Prediction of the reading and spelling performances of normal and retarded readers: A four-year follow-up

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative predictive accuracy of a number of measures employed in a 4-year longitudinal study of the neuropsychological abilities of normal and retarded readers. The results indicated that there were some very accurate predictive measures of reading and spelling achievement levels over the 4-year age span studied, and that the relative accuracy of these measures differed markedly for normal and retarded readers. Especially in the case of retarded readers, performance on the Underlining Test was a much more accurate predictor of eventual achievement levels in reading and spelling than were tests of reading, spelling, or psychometric intelligence.This investigation was supported in part under Grant #195 of the Ontario Mental Health Foundation, funds provided by the Research Division, Windsor Western Hospital Centre, and funds from the Ontario Department of Education Grants-in-Aid of Educational Research and Development program. Dr. M. W. Starr offered advice regarding the statistical design.     

The effects of manual tracing on memory in normal and retarded readers: Some implications for multi-sensory teaching

Summary The present experiments address two interrelated problems; the causes of reading retardation and the possible mechanisms underlying multi-sensory teaching procedures, which involve manually tracing around words, and which reputedly help children retarded in reading. Two experiments explored the effects of manual tracing on memory for letters and non-verbal forms in normal and retarded readers. The retarded readers remembered fewer letters and gained selective benefit from tracing them. In the case of non-verbal forms the two groups performed equally and tracing was equally beneficial to memory in both groups. These findings were explained in terms of the retarded readers' limited reliance on a phonological memory code. A further experiment showed that the differential effect of tracing on the retarded readers' memory for letters was not simply a consequence of their limited reading ability. It was concluded that reading retardation is characterised by deficits of verbal, but not of visual, memory. The tracing activity involved in multi-sensory teaching may help retarded readers by providing a mnemonic aid, which compensates for their verbal memory difficulties.This research was carried out at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and was supported by the SSRC. I should like to thank Dr. D.E. Broadbent and Professor P.E. Bryant for their help and Dr. L. Bradley for providing information concerning some of the children seen in Experiment 3. A more complete account of these experiments and others relating to them is to be found in Hulme, C. (in press), Reading retardation and multi-sensory teaching: an experimental study. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London     

The State School as a Social System

Present research attempted to demonstrate the effect of response delay and the presence or absence of the experimenter on the performance of nonreinforced imitative behaviors in retarded children. A multiple baseline design, counterbalanced for conditions, was used. The results indicated that the degree of control exercised by the experimenter's presence or absence was partially determined by the response delay. Other variables that may have affected the imitative performance were (a) other nonimitative behaivors displayed by the subject(s); (b) additional stimuli generated by the experimenter; and (c) the subject's pre-experimental history with the experimenter.     

An Investigation of the Nature of Non-Directive Psychotherapy

An experiment was performed to assess the effects of mental age (MA) and external cues on response inhibition in the mentally retarded. Twelve Ss were presented with an experimental task which required that they withhold responding for five or more seconds before pressing a key to obtain reinforcement. For half the Ss the key was lighted (cued) during the waiting interval, while it was unlighted (uncued) for the other half. The results indicate that (a) response inhibition increased with MA and (b) MA differences might have been due to an inability to mediate the delay interval. The results were interpreted in terms of possible mediating mechanisms and implications for training inhibitory performance in the mentally retarded.     

Strategy choices by young Braille readers

The hypotheses that in Braille learning coding strategies change with reading level, and coding differs between normal and retarded readers were tested with oddity judgments by blind children. Experiment 1 showed that strategy choices varied with reading level only in association with mental age. By contrast, shape neglect and preference for phonological strategies were shown by retarded readers rather than by matched normal readers. Experiment 2 showed that under instructions to use given coding strategies the retarded were as accurate as normal readers. Accuracy for all forms of coding increased with reading level, but coding word shape was significantly less accurate than other forms of coding, and even correct coding of shape was no faster than semantic or phonological coding. It is concluded that coding the shape of Braille words is unlikely to be a major factor in producing faster Braille reading, and retarded Braille readers differ from normal readers in their spontaneous choice of strategy rather than in the ability to use the relevant codes.     

Susceptibility to interference effects in short-term memory of normal and retarded readers.

