The role of discourse context in developing word form representations: a paradoxical relation between reading and learning

To acquire representations of printed words, children must attend to the written form of a word and link this form with the word's pronunciation. When words are read in context, they may be read with less attention to these features, and this can lead to poorer word form retention. Two experiments with young children (ages 5-8 years) confirmed this hypothesis. In our experiments, children attempted to read words they could not previously read, during a self-teaching period, either in context or in isolation. Later they were tested on how well they learned the words as a function of self-teaching condition (isolation or context). Consistent with previous research, children read more words accurately in context than in isolation during self-teaching; however, children had better retention for words learned in isolation. Furthermore, this benefit from learning in isolation was larger for less skilled readers. This effect of poorer word retention when words are learned in context is paradoxical because context has been shown to facilitate word identification. We discuss factors that may influence this effect of context, especially the role of children's skill level and the demands of learning new word representations at the beginning of reading instruction.     

How generative drawing affects the learning process: An eye‐tracking analysis

Generative drawing is a learning strategy in which students draw illustrations while reading a text to depict the content of the lesson. In two experiments, students were asked to generate drawings as they read a scientific text or read the same text on influenza with author‐provided illustrations (Experiment 1) or to generate drawings or write verbal summaries as they read (Experiment 2). An examination of students' eye movements during learning showed that students who engaged in generative drawing displayed more rereadings of words, higher proportion of fixations on the important words, higher rate of transitions between words and workspace, and higher proportion of transitions between important words and workspace than students given a text lesson with author‐generated illustrations (Experiment 1) or students who were asked to write a summary (Experiment 2). These findings contribute new evidence to guide theories for explaining how generative drawing affects learning processes.     

Breaking the reading code: Letter knowledge when children break the reading code the first year in school

The aim of this study was to examine when children learn to read and how learning to read depends on a foundation of alphabetic knowledge. 356 children aged 5–6 years completed assessments of letter-sound knowledge, i.e. the names and sounds of uppercase and lowercase letters of the Norwegian alphabet. Each child was tested at the start, the middle and the end of the school year. The time that each child broke the reading code was also recorded. The results indicated that 11% of the children knew how to read before starting school and 27% of the children did not learn to read by the end of the first year. The remaining children typically knew 21 uppercase letter sounds before they were first able to read, and only a few (<5%) knew less than 11 uppercase letter sounds when they broke the reading code. The average of all four letter-scores at the time they broke the reading code was 19 ± 5 letters (mean ± standard deviation). Although letter sound knowledge was associated with the ability to read, it was not sufficient for breaking the reading code. 40% of children who knew 23 letter sounds or more, enough to read more than 80% of the most common Norwegian words, and 15% of children who knew all 29 letter sounds still could not read. Based on these data, it seems reasonable to advocate learning letter-sound correspondences early in the first year of school to form the best possible basis for breaking the reading code.     

Mirror writing in pre-school children: a pilot study

Mirror writing refers to the production of individual letters, whole words or sentences in reverse direction. Unintentional mirror writing has been observed in young children learning to write and interpreted as the manifestation of different cognitive impairments. We report on mirror writing instances in a sample of 108 pre-school children. Results showed MW to be age-related but independent from handedness and left-right discrimination abilities. We propose an account of mirror writing as reflecting dissociation between acquired motor programmes for letter shape composition and unspecified spatial direction of hand movements. Before learning to write, the child’s directional cognitive system is assumed to be dichotomous, thus inducing the production of randomly oriented asymmetrical letters.     

Positional character frequency and word spacing facilitate the acquisition of novel words during Chinese children's reading

Children's eye movements were recorded to examine the role of word spacing and positional character frequency on the process of Chinese lexical acquisition during reading. Three types of two-character novel pseudowords were constructed: words containing characters in positions in which they frequently occurred (congruent), words containing characters in positions they do not frequently occur in (incongruent) and words containing characters that do not have a strong position bias (balanced). There were two phases within the experiment, a learning phase and a test phase. There were also two learning groups: half the children read sentences in a word-spaced format and the other half read the sentences in an unspaced format during the learning phase. All the participants read normal, unspaced text at test. A benefit of word spacing was observed in the learning phase, but not at test. Also, facilitatory effects of positional character congruency were found both in the learning and test phase; however, this benefit was greatly reduced at test. Furthermore, we did not find any interaction between word spacing and positional character frequencies, indicating that these two types of cues affect lexical acquisition independently. With respect to theoretical accounts of lexical acquisition, we argue that word spacing might facilitate the very earliest stages of word learning by clearly demarking word boundary locations. In contrast, we argue that characters' positional frequencies might affect relatively later stages of word learning.     

