and unpointed Arabic texts was uncorrelated with either oral reading speed or accuracy. Our findings with regard to the cross-linguistic research literature as well as the specific features of Arabic language are discussed.

Introduction: Previous cross-sectional investigations by Shany and colleagues have provided evidence of double dissociation among dyslexics between word reading accuracy and (pure) word reading rate. A rate-disabled subtype (with intact reading accuracy) evinced deficits only in rapid naming (RAN); An accuracy-disabled subtype (with intact reading rate) showed deficits in phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA) but not RAN. Method: The present longitudinal study followed 639 Palestinian Arabicspeaking children from preschool to Grade 1 with the aim of determining (1) whether a dissociation between PA C MA and RAN is apparent among preliterate preschoolers, (2) whether the PA C MA-disabled subgroup constitutes a mild form of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), (3) whether our three disabled subgroups (PA C MA-only, RAN-only, and PA C MA-plus-RAN) can be differentiated on preschool early literacy measures and, (4) whether the three at-risk subgroups develop into selectively rate-disabled, accuracy-disabled, or doubly-disabled (accuracy C rate) readers in Grade 1? Results: Our findings confirmed the existence of two distinct selectively disabled/at-risk subgroups in preschool: a RAN-only subgroup with intact PA and MA and a PA C MA subgroup with broad impairments across language measures but intact RAN. Grade 1 reading data also confirmed that the RAN-disabled subgroup became slow but accurate readers, whereas the PA C MA subgroup developed into inaccurate and slow readers. Discussion: Our study indicates partial dissociation between early dyslexia subtypes, each displaying distinct and non-overlapping cognitive-linguistic profiles in preschool. The study also revealed a strong association between reading accuracy and reading rate among beginning readers. This study emphasizes the importance of considering heterogeneity in reading outcomes as well as multiple oral language skills beyond the well-documented role of PA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a model of Hebrew reading development that emphasizes both the universal and script-specific aspects of learning to read a Semitic abjad. At the universal level, the study of Hebrew reading acquisition offers valuable insights into the fundamental dilemmas of all writing systems--balancing the competing needs of the novice versus the expert reader (Share, 2008). At the script-specific level, pointed Hebrew initially employs supplementary vowel signs, providing the beginning reader a consistent, phonologically well-specified script while helping the expert-to-be unitize words and morphemes via (consonantal) spelling constancy. A major challenge for the developing Hebrew reader is negotiating the transition from pointed to unpointed Hebrew, with its abundance of homographs. Our triplex model emphasizes three phases of early Hebrew reading development: a progression from lower-order, phonological (sublexical) sequential spelling-to-sound translation (Phase 1, Grade 1) to higher-order, string-level (lexical) lexico-morpho-orthographic processing (Phase 2, Grade 2) followed, in the upper elementary grades, by a supralexical contextual level (Phase 3) essential for dealing with the pervasive homography of unpointed Hebrew.

Most current theories of reading and dyslexia derive from a relatively narrow empirical base: research on English and a handful of other European alphabets. Furthermore, the two dominant theoretical frameworks for describing cross-script diversity--orthographic depth and psycholinguistic grain size theory--are also deeply entrenched in Anglophone and Eurocentric/alphabetocentric perspectives, giving little consideration to non-European writing systems and promoting a one-dimensional view of script variation, namely, spelling-sound consistency. Most dyslexics struggle to read in languages that are not European and orthographies that are not alphabetic such as abjads, abugidas, or morphosyllabaries; hence the full spectrum of the world's writing systems needs to be considered. The global picture reveals multiple dimensions of complexity. We enumerate 10 such dimensions: "linguistic distance," "nonlinearity," "visual complexity," "historical change," "spelling constancy despite morphophonemic alternation," "omission of phonological elements," "allography," "dual purpose letters," "ligaturing", and "inventory size." We then consider how these 10 dimensions might affect variation in reading ability and dyslexia.

