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literacy in the UK
-approximately 250,000 children in the UK left primary school without acquiring the necessary literacy skills for secondary education
-18% of children did not meet the expected standard in the phonics screening check
importance of reading
-functional illiteracy can prevent people from acquiring basic knowledge
-increases likelihood of:
poor physical and mental health
workplace accidents
misuse of medication
participation in crime
reading
-goal is to understand/comprehend what has been read
-need to develop a system that allows children to construct from print
reading wars
phonics approach → sounds that letters make are explicitly taught
whole-language approach → emphasises child’s discovery of meaning through literacy-rich experiences
language and reading
-children exposed to a rich spoken-language environment will almost certainly learn to understand and produce spoken language
-this is not true for reading → learned and requires years of instruction and practice
-not all languages have a written form
challenge of reading
-challenge is to learn to associate arbitrary visual symbols with the meanings of words
-children need to analyse the printed forms of words and map these onto meaning
major categories of writing system
alphabetic → symbols represent individual sounds or phonemes
syllabic → symbols represent whole syllables
morphophonetic → symbols represent elements of both meaning and sound
alphabetic systems
-phonemes of the language are represented by letters or groups of letters
graphemes → written symbols that represent a phoneme
-learning to decode symbol to sound relationship → ability to translate printed words into spoken language, thereby accessing information without meaning
orthographic depth (alphabetic systems)
-substantial variation in orthographic depth → the transparency with which symbols represent sounds
shallow orthographies (alphabetic systems)
-characterised by a consistent relationship between graphemes and phonemes
deep orthographies (alphabetic systems)
-characterised by substantial inconsistency in this relationship
Seymour, Aro & Erskine - method (alphabetic systems)
-do basic decoding skills develop less effectively in English than in some other European orthographies?
-children from 13 orthographies completed assessments of letter knowledge, familiar word reading and simple nonword reading
Seymour, Aro & Erskine - results (alphabetic systems)
-children from most European countries become accurate and fluent in foundation level reading before the end of the first school year
-with exceptions of French, Portuguese, Danish, English
-effects don’t appear to be attributable to differences in age of starting or letter knowledge
Seymour, Aro & Erskine - conclusion (alphabetic systems)
-fundamental linguistic differences in syllabic complexity and orthographic depth are responsible
-syllabic complexity selectively affects decoding → orthographic depth selectively affects word reading and nonword reading
-rate of development in English is more than twice as slow as in the shallow orthographies
Spencer & Hanley (alphabetic systems)
-natural experiment comparing two groups:
children attending Welsh-medium schools
children attending English-medium schools
-across the two schools, children started at the same age, had the same form of reading instruction and roughly equivalent SES
-transparent orthography facilitates reading acquisition and phoneme awareness skills from the earliest stages of reading development onward
phoneme-grapheme mapping
-in English, different phonemes can map to the same grapheme
international phonetic alphabet
-phonemes are written between forward slashes with symbols from the international phonemic alphabet
inconsistency of English language
-80% of monosyllables can be pronounced using a relatively small set of rules relating graphemes to phonemes
-other 20%, typically only one grapheme deviates from its most frequent pronunciation
-context also helps
the development of alphabetic decoding skills
-nature of the writing system determines what will be required for children to link print and meaning, but doesn’t specify how they do so
Byrne - method
-on exposure to printed words, will children naturally induce the basic alphabetic principle that symbols represent sounds?