Exploring long-term modality effects: Vocalization leads to best retention

Five experiments employing an incidental learning procedure explored the effects of different input modalities on the long-term retention of word lists. In each of the first four experiments, mixed-mode presentations featuring three different modes of presentation were employed. In the baseline presentation mode in each experiment, subjects were to read words silently. In the two additional presentation modes, subjects were to vocalize or read and hear (Experiment 1), read and hear or mouth (Experiment 2), vocalize or write (Experiment 3), and vocalize or write without seeing the written word (Experiment 4). In Experiment 5, separate groups of subjects were presented with pure-mode lists that they were to read silently, write without seeing, write and see, mouth, hear, read and hear, or vocalize. The principal findings were that auditory presentation procedures led to best memory performance and that, of these, only vocalization was found to consistently enhance retention. These findings are conceptualized within a framework that proposes that both the temporal distinctiveness of auditory information and self-generated cues are employed in the process of retrieval.     

Use of the dichotic listening technique with learning disabilities

Dichotic listening (DL) techniques have been used extensively as a non-invasive procedure to assess language lateralization among children with and without learning disabilities (LD), and with individuals who have other auditory system related brain disorders. Results of studies using DL have indicated that language is lateralized in children with LD and that the lateralized language asymmetries do not develop after age 6 nor are they affected by gender. Observed differences in lateralized language processes between control children and those with LD were found not due to delayed cerebral dominance, but rather to deficits in selective attention. In addition, attention factors have a greater influence on auditory processing of verbal than nonverbal stimuli for children with LD, and children with LD exhibit a general processing bias to the same hemisphere unlike control children. Furthermore, employing directed attention conditions in DL experiments has played an important role in explaining learning disabled children's performance on DL tasks. We conclude that auditory perceptual asymmetries as assessed by DL with children who experience LD are the result of the interaction of hemispheric capability and attention factors.     

Effects of orthographic transparency on reading and phoneme awareness in children learning to read in Wales

The relationship between the development of reading skills and the consistency of the orthography (writing system) is investigated in a study that examines reading acquisition in children living in Wales. Performance of children learning to read Welsh (a transparent alphabetic orthography) on tests of reading and phoneme detection was compared with the performance of children learning to read English (an opaque alphabetic orthography). The children were tested during their second year of formal reading instruction at school when they were aged between 5 and 6 years, and again one year later. The children learning to read in Welsh performed significantly better at reading both real words and nonwords than children learning to read in English. The English readers made fewer phonologically based reading errors. The Welsh readers also performed better on a phoneme awareness task. These findings support the claim that children learn to read more quickly in a transparent orthography, and provide further evidence that the consistency of the orthography influences the initial adoption of different strategies for word recognition.     

Comprehension in "hyperlexic" readers

Mentally retarded children who can read aloud written words better than one would expect from their Mental Age are often called hyperlexic. The reading comprehension thought to be impaired in such children was investigated in four experiments. Mentally retarded advanced decoders, including autistic and nonautistic children, were compared with younger nonretarded children matched for Mental Age and Reading Age. Experiment 1 established that mildly mentally retarded readers could match sentences to pictures as well as could be expected from their verbal ability. This was the same whether they read the sentences or heard them. Experiment 2 demonstrated that only the more able retarded subjects, but not the less able ones, used sentence context in a normal way in order to pronounce homographs. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that these same more able children could extract meaning at both sentence and story level, and their performance was indistinguishable from that of normal controls. Hence, it is doubtful whether these advanced decoders should be called hyperlexic. In contrast, the readers of relatively low verbal ability performed much worse than their normal controls. Although they could be induced under certain conditions to read sentence-by-sentence rather than word-by-word, they did not do so spontaneously. Furthermore, they did not make use of already existing general knowledge in order to answer questions about the stories they had read. The ability to comprehend in terms of large units of meaning seems to be specifically impaired in these low verbal ability fluent readers. We suggest that it is this impairment that marks true hyperlexia. Since there were no differences between autistic and nonautistic readers on any of our tasks, we conclude that hyperlexia is not an autism-specific phenomenon.     

Representing quantity beyond whole numbers: some, none, and part.