The short-term memory for serial order of third and fourth grade normal and retarded readres (Ns = 13) was studied. Six pictures of common objects were spatially presented and subjects were required to reconstruct the sequence. On the first six trials, the same pictures were repeatedly presented in different sequences. On the seventh trial, a new set of stimuli was introduced. Analysis of short-term memory over trials showed that normal and retarded readers were similar on Trial 1 but the performance of retarded readers deteriorated more over trials than the performance of normal readers. Short-term memory of both groups improved on Trial 7. The results indicate a greater susceptibility to interference in the short-term memory of retarded readers.     

Children and adults both see ‘pirates’ in ‘parties’: letter‐position effects for developing readers and skilled adult readers

Developing readers often make anagrammatical errors (e.g. misreading pirates as parties), suggesting they use letter position flexibly during word recognition. However, while it is widely assumed that the occurrence of these errors decreases with increases in reading skill, empirical evidence to support this distinction is lacking. Accordingly, we compared the performance of developing child readers (aged 8–10 years) against the end‐state performance of skilled adult readers in a timed naming task, employing anagrams used previously in this area of research. Moreover, to explore the use of letter position by developing readers and skilled adult readers more fully, we used anagrams which, to form another word, required letter transpositions over only interior letter positions, or both interior and exterior letter positions. The patterns of effects across these two anagram types for the two groups of readers were very similar. In particular, both groups showed similarly slowed response times (and developing readers increased errors) for anagrams requiring only interior letter transpositions but not for anagrams that required exterior letter transpositions. This similarity in the naming performance of developing readers and skilled adult readers suggests that the end‐state skilled use of letter position is established earlier during reading development than is widely assumed.     

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.     

Word recognition under spatial transformation in retarded and normal readers

The recognition of words in normal, reversed, and inverted orientation was compared in a group of 9- to 11-year-old retarded readers and a matched group of normal readers. Using the ratio of reading times as an index of reading difficulty under spatial transformation, the results confirmed those of earlier studies which have shown that retarded readers' performance is less affected by spatial transformation than is normal readers'. However, an analysis in terms of the ratio of numbers of words read correctly pointed to just the opposite conclusion. The two sets of findings were reconciled by showing that they follow from the form of the function relating reading time to number correct, and by demonstrating that when word lists are equated for orthographic familiarity the performances of retarded and normal readers are equally affected by spatial transformation, whether the time or number ratio is used as an index.     

Research and Statistical Techniques Used in the Journal of Counseling & Development: 1990–2001

This article provides a methodological review of research designs and statistical analyses published over an 11‐year period by the Journal of Counseling & Development (JCD). Results suggest that the majority of published research is more advanced than the research training experienced by the majority of JCD's readership. Suggestions are made for authors publishing research in JCD to assist the 55,000 plus readers in their efforts to interpret and evaluate the research outcomes reported.     

Phonological deficits: Beneath the surface of reading-acquisition problems

Summary In Experiment 1, the performance of young retarded readers on speech-segmentation tasks was compared with the performance of normal subjects matched for chronological age (CA) and with subjects matched for reading age (RA). Retarded readers were poorer than both control groups in consonant deletion, while there was no difference between the groups on a rhyme-judgement task and a syllabic-vowel-reproduction task. In Experiment 2, another group of reading retarded children was compared with CA and RA controls on the classification of pseudowords, either by common phoneme or by overall phonetic similarity. The retarded readers made fewer classifications based on common phoneme than both control groups, while there was no difference between the groups in classifications based on overall phonetic similarity. In Experiment 3, adult developmental dyslexics were compared with normal adults in the tasks of Experiments 1 and 2. The dyslexics made fewer classifications based on a common phoneme than the normals, while no difference was found in classifications based on overall phonetic similarity.     

