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There is ongoing debate regarding what performance on the number line estimation task represents and its role in mathematics learning. The patterns followed by children's estimates on the number line task could provide insight into this. This study investigates children's estimation patterns on the number line task and assesses whether mathematics achievement is associated with these estimation patterns. Singaporean children (n = 324, Age M = 6.2 years, Age SD = 0.3 years) in their second year of kindergarten were assessed on the number line task (0-100) and their mathematical performance (Numerical Operations and Mathematical Reasoning subtests from WIAT II). The results show that most children's number line estimation patterns can be explained by at least one mathematical model (i.e., linear, logarithmic, unbounded power model, one-cycle power model, two-cycle power model). But the findings also highlight the high percentage of participants for which more than one model shows similar support. Children's mathematical achievement differed based on the models that best explained children's estimation patterns. Children whose estimation patterns corresponded to a more advanced model tended to show higher mathematical achievement. Limitations of drawing conclusions regarding what performance on the number line task represents based on models that best explain the estimation patterns are discussed.

Purpose: Children learning to read in English must learn to read words with varying degrees of grapheme-phoneme correspondence regularity, but there is very little research comparing methods of instruction for words with less predictable or irregular spellings. Therefore, we compared three methods of instruction for beginning readers. Method: Eighty-five Kindergarten children were randomly assigned to either Look and Say (LSay), Look and Spell (LSpell), mispronunciation correction (MPC), or wait-list control conditions. Children were taught 12 irregular words over three sessions. Amount of instructional time and number of exposures to the written and spoken forms of the words was controlled across the three experimental conditions. After training, children were assessed on reading aloud and orthographic choice measures. Results: Children showed evidence of superior learning of trained words in the LSpell and MPC conditions, compared to LSay and control conditions. Differences between the LSpell and MPC conditions were not significant. There was no evidence of generalization to untrained items. Conclusions: Findings indicate that active processing of a word's orthography is crucial for learning irregular words. These results have implications for initial reading instruction. Further research is required to determine whether differences between LSpell and MPC conditions emerge after longer periods of training.

This systematic review investigated how successful children/adolescents with poor literacy skills learn a foreign language compared with their peers with typical literacy skills. Moreover, we explored whether specific characteristics related to participants, foreign language instruction, and assessment moderated scores on foreign language tests in this population. Overall, 16 studies with a total of 968 participants (poor reader/spellers: n = 404; control participants: n = 564) met eligibility criteria. Only studies focusing on English as a foreign language were available. Available data allowed for meta-analyses on 10 different measures of foreign language attainment. In addition to standard mean differences (SMDs), we computed natural logarithms of the ratio of coefficients of variation (CVRs) to capture individual variability between participant groups. Significant between-study heterogeneity, which could not be explained by moderator analyses, limited the interpretation of results. Although children/adolescents with poor literacy skills on average showed lower scores on foreign language phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and reading comprehension measures, their performance varied significantly more than that of control participants. Thus, it remains unclear to what extent group differences between the foreign language scores of children/adolescents with poor and typical literacy skills are representative of individual poor readers/spellers. Taken together, our results indicate that foreign language skills in children/adolescents with poor literacy skills are highly variable. We discuss the limitations of past research that can guide future steps toward a better understanding of individual differences in foreign language attainment of children/adolescents with poor literacy skills.