Previous research has demonstrated how children develop the ability to use notational representations to indicate simple quantities. These studies have shown a developmental shift from the use of idiosyncratic, to analogical, to conventional, numerical notations. The present paper extends these findings by reporting the results from a study in which children from 3 to 7 years old were asked to write a representation to indicate a quantity presented in a game-like scenario. Three kinds of quantities were included: whole numbers, zeros, and fractions. The children's notations were shown to them shortly after they were produced and then again two weeks later to see if children could interpret them. The results showed the familiar developmental pattern towards increased use of conventional notations for all quantities. The ability to read the notations was greatest for conventional numbers where performance was at ceiling, lower for analogue representations, and very poor for idiosyncratic global recordings. Children's choice of a notational format was influenced almost entirely by their age and not by the quantity being represented. Children were able to solve the zero problems almost as well as they could the whole numbers, but their understanding and use of representations for fractions was very limited.     

Phonemic awareness and spelling: children's judgments do not always agree with adults

The ability to make explicit judgments about speech sounds is important in learning to read and write an alphabetic system. However, even when children can make consistent judgments about sounds their judgments do not always agree with those of adults. In this study, some children from groups of kindergartners (mean age 5 years, 10 months) and first graders (mean age 6, 7) stated that /tr/ (as in "truck") did not begin with the sound /t/. This judgment was reflected in these children's spellings: They tended to spell /t/ before /r/ with CH, reflecting its affrication. Parallel results were found for /dr/. Further, some children judged that /c/ (as in "chill") and /j/ (as in "Jill") began with /t/ and /d/, respectively. They used the letters T and D to spell these sounds. Thus, children's attention to a phonetic level may result in judgments of speech sounds and spellings that are different from those of adults.     

汉字结构特点和出现次数在儿童字形学习中的作用

以二年级儿童为研究对象,采用“自我教学”（self-teaching）范式（Share,1999）,通过操纵汉字类型、出现次数和测试时间,考察儿童的字形学习效果。结果发现,儿童在故事朗读中的字形学习受汉字结构和部件熟悉性的影响,表现为独体字有稳定的再认优势,熟悉部件能促进合体字短期的再认和回忆,这对今后的理论研究和教学实践都具有一定启示意义。     

The Foundations of Literacy

Learning to read and write in English requires children to master the alphabetic principle, the idea that the letters in printed words represent the sounds in spoken words in a more or less regular manner. Children need at least two skills in order to grasp the alphabetic principle. The first is phonological awareness, or a sensitivity to the sound structure of spoken words. The second is knowledge about letters, including knowledge of letter names and knowledge of letter sounds. Recent research sheds light on these foundational skills, documenting the linguistic factors that affect children's performance and how children put their phonological skills and knowledge of letters to use in learning to read and spell.     

Do current connectionist learning models account for reading development in different languages?

Learning to read a relatively irregular orthography, such as English, is harder and takes longer than learning to read a relatively regular orthography, such as German. At the end of grade 1, the difference in reading performance on a simple set of words and nonwords is quite dramatic. Whereas children using regular orthographies are already close to ceiling, English children read only about 40% of the words and nonwords correctly. It takes almost 4 years for English children to come close to the reading level of their German peers. In the present study, we investigated to what extent recent connectionist learning models are capable of simulating this cross-language learning rate effect as measured by nonword decoding accuracy. We implemented German and English versions of two major connectionist reading models, Plaut et al.'s (Plaut, D. C., McClelland, J. L., Seidenberg, M. S., & Patterson, K. (1996). Understanding normal and impaired word reading: computational principles in quasi-regular domains. Psychological Review, 103, 56-115) parallel distributed model and Zorzi et al.'s (Zorzi, M., Houghton, G., & Butterworth, B. (1998a). Two routes or one in reading aloud? A connectionist dual-process model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 1131-1161); two-layer associative network. While both models predicted an overall advantage for the more regular orthography (i.e. German over English), they failed to predict that the difference between children learning to read regular versus irregular orthographies is larger earlier on. Further investigations showed that the two-layer network could be brought to simulate the cross-language learning rate effect when cross-language differences in teaching methods (phonics versus whole-word approach) were taken into account. The present work thus shows that in order to adequately capture the pattern of reading acquisition displayed by children, current connectionist models must not only be sensitive to the statistical structure of spelling-to-sound relations but also to the way reading is taught in different countries.     