Whereas most English language sub-typing schemes for dyslexia (e.g., Castles & Coltheart, "1993") have focused on reading accuracy for words varying in regularity, such an approach may have limited utility for reading disability sub-typing beyond English in which fluency rather than accuracy is the key discriminator of developmental and individual differences in reading ability. The present study investigated the viability of an accuracy/fluency-based typology in a regular orthography, pointed Hebrew. We sought evidence of true or "hard" accuracy/rate subtypes in the strict (double dissociation) sense of selective impairment on only one dimension in the presence of "normal" levels of performance on the other dimension. In a nationally representative sample of fourth graders, we were able to identify a specific accuracy-disabled sub-group as well as an equally specific rate-disabled subgroup. Validating this subdivision, we show that the nature of reading performance in these subgroups and their converging cognitive/linguistic profiles are unique and distinctive on variables other than the measures used to define them. While the rate-specific disability appeared to reflect a general deficit in speed of processing affecting reading rate, and rapid automatized naming of print-related material, the accuracy-only disability subgroup displayed selective deficits in phonological awareness and morphological knowledge. Biosocial, demographic, and instructional factors, furthermore, did not explain the sub-group differences. It appears that both these subtypes are equally prevalent each counting close to 10% of the population.

The "script-dependence hypothesis" was tested through the examination of the impact of Russian and Hebrew literacy on English orthographic knowledge needed for spelling and decoding among fifth graders. We compared the performance of three groups: Russian-Hebrew-speaking emerging triliterates, Russian-Hebrew-speaking emerging biliterates who were not literate in Russian (but only in Hebrew) and Hebrew-speaking emerging biliterates. Based on similarities between Russian and English orthographies, we hypothesised that Russian-Hebrew-speaking emerging triliterates would outperform both other groups on spelling and decoding of "short vowels" and "consonant clusters". Further, we hypothesised that all groups would face similar difficulties with "novel orthographic conventions". Russian-Hebrew-speaking emerging triliterates demonstrated advantages for spelling and decoding of short vowels and for decoding of consonant clusters. All three groups experienced difficulty with spelling and decoding the digraph "th" as well as the split digraph (silent "e"). (Contains 7 tables.)

The present paper addresses the issue of cross-linguistic transfer of phonemic awareness and word identification skills across two linguistically distant languages (Russian and Hebrew). The role of early literacy learning was directly assessed by distinguishing two groups of Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals; bi-literate (n = 39) and mono-literate bilinguals (n = 41), as well as a group of Hebrew-speaking monolinguals (n = 41). In a longitudinal design, a variety of linguistic, meta-linguistic and cognitive tasks were administered at the commencement of first grade, with Hebrew reading and spelling assessed at the end of the year. We observed general and specific benefits of early acquisition of basic Russian (L1) literacy skills to first grade Hebrew (L2) decoding and spelling. General benefits were evident in the cross-linguistic transfer of phonemic awareness from Russian to Hebrew, while more specific benefits were evident in the enhanced ability of bi-literate bilinguals to spell vowels and consonant clusters in Hebrew. These findings are discussed in the context of two alternative hypotheses: "the central processing hypothesis" and "the script dependent hypothesis".

This study tested the phonological core deficit hypothesis among Dutch dyslexic adults and also evaluated the pattern of individual differences among dyslexics predicted by the phonological-core variable-orthographic differences (PCVOD) model (van der Leij & Morfidi, 2006) in a sample of 57 control adults and 56 dyslexic adults. It was confirmed that Dutch adult dyslexics share a phonological core deficit. As predicted, there was significantly larger variability among dyslexics in orthographic coding relative to phonological coding. Orthographic coding also explained additional variance in word reading fluency after phonological coding was partialled out. Consistent with the PCVOD model, when two subgroups were selected, which differed in levels of orthographic coding, the high-scoring subgroup outperformed the low-scoring subgroup on almost all reading and reading-related tasks. As anticipated, the high-scoring subgroup had near-normal levels of orthographic abilities. These advantages were not attributable to differences in general cognitive competence, print exposure, or educational attainment. (Contains 5 tables, 1 figure, and 2 footnotes.)