This research examines the acquisition of letter-position processing. Study 1 investigated letter-position processing in Grades 1-6 and adult readers, using the occurrence of specific error types as the outcome measure. Between Grades 1 and 2, there was a shift from making more other-word to making more letter-position errors. This shift was a function of reading proficiency, not of years of reading instruction. Based on the multiple-route model of reading development (Grainger, Lété, Bertand, Dufau, & Ziegler, 2012), we argue that the fact that children make fewer other-word errors (i.e., mostly letter-identity errors) opens up the opportunity for them to make "the more advanced" letter-position errors. Finally, skilled adult readers still made fewer letter-position errors than typical readers in Grade 6, suggesting that the acquisition process is not finalized by the end of primary school. In Study 2, we directly compared letter-position processing with letter-identity processing. Thirty children in Grade 3 and 30 children in Grade 4 read aloud words with and without higher-frequency distractors. Children more often misread a word with a higher-frequency distractor than without such a distractor and this effect was stronger for below-average than for above-average readers. Converging with the results of Study 1, we found that a letter-position distractor is more disruptive than a letter-identity distractor. These results confirm that the acquisition of letter-position processing lags behind of that of letter-identity processing. The results are discussed within the framework of the Lexical Tuning Hypothesis (Castles, Davis, Cavalot, & Forster, 2007), which stresses the importance of feedback between letter (identity and position) coding and (developing) orthographic representations.

The aim of this study was to understand the relationship between children's knowledge of letter-sound rules ("grapheme-phoneme knowledge") and their ability to identify separate graphemes (e.g., SH, OI) that comprise words ("grapheme parsing"). We used a single-case study approach with children with phonological dyslexia who were able to read words accurately via whole-word processes ("lexical reading"), but were not able to read using grapheme-phoneme knowledge ("non-lexical reading"). These children were able to correctly parse some graphemes without grapheme-phoneme knowledge for these graphemes. However, they were unable to correctly parse some graphemes for which they had grapheme-phoneme knowledge. This dissociation suggests that children may acquire grapheme-phoneme knowledge and phoneme parsing independently. We discuss the implications of these findings for cognitive models of word reading.

Background: Identifying reading comprehension difficulties is challenging. There are many comprehension tests to choose from, and a child's diagnosis can be influenced by various factors such as a test's format and content and the choice of diagnostic criteria. We investigate these issues with reference to the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA) and the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC). Methods: Ninety-five children were assessed on both tests. Test characteristics were compared using Principal Components and Regression analyses as well as an analysis of passage content. Results: NARA comprehension scores were more dependent on decoding skills than YARC scores, but children answered more comprehension questions on the NARA and passages spanned a wider range of difficulty. Consequently, 15-34% of children received different diagnoses across tests, depending on diagnostic criteria. Conclusion: Knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of comprehension tests is essential when attempting to diagnose reading comprehension difficulties.

Masked transposed-letter (TL) priming effects have been used to index letter position processing over the course of reading development. Whereas some studies have reported an increase in TL priming over development, others have reported a decrease. These findings have led to the development of 2 somewhat contradictory accounts of letter position development: the lexical tuning hypothesis and the multiple-route model. One factor that may be contributing to these discrepancies is the use of baseline primes that substitute letters in the target word, which may confound the effect of changes in letter position processing over development with those of letter identity. The present study included an identity prime (e.g., listen--LISTEN), in addition to the standard two-substituted-letter (2SL; e.g., lidfen--LISTEN) and all-letter-different (ALD; e.g., rodfup--LISTEN) baselines, to remove the potential confound between letter position and letter identity information in determining the effect of the TL prime. Priming effects were measured in a lexical decision task administered to children aged 7-12 and a group of university students. Using inverse transformed response times, targets preceded by a TL prime were responded to significantly faster than those preceded by 2SL and ALD primes, and priming remained stable across development. In contrast, targets preceded by a TL prime were responded to significantly slower than those preceded by an ID prime, and this reaction-time cost increased significantly over development, with adults showing the largest cost. These findings are consistent with a lexical tuning account of letter position development, and are inconsistent with the multiple-route model.

The aims of this study were to (a) compare sight word training and phonics training in children with dyslexia, and (b) determine if different orders of sight word and phonics training have different effects on the reading skills of children with dyslexia. One group of children (n = 36) did 8 weeks of phonics training (reading via grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules) and then 8 weeks of sight word training (reading irregular words as a whole), one group did the reverse (n = 36), and one group did phonics and sight word training simultaneously for two 8-week periods (n = 32). We measured the effects of phonics and sight word training on sight word reading (trained irregular word reading accuracy, untrained irregular word reading accuracy), phonics reading (nonword reading accuracy, nonword reading fluency), and general reading (word reading fluency, reading comprehension). Sight word training led to significant gains in sight word reading measures that were larger than gains made from phonics training, phonics training led to statistically significant gains in a phonics reading measure that were larger than gains made from sight word training, and both types of training led to significant gains in general reading that were similar in size. Training phonics before sight words had a slight advantage over the reverse order. We discuss the clinical implications of these findings for improving the treatment and assessment of children with dyslexia.