Attention to Explicit and Implicit Contrast in Verb Learning

Contrast information could be useful for verb learning, but few studies have examined children's ability to use this type of information. Contrast may be useful when children are told explicitly that different verbs apply, or when they hear two different verbs in a single context. Three studies examine children's attention to different types of contrast as they learn new verbs. Study 1 shows that 3.5-year-olds can use both implicit contrast (“I'm meeking it. I'm koobing it.”) and explicit contrast (“I'm meeking it. I'm not meeking it.”) when learning a new verb, while a control group's responses did not differ from chance. Study 2 shows that even though children at this age who hear explicit contrast statements differ from a control group, they do not reliably extend a newly learned verb to events with new objects. In Study 3, children in three age groups were given both comparison and contrast information, not in blocks of trials as in past studies, but in a procedure that interleaved both cues. Results show that while 2.5-year-olds were unable to use these cues when asked to compare and contrast, by 3.5 years old, children are beginning to be able to process these cues and use them to influence their verb extensions, and by 4.5 years, children are proficient at integrating multiple cues when learning and extending new verbs. Together these studies examine children's use of contrast in verb learning, a potentially important source of information that has been rarely studied.     

Does Providing Prompts During Retrieval Practice Improve Learning?

The purpose of this investigation was to identify ways to prompt retrieval practice to make recall even more effective at producing meaningful learning. In two experiments, subjects read educational texts and practiced retrieval across two periods. During prompted retrieval, subjects were cued to explain and describe concepts from the text, whereas during free recall, subjects recalled as much of the material from the text as they could. A reading control condition was also included. Learning was assessed using both verbatim and higher‐order questions 1 week later. Practicing retrieval improved learning relative to the control on both types of questions; however, whether subjects practiced free or prompted retrieval did not matter for learning. Subjects rated prompted retrieval as less enjoyable and interesting than the other retrieval conditions. Results demonstrate practicing retrieval promoted meaningful learning, and that subjects' initial retrieval success was highest when they used their own retrieval strategies during recall. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alice in Systems Wonderland: A Children's Systems Learning Guidebook Accompanying Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The author proposes the development of systems learning guidebooks to accompany famous children's classic books. Children's classic books can make excellent bases for children's learning guidebooks on systems thinking and global ecology, because they are fun to read and well known worldwide. If such learning guidebooks are properly designed with humor and entertaining aspects, they could stimulate children to learn more about systems thinking. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is chosen as a pilot case for developing such a children's guidebook. The systems learning guidebook that accompanies Alice's Wonderland shall be entitled Alice in Systems Wonderland and will help its readers look at the Alice's Wonderland story with a systems perspective.     

STRATEGY INSTRUCTION FROM A SOCIOCOGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

One of the characteristics of proficient readers and writers is their flexible use of reading and writing strategies. Students experiencing difficulties with reading and writing frequently do not use as many strategies as they read and write. Strategies are the cognitive tools that readers use as they construct meaning from text and that writers use as they produce texts. Many of the strategies that proficient readers and writers use are acquired and some are learned. Reading and writing strategies are frequently learned by purposeful instruction in meaningful social situations. This paper describes the nature of strategy use and instruction from a sociocognitive perspective, discusses the need for purposeful strategy instruction for struggling readers and writers, discusses factors that influence strategy instruction, describes current classroom practices that are congruent with sociocognitive theory, and suggests that strategy instruction should be grounded in classroom routines and situated within beliefs about teaching and learning.     

New age-linked asymmetries: aging and the processing of familiar versus novel language on the input versus output side

This research demonstrates 3 new age-linked asymmetries between identifying versus retrieving phonological information. Young and older adults read aloud familiar isolated words (e.g., mind) and novel pseudowords (e.g., mond) in a production task and identified lexical status for identical stimuli in a comprehension task. Young adults made fewer errors than older adults in production but not comprehension (an age-related input-output asymmetry), and they produced pseudowords but not words with fewer errors than older adults (a lexical-status asymmetry). The lexical-status asymmetry also occurred for response onset times but not for output durations (an onset-output asymmetry). All 3 asymmetries were predicted under the transmission deficit hypothesis (D. G. MacKay & D. M. Burke, 1990) but contradict theories such as general slowing that cannot explain why aging affects some types of information processing more than others.     

Do learning-disabled children exhibit peripheral deficits in selective attention? An analysis of eye movements during reading

It has been suggested that deficits in selective attention play a functional role in the learning and behavior problems of children diagnosed as learning- disabled. In the present study, peripheral and central aspects of selective attention were distinguished and peripheral aspects were examined. The attending eye movements during reading of 12 fifth-grade learning-disabled children who read at the third-grade level were compared with 12 fifth-grade children who read at the fifth-grade level (grade placement controls) and 12 third-grade children who read at the third-grade level (reading level controls). The learning-disabled children did not differ from their reading level controls on any of W measures but showed a pattern of eye movements that was generally slower and less smooth than their grade placement controls. While these patterns might be considered to be immature relative to normal readers of the same age, they are not indicative of peripheral deficits in selective attention. Males, however, did exhibit more variability in duration of fixations and made more regressive eye movements than did females.