The phonological-core variable-orthographic differences (PCVOD) model [van der Leij, & Morfidi (2006). "Journal of Learning Disabilities," 39, 74-90] has been proposed as an explanation for the heterogeneity among dyslexic readers in their profiles of reading-related subskills. The predictions of this model were investigated in a sample of 72 Dutch secondary school students (dyslexics and controls). First, the PCVOD assumption was confirmed that phonological processing and orthographic competence are independent contributors to the prediction of reading fluency and spelling. Among the phonological processing tasks, phonological recoding explained substantial unique variance, but not phonemic awareness or rapid serial naming. Next, the dyslexic readers were divided into two subgroups based on high (ORTH[superscript +]) and low levels (ORTH[superscript -]) of orthographic competence. Both subgroups performed below controls on all measures tapping phonological processing, reading and spelling but the ORTH[superscript +] group performed as well as non-disabled controls on Dutch and English orthographic choice. As predicted by the model, there were no differences between the subgroups on the tasks that depend on phonological processing, with or without reading. There were differences on Dutch word reading fluency and spelling. Furthermore, the ORTH[superscript +] subgroup outperformed ORTH[superscript -] on tasks demanding speeded word processing such as "flashed" presentation. This finding was independent of lexicality (words or pseudowords), language (Dutch or English) or response mode (lexical decision or typing), but restricted to silent reading. This supports the view that the ORTH[superscript +] subgroup is better at identifying larger orthographic units. There was no indication of differences between the subgroups in reading experience. Our data, therefore, support the PCVOD model.

In a previous study [Schwartz et al. (2005). "Written Language and Literacy," 8, 179-207] we showed that early literacy in Russian (L1) facilitated decoding acquisition in Hebrew (L2) among Russian-Hebrew first graders. The present study examined two alternative explanations for this finding. The first account concerns the general benefits of an early start in literacy. The second relates to the specific meta-linguistic insights engendered by early exposure to a fully fledged orthography--Russian. We therefore compared two groups who had acquired literacy prior to the onset of schooling: bi-literate bilinguals (Russian L1 literates and Hebrew L2 learners) (n = 26) and early-literacy monolinguals (Hebrew-speaking monolinguals) (n = 18). The research was conducted in two stages. First, linguistic, meta-linguistic and cognitive tasks in Hebrew were administered to all children and in Russian to the bilinguals at the beginning of the first grade. Next, reading and writing skills in Hebrew were assessed at the end of the first grade. Bi-literate bilinguals showed superior levels of phonological awareness on an initial phoneme isolation task in Hebrew compared to other three groups. In addition, the bi-literate bilinguals were found to be superior to the early-literacy monolinguals on measures of word and pseudoword accuracy, which are known to depend heavily on phonological processing efficiency, but not on fluency and spelling measures, which are more reliant on stored orthographic information. This pattern of outcomes was attributed to the facilitating effects of an orthography characterized by a fully fledged alphabet, in contrast to Hebrew's primarily consonantal orthography, as well as the complex syllabic structure of Russian.

In this critique of current reading research and practice, the author contends that the extreme ambiguity of English spelling-sound correspondence has confined reading science to an insular, Anglocentric research agenda addressing theoretical and applied issues with limited relevance for a universal science of reading. The unique problems posed by this "outlier" orthography, the author argues, have focused disproportionate attention on oral reading accuracy at the expense of silent reading, meaning access, and fluency, and have significantly distorted theorizing with regard to many issues-including phonological awareness, early reading instruction, the architecture of stage models of reading development, the definition and remediation of reading disability, and the role of lexical-semantic and supralexical information in word recognition. The dominant theoretical paradigm in contemporary (word) reading research--the Coltheart/Baron dual-route model (see, e.g., J. Baron, 1977; M. Coltheart, 1978) and, in large measure, its connectionist rivals--arose largely in response to English spelling-sound obtuseness. The model accounts for a range of English-language findings, but it is ill-equipped to serve the interests of a universal science of reading chiefly because it overlooks a fundamental unfamiliar-to-familiar/novice-to-expert dualism applicable to all words and readers in all orthographies. (Contains 19 footnotes.)

