Pierre Cormier

A longitudinal study of phonological processing skills in children learning to read in a second language

English-speaking children (N = 122) in French immersion classes participated in a 1-year longitudinal study of the relation between phonological awareness and reading achievement in both languages. Participants were administered measures of word decoding and of phonological awareness in French and in English as well as measures of cognitive ability, speeded naming, and pseudoword repetition in English only. The relation of phonological awareness in French to reading achievement in each of the languages were equivalent to that in English. These relations remained significant after partialing out the influences of speeded naming and pseudoword repetition. Phonological awareness in both languages was specifically associated with 1-year increments in decoding skill in French. These findings support the transfer of phonological awareness skills across alphabetic languages.

A componential model for mental addition

A componential model capable of representing simple and complex forms of mental addition was proposed and then tested by using chronometric techniques. A sample of 23 undergraduate students responded to 800 addition problems in a true-false reaction time paradigm. The 800 problems comprised 200 problems of each of four types: two single-digit addends, one single- and one double-digit addend, two double-digit addends, and three single-digit addends. The results revealed that the columnwise product of addends, a structural variable consistent with a memory network retrieval process, was the best predictor of mental addition for each of the four types of problem. Importantly, the componential model allowed estimation of effects of several other structural variables, e.g., carrying to the next column and speed of encoding of digits. High levels of explained variance verified the power of the model to represent the reaction time data, and the stability of estimates across types of problem implied consistent component use by subjects. Implications for research on mental addition are discussed.

Cognitive Addition: Comparison of Learning Disabled and Academically Normal Elementary School Children

Simple addition problems were presented using a true/false reaction time (RT) verification paradigm to 77 academically normal and 46 learning disabled (LD) subjects in the second, fourth, or sixth grade. The experiment was designed to determine the potential process deficits associated with a learning disability in mathematics achievement. Structural models representing alternative process strategies were fit to RT data. Across grade level and academic status, RT was best fitted by structural variables representing either an implicit counting strategy or a memory retrieval process. The majority of normal and LD second-grade subjects used the implicit counting strategy for problem solution; however, LD subjects required a greater amount of time to execute this process and appeared to be deficient in the ability to self-monitor the problem-solving process. A clear shift from reliance on the implicit counting strategy to the memory-retrieval process was evident from the second to sixth grade for normal subjects. No such shift was evident for LD subjects, as the majority of these subjects relied on the counting strategy in the second, fourth, and sixth grade. Subjects having a specific learning disability in mathematics achievement appear to differ from academically normal subjects in the developmental maturity of the component process used for problem solution, the temporal duration required to execute this strategy, and the ability to self-monitor the problem-solving process. Implications for remediation are discussed.

Distinctive patterns of relationship of phonological awareness and working memory with reading development

The purpose of this study was to assess the contributions of specific components of verbal and nonverbal working memory and of phonological awareness to the prediction of reading achievement. One hundred and three children from grades 1, 2, and 3 were administered a measure of phonological awareness, four measures of working memory, four measures of academic achievement, and a measure of verbal intelligence. Separate multiple regression analyses controlling for the effects of age, sex and verbal intelligence showed that tests of verbal memory and of direct recall significantly predicted reading and spelling achievement whereas tests of backward recall significantly predicted only pseudoword identification. Phonological awareness was also found to relate significantly to reading and spelling achievement even when working memory was partialled out. Thus, phonological awareness and measures of working memory predicted specific and significant amounts of variance in reading and spelling achievement. Further, none of these measures were specifically related to arithmetic achievement. The specific roles of phonological awareness and working memory in reading development are examined in the discussion.

Planning ability and cognitive performance: The compensatory effects of a dynamic assessment approach

Abstract This study investigated the relationships of a dynamic assessment approach involving overt verbalization, planning ability and cognitive performance. It was hypothesized that under the verbalization condition, poor planners would be able to regulate and improve their performance on the cognitively complex reasoning by analogy items of the Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices test. Subjects were 68 children, mean age 10 years, 4 months. A 2 × 2 factorial design was employed with two levels of planning and two testing conditions (standard and dynamic) employing the Raven. The results of a multivariate analysis of variance of performance on the pattern, closure, and analogy items of the Raven supported the hypothesis guiding the study. The results were discussed in terms of Lurias interactive model of cognitive functioning and how overt verbalization can affect performance on cognitively complex tasks.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SKILL IN MENTAL ADDITION: INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VALIDATION OF CHRONOMETRIC MODELS

Abstract Two studies were undertaken to investigate the development of skill in mental addition. In Study 1, a sample of 123 second-, fourth-, and sixthgraders were administered 140 simple addition problems in a true-false reaction time (RT) format; scores on eight subtests of the Stanford Achievement Test were also available on these subjects. In Study 2, the sample consisted of 63 second-, fourth-, and sixth-graders and 100 college students. The RT tasks used in Study 2 comprised 80 simple addition problems and 80 complex addition problems, and a set of six paper-and-pencil tests for Numerical Facility and Perceptual Speed was also administered to the subjects. The results of the two studies support several conclusions. First, there are substantial individual differences in the age at which the transition from counting to retrieval strategies occurs. A large proportion of students in second grade already rely primarily on retrieval to respond to addition problems, yet a sizeable minority of sixth graders and even college students still apparently rely heavily on counting processes to solve addition problems. Second, there are different rates of automatization for the several processes that underlie skill in mental addition, processes of encoding of digits, recomputing or retrieving the correct sum, and carrying to the next column. Third, individual differences in efficiency in mental addition, indexed by retrieval speed for retrieval subjects and incrementing speed for digital subjects, exhibited strong relationships with achievement and ability measures. The results of these two studies demonstrated (a) the internal and external validity of the component processes in the proposed model of mental addition performance and (b) the need to use individual-level data to characterize properly the development of the cognitive skills underlying mental addition.