The main aim of this study was to develop standardised tests that assess some of the most important spelling skills for children in primary school: sound-letter mappings (non-lexical spelling) and word spelling accuracy (lexical spelling). We present normative comparison data for children in Grades 1-7 as well as measures of validity and reliability for both tests. Another aim of this study was to assess the relative prevalence of spelling difficulties that only affect one skill selectively (only lexical or only non-lexical spelling) or both. We found that throughout Grades 1-7, children were as likely to have selective as they were to have mixed difficulties. This underscores the importance of measuring lexical and non-lexical skills separately. The tests presented in this paper provide teachers and clinicians with the necessary tools to do exactly that.

Children who have difficulty learning to read are at increased risk for academic failure, poor self-esteem, anxiety and depression, and unemployment. To help reduce these risks, it is important to identify and treat weaknesses in a child's reading as early as possible. The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable comprehensive standardized test of a key reading sub-skill called grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) knowledge. In Phase 1 of the study, we selected a comprehensive evidence-based list of the most important GPC rules for learning to read in English. In Phase 2, we administered this list to a representative sample of Australian children to calculate age- and grade-based norms. In Phase 3, we established that the test had robust inter-rater and test-retest reliability, and appropriate criterion validity. We hope that this new test, which is called the Letter-Sound Test, proves useful to clinicians, teachers, and researcher as a comprehensive test of GPC knowledge.

There has been much recent interest in letter position coding in adults, but little is known about the development of this process in children learning to read. Here, the letter position coding abilities of 127 children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 (aged 7-10 years) were examined by comparing their performance in reading aloud "migratable" words (e.g., "bread," "three," "diary") with that in reading aloud words without potential for migration (e.g., "heard," "boot," "bitter"). Across all three grade levels, children made many more errors on migratable words than on non-migratable words, and the proportion of migration errors did not decrease with increasing grade level. Within each grade, a tendency to make a high proportion of migration errors was not associated with deficits in other reading subprocesses or with general lexical guessing; indeed, it was associated with strong lexical reading skills. We conclude that letter position coding is generally fragile in developing readers and that this interacts with lexical knowledge to produce migration errors in reading. (Contains 1 figure and 8 tables.)

This paper reports provisional Australian comparison data and scoring instructions for the "Test of Word Reading Efficiency" (TOWRE). The TOWRE is a popular reading fluency test used in reading research, classroom assessment and clinical practice. Approximate "norms" were obtained from children attending four primary schools in New South Wales. Results suggested that the US norms for the TOWRE may overestimate the reading level of Australian children in lower grades and that the performance on the two parallel forms (A and B) of the subtests ("Sight Word Efficiency and Phonemic Decoding Efficiency") of the TOWRE did not differ from each other. While no performance differences were found between boys and girls overall, it was noted that the youngest boys outperformed the youngest girls on Form A of the Sight Word Efficiency subtest, and the youngest girls outperformed the youngest boys on Form B of the Sight Word Efficiency subtest. Limitations of the current study are discussed and a brief reference is made to a new (2012) edition of TOWRE (TOWRE-2).

