Usha Goswami

The influence of orthographic consistency on reading development: word recognition in English and German children

Groups of 7, 8, and 9-year-old children who were learning to read in English and German were given three different continuous reading tasks: a numeral reading task, a number word reading task, and a nonsense word reading task. The nonsense words could be read by analogy to the number words. Whereas reading time and error rates in numeral and number word reading were very similar across the two orthographies, the German children showed a big advantage in reading the nonsense words. This pattern of results is interpreted as evidence for the initial adoption of different strategies for word recognition in the two orthographies. German children appear to rely on assembling pronunciations via grapheme-phoneme conversion, and English children appear to rely more on some kind of direct recognition strategy. A model of reading development that takes account of orthographic consistency is proposed.

Children's use of analogy in learning to read: A developmental study

Abstract If children are able to make analogies between the spelling patterns in words, this would have important consequences for theories of reading development, as a child who knew a word like beak could use analogy to read new words like peak and bean . A study is reported which compared the ability of children at three different reading levels to use analogy in reading both real and nonsense words. The results showed that even very young children can successfully use analogy to decode new words. This finding suggests that analogy has a role to play in the initial stages of reading acquisition.

Analogical reasoning in children

Reasoning by Analogy. Structural Theories of Analogical Development. Testing the Claims of Structural Theory. Information-Processing Accounts of Classical Analogical Reasoning. Problem Analogies and Analogical Development. Analogies in Babies and Toddlers. Analogies in the Real World of the Classroom.

Neuroscience and Education.

Neuroscience is a relatively new discipline encompassing neurology, psychology and biology. It has made great strides in the last 100 years, during which many aspects of the physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology and structure of the vertebrate brain have been understood. Understanding of some of the basic perceptual, cognitive, attentional, emotional and mnemonic functions is also making progress, particularly since the advent of the cognitive neurosciences, which focus specifically on understanding higher level processes of cognition via imaging technology. Neuroimaging has enabled scientists to study the human brain at work in vivo, deepening our understanding of the very complex processes underpinning speech and language, thinking and reasoning, reading and mathematics. It seems timely, therefore, to consider how we might implement our increased understanding of brain development and brain function to explore educational questions.

Children's orthographic representations and linguistic transparency: Nonsense word reading in English, French, and Spanish

Three experiments were conducted to compare the development of orthographic representations in children learning to read English, French, or Spanish. Nonsense words that shared both orthography and phonology at the level of the rhyme with real words ( cake-dake, comic-bomic ), phonology only ( cake-daik, comic-bommick ), or neither ( faish, ricop ) were created for each orthography. Experiment I compared English and French childrens reading of nonsense words that shared rhyme orthography with real words ( dake ) with those that did not ( daik ). Significant facilitation was found for shared rhymes in English, with reduced effects in French. Experiment 2 compared English and French childrens reading of nonsense words that shared rhyme phonology with real words ( daik ) with those that did not ( faish ). Significant facilitation for shared rhyme phonology was found in both languages. Experiment 3 compared English, French, and Spanish childrens reading of nonsense words ( dake vs. faish ) and found a significant facilitatory effect of orthographic and phonological familiarity for each language. The size of the familiarity effect, however, was much greater in the less transparent orthographies (English and French). These results are interpreted in terms of the level of phonology that is represented in the orthographic recognition units being developed by children who are learning to read more and less transparent orthographies.

Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework

This paper attempts to integrate recent research findings in phonological development, reading development and dyslexia into a coherent theoretical framework that can provide a developmental account of reading and reading difficulties across languages. It is proposed that the factors governing phonological development across languages are similar, but that important differences in the speed and level of phonological development are found following the acquisition of alphabetic literacy. The causal framework offered is at the level of a cognitive model, which may prove useful in organizing future cross-linguistic developmental work.

Orthographic analogies and reading development

Given the interest in the use of orthographic analogies in skilled reading, the role of analogies in reading development has received surprisingly little attention. The experiments presented here examine three important developmental issues: whether beginning readers can make orthographic analogies, how the consistency of spelling–sound relations affects this ability, and whether orthographic analogies are used in reading prose. It is concluded that orthographic analogies have an important role to play in reading development, and some suggestions are offered as to why this may be so.

Melting chocolate and melting snowmen: Analogical reasoning and causal relations☆

Childrens performance in the classical a:b::c:d analogy task is traditionally very poor prior to the Piagetian stage of formal operations. The interpretation has been that the ability to reason about higher-order relations (the relations between the a:b and c:d parts of the analogy) is late-developing. However, an alternative possibility is that the relations used to date in the analogies are too difficult for younger children. Two experiments presented children aged 3, 4 and 6 years with a:b::c:d analogies which were based on relations of physical causality such as melting and cutting, for example chocolate bar:melted chocolate::snowman:melted snowman. Understanding of these particular causal relations is known to develop between the ages of 3 and 4 years. It was found that even 3-year-olds could solve the classical analogies if they understood the causal relations on which they were based.

Music, rhythm, rise time perception and developmental dyslexia: Perception of musical meter predicts reading and phonology

INTRODUCTION Rhythm organises musical events into patterns and forms, and rhythm perception in music is usually studied by using metrical tasks. Metrical structure also plays an organisational function in the phonology of language, via speech prosody, and there is evidence for rhythmic perceptual difficulties in developmental dyslexia. Here we investigate the hypothesis that the accurate perception of musical metrical structure is related to basic auditory perception of rise time, and also to phonological and literacy development in children. METHODS A battery of behavioural tasks was devised to explore relations between musical metrical perception, auditory perception of amplitude envelope structure, phonological awareness (PA) and reading in a sample of 64 typically-developing children and children with developmental dyslexia. RESULTS We show that individual differences in the perception of amplitude envelope rise time are linked to musical metrical sensitivity, and that musical metrical sensitivity predicts PA and reading development, accounting for over 60% of variance in reading along with age and I.Q. Even the simplest metrical task, based on a duple metrical structure, was performed significantly more poorly by the children with dyslexia. CONCLUSIONS The accurate perception of metrical structure may be critical for phonological development and consequently for the development of literacy. Difficulties in metrical processing are associated with basic auditory rise time processing difficulties, suggesting a primary sensory impairment in developmental dyslexia in tracking the lower-frequency modulations in the speech envelope.

Why theories about developmental dyslexia require developmental designs

This article examines the importance of developmental designs in dyslexia research using a neuroconstructivist framework. According to neuroconstructivism, the lowest level of impairment should be identified as early as possible, and developmental effects on higher-level cognition examined longitudinally. A number of recent studies proposing candidate low-level impairments have not used such developmental designs. The role of normal variation in postulated causal factors on development is ignored, inadequate control groups are used, and the nature and timing of environmental inputs are not measured, even though reading is taught systematically and both reading acquisition and dyslexia vary with orthography. It is suggested here that only a phonological deficit arising from low-level auditory processing problems meets the criteria for a neuroconstructivist approach.