Contribution of perceptual and lexical-semantic errors to the naming impairments in Alzheimer's disease.

The contribution of perceptual and semantic processing deficits to naming-test performance by Alzheimers Disease subjects was examined. Groups of 34 Alzheimer subjects and 25 elderly controls completed tests of naming standard line drawings and naming perceptually degraded figures, and a test of verbal fluency for a specific semantic category. Alzheimer subjects were impaired on all measures and, when their naming-test errors were analyzed, they showed higher proportions of perceptual errors and failures to respond. Further, considerable variability in the proportions of different types of error was found both among subjects and among test items. These findings indicate that poor naming-test performance cannot necessarily be attributed to a specific deficit in semantic processing. Also, the discrepancies between previous reports of the naming deficits in Alzheimers Disease may reflect differences in task difficulty and item selection that were apparent in this study.

Instruction Effects on Gender Differences in Visual Field Advantages During Lexical Decision Tasks

Two experiments explored the effects of speed, accuracy, on speed and accuracy instructions on visual field advantages to lexical decisions in males and females. In Experiment 1, right visual field advantages in reaction time appeared in the groups of males in the accuracy condition and in the speed and accuracy condition. In Experiment 2, feedback consistent with the instructions was given to subjects. Females and males in the accuracy condition showed a right visual field advantage in the second block of trials. These findings suggest that cognitive variables mediate right visual field advantages to lexical decisions in males and females.

Low level exposure to manganese from drinking water and cognition in school-age children

HighlightsMeasured Mn in drinking water, childrens saliva, hair, and toe nails.Assessed neurodevelopment in children.Mn concentrations in drinking water are very low.Higher toe nail Mn associated with poorer Performance IQ scores only in girls.Higher Mn in water associated with better Performance IQ scores only in boys. Background: Manganese (Mn) is an element found in the environment and certain geographic areas have elevated concentrations in soil and water du to natural conditions or anthropic activities. A growing body of data suggests that exposure to manganese in drinking water could be neurotoxic. Objective: Firstly, we aimed to examine the association between exposure to manganese from drinking water and cognition in children consuming well water. Secondly, we also aimed to examine the relation between cognition and manganese concentrations in childrens hair, nail, and saliva. Methods: A total 259 children from 189 households consuming well water were included in the present study (ages 5.9 to 13.7 years). We assessed childrens cognition with the WISC‐IV, and we used five indicators of manganese exposure: concentration in tap water, intake from the consumption of water divided by childs weight, manganese concentration in childrens hair, toe nail, and saliva. We used General Estimating Equation analysis to assess the relation between manganese exposure indicators and IQ scores, adjusting for potential confounders, and taking into account family clusters. Results: Drinking water manganese concentrations were generally low, with 48% of children consuming water <5 &mgr;g/L, 25% >50 &mgr;g/L, and 4% >400 &mgr;g/L. Results differed by sex. In girls, higher manganese concentration in water, hair, and toe nail were associated with poorer Performance IQ scores but this was significant only for toe nail (for a 10‐fold increase in manganese, &bgr;: −5.65, 95% CIs: −10.97, −0.32). Opposite associations were observed in boys, i.e., better Performance IQ scores with higher manganese concentration hair, toe nail, and water, the latter being significant (&bgr;: 2.66, 95% CIs: 0.44, 4.89). Verbal IQ scores did not seem to be associated with manganese exposure indicators. Conclusions: Drinking water manganese levels were considerably lower than in previous studies reporting neurotoxic effects. There was no clear indication of an association between exposure to manganese and cognitive development in this sample of school‐age children although the data suggest there might be sex‐specific associations. Given the low levels of exposure and sex‐specific associations, a larger sample size would have been required to increase the statistical power and better characterize the relations.

Discrimination of English and French orthographic patterns by biliterate children.

We investigated whether young English-French biliterate children can distinguish between English and French orthographic patterns. Children in French immersion programs were asked to play a dictionary game when they were in Grade 2 and again when they were in Grade 3. They were shown pseudowords that contained either an English spelling pattern or a French spelling pattern, and they were asked to decide whether each pseudoword should go in an English dictionary or a French dictionary if it became a real word. Comparison groups of monolingual English children, monolingual French children, and English-French bilingual university students were also tested on the task. French immersion students in both grades were above chance in discriminating between the two types of pseudowords but were well below adult performance on the task. Measures obtained in kindergarten showed that early print knowledge had some ability to predict later ability to discriminate between the orthographic patterns of the two languages. Further analyses indicated that exposure to print in each language in Grades 1 to 3 was strongly related to discrimination performance. The findings are interpreted as being consistent with the statistical learning hypothesis.