Cláudia Cardoso-Martins

Comparing the Phonological and Double Deficit Hypotheses for Developmental Dyslexia.

This study tested the predictions of thephonological and double deficit hypotheses byexperimentally examining speech perception,phoneme awareness, lexical retrieval (serialand discrete), articulatory speed, and verbalSTM in school age child (N = 35) and adolescent(N = 36) dyslexics, and both chronological age(CA) and reading age (RA) controls. Theresults confirmed the findings of previousstudies of a deficit in phoneme awareness indevelopmental dyslexia. At both age levels,dyslexics performed significantly more poorlythan both their CA and RA controls. Althoughdeficits in the other processes investigated,particularly in rapid serial naming, were alsoapparent, they were not as clear-cut as thedeficit in phoneme awareness. In general,definite evidence of a deficit in rapid serialnaming was limited to the more severelyimpaired dyslexics. Furthermore, although rapidserial naming contributed independent variationto various literacy skills, its contributionwas modest relative to the contribution ofphoneme awareness, regardless of whether theliteracy skill relied more or less heavily onphonological or orthographic coding skills. Further analyses suggested that variation inrapid serial skill is particularly importantfor fluent reading of text, whereas phonemeawareness is particularly important for thedevelopment of the ability to read byphonologically recoding letters or groups ofletters in words into their phonological codes.This explains the relatively strongcontribution of phoneme awareness to readingand spelling ability in general. In sum, thephonological hypothesis offers a moreparsimonious account of the present resultsthan the double deficit hypothesis.

The Relationship Between Phoneme Awareness and Rapid Serial Naming Skills and Literacy Acquisition: The Role of Developmental Period and Reading Ability

This study investigates the relationship between phoneme awareness and rapid naming skills and subsequent reading and spelling ability in two developmental periods: kindergarten to Grade 1 and Grade 1 to Grade 2. Two groups of children participated in the study: children at high and children at low familial risk of developmental dyslexia. The results are consistent with previous findings that both phoneme awareness and rapid naming play an important role in early literacy acquisition in an alphabetic writing system. However, relative to phoneme awareness, rapid naming plays a modest role. In this study, an unambiguous specific effect for rapid naming was found only among the children in the high-risk group. Furthermore, even among these children, the effect of rapid naming was limited to rapid naming of letters and digits and to the second developmental period investigated. The implications of these results for understanding the role played by rapid naming and phoneme awareness in alphabetic literacy acquisition are discussed.

Alphabetic Access Route in Beginning Reading Acquisition in Portuguese: The Role of Letter-Name Knowledge.

The present study investigates Ehris (Ehri & Wilce 1985; Scott & Ehri 1990) hypothesis that knowledge of the alphabet enables children to learn to read by processing and storing letter-sound relations in words. In particular, it examines whether letter-name knowledge facilitates the learning of spellings in which the names of one or more letters can be heard in the pronunciation of the words. Preschool children who could not read any word out of context were divided into two groups on the basis of their ability to name the letters of the alphabet: one group knew the names of the letters while the other did not. Both groups were taught to read two types of simplified spellings: visual spellings, that is, spellings whose letters did not correspond to sounds in the pronunciations of the words but which were visually more salient (e.g., XQKO for the word ‘cerveja’), and phonetic spellings, that is, spellings whose letters corresponded to sounds in the pronunciation of the words (e.g., CRVA for the word ‘cerveja’). In all phonetic spellings, the name of at least one letter could be clearly heard in the pronunciation of the words. Results corroborated Ehris hypothesis. The children who did not know the names of the letters learned to read the visual spellings more easily than the phonetic ones. On the other hand, the children who knew the names of the letters showed the opposite pattern, that is, they learned the phonetic spellings more easily than the visual ones.

Can individuals with Down Syndrome acquire alphabetic literacy skills in the absence of phoneme awareness

Two studies investigating the relationship betweenphoneme awareness and word reading ability in Downsyndrome (DS) are reported. The first study included33 Brazilian individuals with DS (mean age = 23years). They all had begun to read and all showedclear signs of phonological recoding skills. Thirty-three normal children (mean age = 7 years),matched with the individuals with DS for readingability, participated as controls. The second studyincluded individuals with DS with a wider range ofreading ability: a group of 46 readers (mean age = 22years) and a group of 47 nonreaders (mean age = 18years). The results question Cossu, Rossini, andMarshalls (1993a) claim that phoneme awareness is notrelated to alphabetic reading acquisition in DS.Although the individuals with DS who participated inthe first study performed rather poorly on a task thatpresupposes the ability to explicitly manipulatephonological representations, they performed quitewell on a task assessing the ability to detectphonemic similarities in words. We suggest that it wasthis ability that enabled them to acquire phonologicalrecoding skills as well as they did, despite theircognitive limitations. The results of the second studywere consistent with this interpretation. The abilityto detect phonemic similarities in wordssignificantly differentiated between the readers andthe nonreaders, even after we controlled forvariations in letter knowledge, intelligence, andchronological age.