The present study examined the possibility that spelling fulfils a self-teaching function in the acquisition of orthographic knowledge because, like decoding, it requires close attention to letter order and identity as well as to word-specific spelling-sound mapping. We hypothesised that: (i) spelling would lead to significant (i.e. above-chance) levels of orthographic learning; (ii) spelling would actually result in superior learning relative to reading owing to the additional processing demands invoked when spelling; (iii) there would be stronger outcomes for post-test spelling production compared with spelling recognition; and (iv) relative to reading, spelling would produce superior orthographic learning in the case of later-occurring orthographic detail compared with information appearing earlier in the letter string. In a fully within-subjects design, third grade Hebrew readers were exposed to novel letter strings presented in three conditions: spelling, reading and an unseen control condition. With the exception of the position by condition interaction (our fourth hypothesis), which, although in the expected direction, failed to attain significance, all hypotheses were supported. These data highlight yet another dimension of reading-writing reciprocity by suggesting that spelling offers a powerful self-teaching tool in the compilation of word-specific orthographic representations.

This study examined orthographic learning in oral and silent reading conditions. Dutch third graders read, either aloud or silently, short texts containing novel target (pseudo) words. The acquisition of new word-specific orthographic knowledge was assessed several days later by comparing target spellings with homophonic spellings in tasks requiring orthographic choice, spelling, and naming. It was predicted that orthographic learning would be evident in both oral and silent conditions but stronger in the oral condition. As expected, orthographic learning was evident in both oral and silent conditions. This finding suggests that support for the self-teaching hypothesis of orthographic learning obtained in studies of unassisted oral reading can be generalized to the more common form of independent reading: silent reading. In addition, the results on the naming task provided some evidence for stronger orthographic learning during oral reading, but the two spelling tasks did not.

This study examined consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllable splitting among literate (Grade 2) and preliterate (kindergarten) Hebrew speakers. Consideration of both the architecture of Hebrew orthography and phonology led to the prediction that a body-coda rather than an onset-rime subdivision would predominate. Structured and unstructured tasks confirmed the claim that there exists a subsyllabic, supraphonemic level of phonological awareness that is more accessible than individual phonemes. However, as predicted, the syllable body rather than the rime was found to be the more accessible biphonemic unit. Moreover, this preference did not appear to be solely the product of orthographic structure; rather it was also inherent in spoken phonology. Access to single phonemes, in contrast, shifted from an early preliteracy advantage for (monophonemic) onsets to a literacy-based preference for codas.

The present study examined factors that influence the process of learning to read in a second language. The Hebrew reading comprehension skills of 68 Russian-speaking children (mean age 7 years 6 months) were screened at the start of Grade 2. From this sample, 40 participants were selected: 20 successful learners and 20 unsuccessful learners. These two groups were then tested on a wide range of language skills (e.g., phonological processing, vocabulary, syntactic and morphological awareness) in both languages (Hebrew and Russian) and reading skills in Hebrew (e.g., reading speed and accuracy). Two factors, level of spoken Hebrew and phonological awareness deficits in both languages, were significant. Phonological awareness difficulties constituted the key factor associated with poor decoding whereas insufficient mastery of spoken Hebrew was important in the case of reading comprehension. An interesting dissociation was also found in our poor readers between impaired phonological awareness and other unimpaired phonological processing abilities such as oral pseudoword repetition and working memory. These findings suggest that, in addition to poor spoken L2 proficiency, poor readers are characterized more by a metalinguistic rather than a linguistic deficit in their native tongue.