The focus of this paper is on the assessment of the two main processes that children must acquire at the single word reading level: word recognition (lexical) and decoding (nonlexical) skills. Guided by the framework of the dual route model, this study aimed to (1) investigate the impact of item characteristics on test performance, and (2) determine to what extent widely used reading measures vary in their detection of lexical and nonlexical reading difficulties. Thirty children with reading difficulties were administered selected reading subtests from the Woodcock-Johnson III, the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test--Second Edition, the Castles and Coltheart Reading Test 2 (CC2), as well as a measure of nonverbal IQ. Both within-subjects analyses and descriptive data are presented. Results suggest that in comparison to a pure measure of irregular word reading, children with reading difficulties perform better on word identification subtests containing both regular and irregular word items. Furthermore, certain characteristics (e.g., length, similarity to real words) appear to influence the level of difficulty of nonword items and tests. The CC2 subscales identified the largest proportions of children with reading difficulties. Differences between all test scores were of statistical and clinical significance. Clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.

We report the first three cases of selective developmental letter position dyslexia in English. Although the parents and teachers of the children were concerned about these children's reading, standard tests did not reveal their deficit. It was only when the appropriate target words were presented, in this case, migratable words, that their letter position dyslexia was detected. Whereas previous research has described cases with acquired and developmental forms of letter position dyslexia in Hebrew and Arabic readers, this is the first report of this type of reading disorder in English. The cardinal symptom of letter position dyslexia is the migration of letters within the word (reading "slime" as "smile"; "pirates" as "parties"). These migration errors occur in reading aloud as well as in tasks of silent reading. This study provides further evidence that migration errors emerge at the level of early visual-orthographic analysis, in the letter position encoding function. Alternative explanations for the occurrence of migration errors such as poor phonological processing or a deficit in the orthographic input lexicon are ruled out. (Contains 1 figure and 7 tables.)

A central focus in remedial teaching is the generalisation of responses to contexts in which a student has never been explicitly instructed. Remarkably little is known about how and when generalisation occurs. In this article we examine generalisation effects in the context of spelling. Three areas are discussed: generalisation between spelling and reading, generalisation to untrained sound-letter-correspondences and generalisation to untrained unpredictable words. The research presented indicates both that reading training often leads to spelling improvements and that spelling training leads to reading improvements. There is a tendency for spelling training to be more likely to induce changes in reading than vice versa. In addition, for unpredictable words, generalisation is more likely to occur for words of high frequency and words that are orthographically similar to many other words. We conclude that a better understanding of how generalisation occurs will enable us to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of remedial spelling programmes. (Contains 7 notes and 6 figures.)

This paper reports a single case treatment study conducted with R.F.L., a young man with developmental mixed dysgraphia. The intervention focused on teaching spelling rules and was a replication of a previous successful study. The results of the present study provided further insights into the mechanism that operates to update faulty lexical representations for regular words. We argue that the level of spelling accuracy in combination with the error types present before the intervention are important to consider when choosing intervention methods.

The aim of this article is to provide clinical and practical guidance for the provision of one-on-one intervention for children with spelling difficulties. We briefly discuss the requirements of theoretically guided assessment and suggest some norm-based assessment tools in this light. The main focus of this article is on teaching children with spelling difficulties in a one-on-one context. Previous research has shown that children present with spelling difficulties of different types and that intervention is most effective when targeted at the specific difficulty. Hence, we outline different interventions for different subtypes of developmental spelling difficulties.

In this paper, we discuss a variety of spelling tests that are used to assess developmental spelling difficulties. We differentiate between tests that are valuable tools to monitor spelling development and spelling tests that should be used to further assess children who are not making sufficient progress in the mainstream classroom. We recommend the use of several tests in order to achieve these assessment goals. This paper is a practical guide for clinicians and teachers concerned with the assessment (and treatment) of poor spellers. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure and 14 notes.)

This paper presents a treatment study with a developmental dysgraphic girl, KM, and addresses the mechanisms by which orthographic learning of spelling rules might occur. Before treatment, KM's spelling of words and nonwords was impaired. Analyses of spelling errors indicated poor knowledge of sound-to-letter correspondences. Treatment focused on two spelling rules and was successful: spelling improved for both regular words and nonwords. Untrained words that included the training rules also improved, but later than nonwords and trained words. This delayed generalisation was explained through feedback mechanisms between orthographic lexicon and graphemic buffer.