Letter name knowledge and the ability to learn to read by processing letter–phoneme relations in words: Evidence from Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children

Previous studies [Scott & Ehri (1990) Journal of Reading Behavior22: 149–166; de Abreu & Cardoso-Martins (1998) Reading and Writing:An Interdisciplinary Journal 10: 85–104] have shown thatprereaders who know the names of the lettersuse a visual–phonological strategy to learn toread words in which the names of one or moreletters can be clearly detected in thepronunciation of the words. The present resultsextend these findings by showing that BrazilianPortuguese-speaking prereaders who know thenames of the letters can process letter–soundrelations to learn to read spellings in whichthe letters correspond to phonemes, not toletter names. Following Ehri & Wilcesprocedure [(1985) Reading Research Quarterly 20:163–179], Brazilian preschool childrenlearned to read two types of simplifiedspellings: phonetic spellings, that is,spellings in which the letters corresponded tophonemes in the pronunciation of the words(e.g., SPT for sapato), and visualspellings, that is, spellings in which theletters did not correspond to sounds in thepronunciation of the words, but which werevisually more salient (e.g., VST for pijama). The children learned to read thephonetic spellings more easily than the visualspellings, suggesting that they recognized theletter–phoneme relations in learning to readthe phonetic spellings. This interpretation isbolstered by the results of correlationalanalyses between knowledge of letter sounds andperformance on the two word-learning tasks.While knowledge of letter–phonemecorrespondences did not correlate withperformance on the word-learning task with thevisual spellings, it correlated significantlyand positively with the childrens ability tolearn to read the phonetic spellings.

O conhecimento do nome das letras e o desenvolvimento da escrita: evidência de crianças falantes do português

Four to 5-year-old children were asked to spell pairs of words beginning with the same letter and consonant sound. For each pair, the entire name or part of the name of the initial letter could be heard in the pronunciation of one of the words (e.g., telefone; limao), but not in the pronunciation of the other (e.g., tartaruga; laranja). The children spelled the first letter correctly more frequently for words such as telefone than for words such as tartaruga, suggesting that children use their knowledge of letter names to connect print to speech. The implications of these findings for our understanding of the development of childrens invented spellings are discussed. In particular, we question Ferreiros interpretation of a type of spelling that is observed among young speakers of Spanish and Portuguese - the so-called syllabic spelling.

Qual é a Contribuição da Nomeação Seriada Rápida para a Habilidade de Leitura e Escrita?: Evidência de Crianças e Adolescentes com e sem Dificuldades de Leitura

The study investigates the relationship between rapid serial naming and phoneme awareness, and reading and spelling ability. Participants were 146 North-American children and adolescents varying in age from seven to 18 years. Approximately half of the participants (N = 71) had reading difficulties. The results suggest that rapid serial naming contributes variation to reading and spelling ability that is independent of the contribution of phoneme awareness. However, relative to this skill, rapid serial naming makes a rather modest contribution to learning to read and spell in an alphabetic writing system. Further analyses suggested that rapid serial naming is particularly important for the development of the ability to read texts rapidly and accurately, whereas phoneme awareness is particularly important for the development of the ability to read by phonological recoding, that is, by translating letters or group of letters into their phonological codes. Finally, there was little indication that the role played by either phoneme awareness or rapid serial naming interacts with age or reading ability

Is Sensitivity to Rhyme a Developmental Precursor to Sensitivity to Phoneme?: Evidence from Individuals with Down Syndrome.

This study investigated sensitivity to rhymeand phoneme among readers and nonreaders with Down syndrome (DS) and normally developingchildren. Three tasks were administered toevaluate sensitivity to rhyme and phoneme: arhyme detection task, an initial phonemedetection task, and a middle phoneme detectiontask. Results for the normally developingchildren replicated the results of previousstudies suggesting that the ability to detectrhyme is a developmental precursor of theability to detect phonemes. Although all taskswere very easy for the children who had alreadystarted to read, the nonreaders found the rhymedetection task significantly easier than eitherthe initial or the middle phoneme detectiontask. On the other hand, there was scarcelyany indication that the individuals with DSfound the rhyme detection task easier thaneither one of the phoneme detection tasks.While all tasks were very difficult for thenonreaders with DS, the DS individuals who hadalready started to read found the rhymedetection task significantly more difficultthan both the initial and the middle phonemedetection tasks.

Consciência fonológica e habilidade de leitura na Síndrome de Down

The present study investigated the relationship between phonological awareness and reading ability in Down syndrome (DS). Thirty-three individuals with DS participated in the study. They all had begun to read and all showed clear signs of phonological recoding skills. Thirty-three normal children, matched with the individuals with DS for reading ability, served as controls. The results contradicted Cossu, Rossini and Marshallx92s (1993) claim that individuals with DS can learn to read in the absence of phonological awareness. Although the individuals with DS performed significantly worse than the normal children on the tasks that were used to assess phonological awareness, they performed quite well on a simple task of phoneme detection. In fact, analyses of the individual scores did not reveal a significant difference between the two groups on that task. In addition, analyses of the relationship between phonological awareness and reading ability yielded the same results for the two groups of subjects. For both groups, performance on a task that required the ability to explicitly manipulate phonemes correlated significantly with reading ability, even after individual differences for letter name knowledge and nonverbal intelligence were controlled.

Frequency Analyses of Prephonological Spellings as Predictors of Success in Conventional Spelling

The present study explored how children’s prephonological writing foretells differential learning outcomes in primary school. The authors asked Portuguese-speaking preschool children in Brazil (mean age 4 year 3 months) to spell 12 words. Monte Carlo tests were used to identify the 31 children whose writing was not based on spellings or sounds of the target words. Two and a half years later, the children took a standardized spelling test. The more closely the digram (two-letter sequence) frequencies in the preschool task correlated with those in children’s books, the better scores the children had in primary school, and the more preschoolers used letters from their own name, the lower their subsequent scores. Thus, preschoolers whose prephonological writing revealed attentiveness to the statistical properties of text subsequently performed better in conventional spelling. These analytic techniques may help in the early identification of children at risk for spelling difficulties.