This study set out to investigate the self-teaching of good and poor readers in pointed Hebrew--a highly regular orthography. Four groups of children (three groups in Grades 4 to 6, and one group in Grade 2) were included in this study; poor readers with large discrepancies between IQ and reading ("dyslexics"), IQ-nondiscrepant poor readers (non-dyslexic or "garden-variety" poor readers), chronological-age matched normal readers, and a group of younger normal readers matched to the older garden-variety group on both reading and mental age. It was hypothesized that primary deficits in phonological recoding (decoding) would impair the identification of novel target words (fictitious names of fruits/towns/stars/coins, etc.) appearing in text, which, in turn, would lead to deficient orthographic memory for target spellings. Alternative predictions were derived with regard to the degree of orthographic deficiency. According to the "compensatory processing" hypothesis, orthographic learning was expected to be relatively "less" impaired among disabled readers compared to normal readers. The alternative "dissociation" hypothesis, on the other hand, predicts that disabled readers' orthographic learning would be significantly "more" impaired than that of normal readers. Neither hypothesis was supported. Impaired orthographic learning, commensurate with levels of target decoding success, was evident in the post-test spelling and orthographic choices of both groups of poor readers. Indeed, a close link was observed between levels of target word decoding and the acquisition of orthographic information among all three older groups of children. No qualitative differences between dyslexics and garden-variety poor readers emerged in patterns of self-teaching. While the data from the three older groups supported a model of developmental delay rather than deviance, findings from the younger reading-age/mental-age controls revealed startling qualitative divergence in orthographic learning. No statistically reliable evidence was obtained for orthographic learning in these younger beginning readers who displayed an essentially "surface" pattern of non-lexical reading. A hybrid "orthographic sensitivity" hypothesis was proposed to account for these data, according to which an initially surface-style of word reading engendered by a highly regular orthography gives way to a highly specialized "print-specific" (orthographic) processing advantage that develops in the course of the second school year as an outgrowth of a critical volume of print experience.

Two experiments tested the common assumption that knowing the letter names helps children learn basic letter-sound (grapheme-phoneme) relation because most names contain the relevant sounds. In Experiment 1 (n=45), children in an experimental group learned English letter names for letter-like symbols. Some of these names contained the corresponding letter sounds, whereas others did not. Following training, children were taught the sounds of these same ''letters.'' Control children learned the same six letters, but with meaningful real-word labels unrelated to the sounds learned in the criterion letter-sound phase. Differences between children in the experimental and control groups indicated that letter-name knowledge had a significant impact on letter-sound learning. Furthermore, letters with names containing the relevant sound facilitated letter-sound learning, but not letters with unrelated names. The benefit of letter-name knowledge was found to depend, in part, on skill at isolating phonemes in spoken syllables. A second experiment (n=20) replicated the name-to-sound facilitation effect with a new sample of kindergarteners who participated in a fully within-subject design in which all children learned meaningless pseudoword names for letters and with phoneme class equated across related and unrelated conditions.

Experiment 1 examined the time course of orthographic learning among Grade 3 children. A single encounter with a novel orthographic string was sufficient to produce reliable recall of orthographic detail. Moreover, newly acquired orthographic information was retained 1 month later. These data support the logistic learning functions featured in contemporary connectionist models of reading rather than a ''threshold'' model of orthographic learning. Experiments 2 and 3 examined self-teaching among novice readers. In contrast to the findings from less regular orthographies such as English and Dutch, beginning readers of a highly regular orthography (Hebrew) appear to be relatively insensitive to word-specific orthographic detail, reading in a nonlexical ''surface'' fashion. These results suggest fundamental differences between shallow and deep orthographies in the development of orthographic sensitivity.

This study employed the distinction between lexical and supralexical processes in reading in order to gain a more fine-grained picture of the relationships between early language impairment and later reading disabilities. We hypothesized that early semantic-syntactic deficits would be only weakly related, if at all, to the characteristically modular word recognition processes involved in reading isolated words and pseudowords. On the other hand, early language deficiencies were expected to be significantly associated with processes operating beyond the level of individual words when children are required to read and understand connected text. These predictions were tested using data from a longitudinal study of over 500 unselected children followed from kindergarten to the end of Grade 1. Both traditional categorical analyses of specific subgroups with early language impairment or later reading disability as well as dimensional (regression) analyses were carried out. As predicted, higher order language was found to be related to supralexical aspects of reading after controlling IQ, age, gender and socioeconomic status, with only a weak and statistically marginal association with lexical processing. With biosocial variables and phonological awareness partialled out, higher order language was unrelated to lexical aspects of reading. These data highlight the multicomponential nature of reading and suggest that different measures of reading cannot simply be regarded as interchangeable measures of a single undifferentiated reading construct.

A study investigated whether higher prevalence of reading disabilities among boys is related to gender bias in the prediction of reading from IQ. Data from 1,139 New Zealand children (collected during ages 5-13) indicate a significant intercept bias. Boys' predicted reading scores were systematically overestimated, thereby inflating IQ-reading discrepancies. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)