Differences between Chinese morphosyllabic and German alphabetic readers in the Stroop interference effect

The goal of our study was to localize the source of the stronger Stroop interference effect found in morphosyllabic readers as compared with alphabetic readers. Twenty-three Chinese and 24 German undergraduate students were tested in a Stroop paradigm with the following stimuli: color patches, colorneutral words (e.g.,friend printed in yellow), incongruent color-associated words (e.g.,blood printed in blue), and incongruent color words (e.g.,yellow printed in blue). Results revealed no differences in German and Chinese students’ response times to color patches. Chinese participants, however, showed longer color naming latencies for neutral words as well as for color words and color-related words. No differences between German and Chinese participants were found when print color latencies for neutral words were subtracted from print color latencies for color words and color-related words. This result does not support theories which suggest that for morphosyllabic readers there is a direct route from orthography to the semantics of a word. We rather argue, with reference to dual route models of reading, that access from print to phonology is faster for morphosyllabic than for alphabetic readers, and therefore interference caused by conflicting phonologies of color name and written word will be stronger in Chinese readers than in German readers.     

Verification of Statements about Story Worlds That Deviate from Normal Conceptions of Time: What Is True aboutEinstein''s Dreams?

College students read chapters from a novel written by Alan Lightman (Einstein's Dreams) and later provided verification judgments on the truth/falsity of test statements. Each chapter described a different fictional village that incorporated assumptions about time that deviate from our normal TIME schema, e.g., citizens knowing exactly when the world will end, time flowing backward instead of forward. These novel assumptions about time provided interesting insights about life and reality. In two experiments, we examined whether readers could accurately incorporate these novel assumptions about time in the fictional story worlds, as manifested in the verification judgments for statements after story comprehension. The test statements included verbatim typical, verbatim atypical, inference typical, and inference atypical information from the perspective of mundane reality that meshes with a normal TIME schema. Verification ratings were collected on a 6-point scale in Experiment 1, whereas Experiment 2 used a signal–response technique in which binary true/false decisions were extracted at −.5, 1.5, 3.5, 5.5, and 10.0 s. The college students were measured on literary expertise, reading skill, working memory span, and reading time. Readers with comparatively high literary expertise showed truth discrimination scores that were compatible with aschema copy plus tagmodel, which assumes that readers are good at detecting and remembering atypical verbatim information; this model predicts better (and faster) truth discrimination for verbatim atypical statements than for verbatim typical statements. In contrast, fast readers with comparatively low literary expertise were compatible with afilteringmodel; this model predicts that readers gloss over (or suppress) atypical verbatim information and show advantages for verbatim typical information. All groups of readers had trouble inferentially propagating the novel assumptions about time in a fictional story world, but the slower readers were more accurate in their verification of the atypical inferences. Aconstruction–integrationmodel could explain the interactions among literary expertise, reading time, and the typicality of test statements.     

Introduction to the Technical Series: What is Science,and How Does It Help Us?*

Editor's Note: Readers trained in research have no need of a series of articles that introduce the value of the scientific method and the basic factors that comprise good research methodology. But readers who are primarily trained to do clinical work with families will find that today's healthcare environment increasingly requires that they be good consumers of research, as well as an increasing need for them to participate in studies of the models we wish to preserve. At a recent NIMH‐sponsored conference, a speaker lamented the probable demise of some of our more interesting family approaches because third‐party payers tend to support only evidence‐based interventions. Clearly, we need to be able to defend our practices, and understanding the value and essential components of scientific methodology and research studies is likely to become even more important in the future. This new series will attempt to provide an orientation for those of our readers who are interested. We welcome your response to these articles and your suggestions for future segments.     

How Parental Support During Homework Contributes to Helpless Behaviors Among Struggling Readers

This research investigated the influence of parental practices on helpless behaviors of struggling readers during homework tasks. Parents (N = 36) of elementary students reported on their children's helpless behaviors, such as task avoidance and negative affect, during homework assignments, and on the nature and frequency of their support. Distinctions were made between parental support considered to be strategic, compensatory, or intrusive. Additional variables that influence achievement behaviors were assessed, including children's language skills, academic abilities, and behavior regulation. Parent support considered intrusive, such as unsolicited interruptions and corrections, along with children's behavior regulation abilities, accounted for the greatest variation in struggling readers' helpless behaviors.     