-experiments on 80 preschool children 3-5 years of age
training → children who knew no letter names taught to read aloud pairs of written words
testing → shown a written word and asked to choose that word from two options
Byrne - results
-left to their own devices, children show no evidence of inducing the alphabetic principle
triggering the acquisition of the alphabetic principle
-reliable success on the transfer task was typically achieved only when children were trained so that they could:
segment phonemes in spoken words and identify their initial phonemes
recognise the graphic symbols that correspond to the key sounds in the transfer task
once children gain alphabetic insight needed to succeed in transfer task, learning is relatively robust and can be generalised
phases of alphabetic decoding development
initial
partial alphabetic
full alphabetic
initial stage (phases of alphabetic decoding development)
-before the acquisition of the alphabetic principle
-children ‘read’ words by relying on visual cues, rote learning or guessing
partial alphabetic stage (phases of alphabetic decoding development)
-begin to use a rudimentary form of decoding
-beginning to use alphabetic knowledge to make links between spellings and sounds
full alphabetic stage (phases of alphabetic decoding development)
-more complete knowledge of grapheme-phoneme relations
-apply knowledge consistently across a whole printed word
-may be able to draw on oral vocabulary to correct a partial decoding attempt
skilled word reading
-skilled readers continue to use alphabetic decoding and phonological processes as a matter of routine
-skilled readers continue to draw on the systematic relations between letters and sounds when they read and understand words → not enough jfor fluent word reading
key cognitive processes in word reading
translation of a word’s spelling into its sound and then to meaning
gaining access to meaning directly from the spelling, without the requirement to do so via phonology
development of fluent word-reading skills
-as children progress toward becoming skilled readers, heavy reliance on alphabetic decoding gradually decreases
novice → reading words primarily via alphabetic decoding
expert → recognising familiar written words rapidly and automatically, mapping spelling directly to their meanings without recourse to decoding
orthographic learning
-umbrella term that encompasses:
the acquisition of the word-specific knowledge required to access a particular word’s meaning from print
accumulation of more general knowledge about orthographic regularities within the writing system
self-teaching hypothesis (Share)
-theory on transition to skilled word reading
-by requiring a child to engage in the effortful process of translating print to sound and therefore to focus on the letters in the word and their sequence
-act of decoding provides an opportunity to acquire orthographic knowledge
-this knowledge is then available on future encounters with the word, lessening the reliance on alphabetic decoding
-children are able to self-teach through the combination of alphabetic decoding and repeated exposure
importance of lexical quality
-as lexical quality builds, cognitive resources are freed up for comprehension
-understanding text is a complex task that places heavy demands on attention, memory and high-level language processes
promoting the emergence of automatic and efficient word-recognition processes
-amount of exposure to a given word matters but so do words’ neighbours
-the discrimination challenge of reading
discrimination challenge of reading
-discriminating a word from many other words that differ by one letter requires the development of a very precise recognition mechanism that attends to all letters in a word and their order
-discrimination is more challenging for some words than others
lexical tuning (emergence of automatic word-recognition processes)
-beginning readers with knowledge of relatively small number of words encode only approximate information about letter position → successful identification of a word even though there may not be full overlap between their cognitive representation of the word’s orthography and visual input
-with greater exposure and skills, lexical identification system is more precisely tuned to distinguish similar words → reduced magnitude of flexible letter position encoding
acquiring links between spelling and meaning
-no relationship between spelling and meaning where single morphemes are concerned
-words that look similar are similar in sound but not meaning
-learning the meaning of one word does not assist in learning the meaning of another
-relationship between print and meaning needs to be learned one word at a time
morphology
-words with more than one morpheme have underlying regularities between spelling and meaning
stems (morphology)
-occur and reoccur in words with similar meanings
affixes (morphology)
-alter the meanings of stems in highly predictable ways
acquiring morphological knowledge
-gaining experience with morphologically complex words can help readers learn that particular groups of letters are associated with particular meanings
-able to interpret or produce new words they have not seen before
-advantage in acquiring mapping between spelling and meaning
morphological awareness
-explicit knowledge of morphological relationships
-a child’s ability to reflect on and manipulate the morphological structure of words
print reading (motivating children to read)
-children need to see as many words as possible, as frequently as possible
-most effective pathway to fluent word reading
Anderson, Wilson & Fielding - method (motivating children to read)
