Lynn McQuarrie

Articulation Rate, Naming Speed, Verbal Short-Term Memory, and Phonological Awareness: Longitudinal Predictors of Early Reading Development?

This study examines how measures of articulation rate, verbal short-term memory (STM), naming speed, and phonological awareness tasks administered in kindergarten and again in Grade 1 jointly and uniquely predict word reading and passage comprehension variance in Grades 1, 2, and 3. Results from regression and commonality analyses indicated that (a) when measured in Grade 1, phonological processing tasks were better, but not significantly better, predictors of later reading than when measured in kindergarten; (b) articulation rate and verbal STM did not uniquely predict reading if phonological awareness and naming speed were controlled; (c) when measured in kindergarten, both phonological awareness and naming speed accounted for unique variance in reading measures, and (d) when measured in Grade 1, phonological awareness was the strongest predictor of reading. Commonality analyses indicated that kindergarten letter recognition shares large parts of its predictive variance with phonological awareness and naming speed measures. Finally, controlling for the autoregressive effect of Grade 1 word reading reduced the usefulness of phonological awareness and naming speed as predictors of Grade 3 reading, but both still accounted for significant unique variance.

Bilingual Deaf Students' Phonological Awareness in ASL and Reading Skills in English

The sources of knowledge that individuals use to make similarity judgments about words are thought to tap underlying phonological representations. This study addresses the issue of segmental representation by investigating bilingual deaf students’ (a) awareness of American Sign Language (ASL) phonological structure; (b) the relationships between ASL phonological awareness (ASL-PA) and written English word recognition and reading comprehension skill, and (c) the question of whether age and/or reading ability would differentially affect performance on an ASL-PA task in fifty bilingual deaf children (ages 7–18) attending schools for deaf children in Western Canada. In the ASL-PA task, minimal contrasts between ASL parameters (handshape, movement, and location; H, M, and L, respectively) were systematically manipulated. The results show significant differences in deaf students’ ASL phonological awareness, with discrimination accuracy improving with age and reading ability. Significant relationships between children’s second language (L2) reading skills and first language (L1) phonological awareness skills were found. Evidence of rich metalinguistic knowledge that children with developing L1 phonological skills bring to the acquisition of L2 reading skills may have practical implications for the education of bilingual deaf children.

Literacy and Linguistic Development in Bilingual Deaf Children: Implications of the "and" for Phonological Processing

Cumulating evidence suggests that the establishment of high-quality phonological representations is the cognitive precursor that facilitates the acquisition of language (spoken, signed, and written). The authors present two studies that contrast the nature of bilingual profoundly deaf children’s phonological representations derived from a spoken language and from a signed language using the framework of “functional equivalence” as outlined in McQuarrie and Parilla (2009). The authors argue further that a signed-language phonological system is suited in establishing the “functional” representational base that will support reading acquisition for bilingual deaf learners. They highlight rapidly developing empirical research on dual-language interactions between signed language and written language is highlighted, and discuss the need to take such data into account in any discussion of fundamental skills necessary to support reading achievement in bilingual profoundly deaf learners.

Cognitive Processes and Academic Achievement: Multiple Systems Model of Reading

In this chapter, we argue that to fully understand how cognitive processes contribute to academic success and failure, we need a meta-theoretical framework that better contextualizes cognitive processes in other psychological attributes of individuals, their environments, and their behaviors within those environments. We present one such framework, the multiple systems model of reading, that views development as contingent cycles of construction and reconstruction to which developmental resources at various levels of functioning (genetic, neural, psychological, behavioral, and environmental) contribute. The model makes two key assumptions: (a) academic abilities are continuously distributed, and (b) the developmental process has distributed control. We discuss the ramifications of these assumptions for both research and educational practice. In particular, we argue that educational practice is better served by respecting the complex, and sometimes idiosyncratic, nature of the developing organism, and by not allocating causal responsibility, or all the remedial efforts, for possible academic problems to any specific factor.In this chapter, we argue that to fully understand how cognitive processes contribute to academic success and failure, we need a meta-theoretical framework that better contextualizes cognitive processes in other psychological attributes of individuals, their environments, and their behaviors within those environments. We present one such framework, the multiple systems model of reading, that views development as contingent cycles of construction and reconstruction to which developmental resources at various levels of functioning (genetic, neural, psychological, behavioral, and environmental) contribute. The model makes two key assumptions: (a) academic abilities are continuously distributed, and (b) the developmental process has distributed control. We discuss the ramifications of these assumptions for both research and educational practice. In particular, we argue that educational practice is better served by respecting the complex, and sometimes idiosyncratic, nature of the developing organism, and by not allocating causal responsibility, or all the remedial efforts, for possible academic problems to any specific factor.

Equitable Assessment for Hearing and Deaf English Language Learners: An Investigation of the Impact of Verbal Load on PASS Processes

In both research and practice, there are long-standing concerns regarding how to ensure the valid and equitable assessment of English language learners (ELLs) and students from nonmainstream backgrounds (Solano-Flores, & Trumbull, 2003). Most conventional measures of cognitive processing are language-laden and tend to confound language proficiency with cognitive abilities. When such assessments are used with ELLs, these students may be misidentified as learning disabled and inappropriately placed in special education programs. Alternative assessments, such as nonverbal measures of intelligence, do not measure as wide a range of abilities as established intelligence tests and, as a result, are not strong predictors of academic performance. Therefore, results from nonverbal measures should not be used as substitutes for conventional measures when making high stakes classification and placement decisions for limited language proficiency ELLs. Because the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive (PASS; Das, Naglieri, & Kirby, 1994) framework has been demonstrated to be a valid predictor of academic achievement (see Kroesbergen, Van Luit, & van Viersen, this volume), we speculated that low verbal load assessments that correspond to the PASS framework may provide more valid results for ELLs and thereby be more appropriate for use with limited proficiency ELLs than conventional and nonverbal measures of cognitive functioning. In this chapter, we report on the development of a computerized cognitive assessment battery (CCAB) designed to examine the impact of verbal load on PASS processes. To ensure that the computerized tasks were functioning correctly, we initially pilot tested the tasks with three groups of university students (hearing ELL, deaf ELL, and a monolingual control group) in Phase 1 of the study. In Phase 2, the CCAB was piloted with a small sample of Grade 3 students (hearing ELL, deaf ELL, and monolingual control groups). Although the empirical results from this small-scale pilot study were inconclusive, it is our hope that with further refinement and pilot testing of low load CCAB measures, the CCAB will offer a more equitable means of assessing low proficiency hearing and deaf ELLs in the future.