The perception of complex patterns by touch

Two experiments are reported on matching Braille characters in dot pattern and outline shape formats by congenitally blind subjects. In a third experiment subjects' drawings of Braille shapes were analysed. Experiment 1 showed that normal and retarded readers differed significantly when outline shapes 'cued' identical dot patterns, but did not differ when the dot patterns preceded outlines. However, normal as well as retarded readers were faster and more accurate in judging identical pairs in dot-pattern format than in any other condition. In experiment 2 dot patterns and outline shapes were matched at three levels of reading proficiency. Faster readers made fewer errors in matching identical pairs, but all subjects were more accurate and faster with dot patterns than with outline shapes. Experiment 3 showed that blind subjects' drawing of outline shapes is not affected by reading proficiency. Most common were errors of alignment, including 'rotation' from vertical to horizontal axes, suggesting that sources of confusion were spatial position of dots and major axes of alignment rather than mirror-image reversals. It is argued that the results are not compatible with the hypothesis that Braille letters are perceived as global outline shapes by faster readers.     

The influence of a reading task on children’s eye movements during reading

In the present study, second graders (n= 23), fourth graders (n= 16), sixth graders (n= 24) and adults (n= 21) read texts adopted from children’s science textbooks either with the task to answer a “why” question presented as the title of the text or for comprehension when their eye movements were recorded. Immediately after reading, readers answered a text memory and an integration question. Second graders showed an effect of questions as increased processing during first-pass reading, whereas older readers showed the effect in later look-backs. For adult readers, questions also facilitated first-pass reading. Text memory or integration question-answering was not influenced by the reading task. The results indicate that questions increase the standards of coherence for text information and that already young readers do modify their reading behaviour according to task demands.     

Social problem solving and mother-child interactions of educable mentally retarded children

Mothers of retarded children and nonretarded children were observed and videotaped as they interacted with their own child in a seminaturalistic situation, requiring teaching, cooperation, and free play. The child's social problem-solving abilities were assessed independently. The Vineland scale was employed to provide some convergent evidence of social problem-solving as a component of social competence. Twelve educable mentally retarded and 19 nonretarded 10-year-old children and their mothers comprised the sample. For the mentally retarded group, it was found that the higher maternal directiveness, the lower the child's social problem-solving skills. Mothers who often gave the child opportunity for decision-making and social influence had children with higher problem-solving skills. The retarded children produced significantly fewer different strategies for solving social problems, but gave a wider range of strategies than has been found in previous research. There was some support that social problem-solving skills are related to social maturity.     

Nonselective read-out from iconic memory in normal, borderline and retarded adolescents

The hypothesis that retarded individuals read-out information from iconic memory at a slower rate, relative to their CA matched peers, was tested. Three IQ groups (normal, borderline and retarded) were selected with 10 subjects in each group. A tachistoscope presented a stimulus array and a post-stimulus cue for 100 msec. each, separated by a variable interstimulus interval (ISI). This stimulus array consisted of 10 letters arranged on two horizontal rows. The post-stimulus cue was a circle which surrounded the position of the correct letter. Nine ISIs were used and ranged from −100 (cue before array) to 500 msec. A 3 × 9 repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed non-significant effects for IQ and the IQ × ISI interaction. A significant effect was found for ISIs (p < .01) which reflected reduced performance at the intermediate ISIs for all intelligence groups. The hypothesis of a read-out deficit in the retarded was not supported. The present findings were discussed in relation to previous research which supported a read-out deficit in the retarded.     

Frequency and predictability effects in eye fixations for skilled and less-skilled deaf readers

The illiteracy rate in the deaf population has been alarmingly high for several decades, despite the fact that deaf children go through the standard stages of schooling. Much research addressing this issue has focused on word-level processes, but in the recent years, little research has focused on sentence-levels processes. Previous research (Fischler, 1985) investigated word integration within context in college-level deaf and hearing readers in a lexical decision task following incomplete sentences with targets that were congruous or incongruous relative to the preceding context; it was found that deaf readers, as a group, were more dependent on contextual information than their hearing counterparts. The present experiment extended Fischler's results and investigated the relationship between frequency, predictability, and reading skill in skilled hearing, skilled deaf, and less-skilled deaf readers. Results suggest that only less-skilled deaf readers, and not all deaf readers, rely more on contextual cues to boost word processing. Additionally, early effects of frequency and predictability were found for all three groups of readers, without any evidence for an interaction between frequency and predictability.