-monitored the out of school reading habits for grade 5 US children
-based on amount of time children reported spending reading per day
-estimated number of words they would have been exposed to over a year
Anderson, Wilson & Fielding - results (motivating children to read)
-estimate of number of words children were exposed to:
10th percentile → 60,000 words per year
50th percentile → 900,000 words per year
90th percentile → >4,000,000 words per year
Matthew effect (motivating children to read)
-differences in exposure have cumulative effects on reading ability over time
-rewarding children for reading may have a negative impact on their motivation to read → long term impact leads children to believe the behaviour must have no intrinsic value
simple view of reading
-text comprehension requires much more than the capacity to identify and read individual words
-simple view of reading posits that reading comprehension is the product of two sets of skills
decoding x linguistic comprehension = reading comprehension
measures of decoding and linguistic comprehension
-predict reading comprehension and its development
-accounts for almost all the variance in this ability
-reading comprehension highly constrained by limitations in decoding
-correlation between linguistic and reading comprehensions strengthens as children get older
learning to comprehend text
-range of linguistic and cognitive processes are implicated in text comprehension
-depends on children’s knowledge and features of the text and purpose/goals of reading situation
-how people construct meaning from information in their environment
situation models
-when reading, construct a mental representation of the situation being described by the text, linking information from the text with relevant background knowledge
-situation model builds dynamically as people read, creating a representation of the text that goes beyond what is stated explicitly
reading systems framework (Perfettit & Stafura)
-three constructs underpin reading comprehension:
knowledge
processes involved in reading
general cognitive resources
knowledge (reading systems framework)
-orthographic, linguistic and general knowledge are key sources of knowledge to be acquired
orthographic knowledge (reading systems framework)
-reading comprehension cannot happen without adequate levels of word-reading skill
linguistic knowledge (reading systems framework)
-vocabulary → understanding the majority of individual words within a text, prerequisites understanding the text
-knowledge of multiword utterances, idioms, grammar, syntax
-cohesive devices allow information/ideas to be integrated across phrases and sentences
general knowledge (reading systems framework)
-good background knowledge
-allows relevant knowledge to be activated as the situation model builds during reading
-provides a coherent representation of the text and is required for the formation of many types of inference
processing (reading systems framework)
-several processes are engaged as people read
meaning activation
inference generation
comprehension monitoring
meaning activation (reading systems framework)
-children with lower levels of reading comprehension are slower to make semantic judgements about words
-word meaning need to be integrated into the text representation as reading unfolds
-information that is activated but not needed needs to be disregarded
inference generated (reading systems framework)
-poor comprehenders find it difficult to integrate ideas across a text and are less skilled at answering questions that require an inference to be made
comprehension monitoring (reading systems framework)
-collection of strategies or skills used to evaluate one’s own comprehension to identify when comprehension has gone astray
-repairs misunderstanding
-uses capacities needed to monitor, update and integrate information as the situation model builds
-standard of coherence
standard of coherence
-person’s criteria for coherent understanding of a text
-extent of their motivation to make sense of what they are reading
general cognitive resources (reading systems framework)
-general factors promote comprehension
-such as EFs and working memory
working memory (reading systems framework)
-greater working memory → retain more information, so more inferences generated/connections made
-assist with reactivating relevant information from the text or from background knowledge
-deactivate or supress irrelevant information
Dehaene (recycling pre-existing brain circuits)
-brain isn’t hardwired for reading
-learning to read consist of creating an invariant visual representation of written words and connecting that representation to brain areas responsible for speech sounds and meaning
recycling pre-existing brain circuits
-activation moves from the back of the brain to the front
-reading starts as a visual process
-overlap in areas for spoken and written language
visual word form area
-left lateral occipito-temporal sulcus
-reproducible site of activation during reading in all cultures
-activates to known scripts more than to other categories of visual stimuli
-lesions can cause inability to comprehend written language
brain and literacy
-prior to reading, visual word form area is involved in visual recognition
-increased activation to letter strings and a decreased activation to faces and objects
-development is not based on age but rather experience
brain and phonics
-reading relies on slow, serial, letter-by-letter decoding in young children
-adult reading is automised, giving the illusion of whole-word reading
-phonics is superior to whole-word training → learning with whole word method is slower and trains wrong brain area
