Orthographic analogies and phonological priming: a comment on Bowey, Vaughan, and Hansen (1998)

J. A. Bowey, L. Vaughan, and J. Hansen (1998, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 68, 108-133) carried out two experiments on 6- and 7-year-old children's use of orthographic analogies in word reading. They reported that, following apparently stringent controls for phonological priming effects, beginning analogies (beak-bean) were more frequent in this age group than rime (beak-peak) analogies. From this, they concluded that beginning readers do not reliably use orthographic rimes in reading, even in the clue word task (p. 129). However, the clue word task was not used in this study. This comment highlights two problems with Bowey et al.'s paper. The first is a theoretical one, and the second is methodological. Firstly, Bowey et al. base their investigation on a misunderstanding of U. Goswami and P. E. Bryant's (1990, Phonological skills and learning to read, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum) claims about the role of rhyme and analogy in beginning reading. Secondly, methodological weaknesses, in particular unintended intralist priming effects, seriously limit the conclusions that can be drawn from Bowey et al.'s booklet analogy task.     

The effects of spelling consistency on phonological awareness: a comparison of English and German

Within alphabetic languages, spelling-to-sound consistency can differ dramatically. For example, English and German are very similar in their phonological and orthographic structure but not in their consistency. In English the letter a is pronounced differently in the words bank, ball, and park, whereas in German the letter a always has the same pronunciation (e.g., Ball, Park, Bank). It is often argued that reading acquisition has a reciprocal effect on phonological awareness. As reading is acquired, therefore, spoken language representation may be affected differently for English and German children. Prior to literacy acquisition, however, phonological representation in English and German children should be similar due to the similar phonological structure of the two languages. We explored this hypothesis by comparing phonological awareness at the rime and phoneme levels in prereaders and beginning readers in English and German. Similar developmental effects were indeed observed in prereaders, but differential effects had emerged within the first year of reading instruction.     

Book reviews

Miles, T. R., & Miles, E. (1990). Dyslexia: A hundred years on. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. pp. 214. ISBN 0-335-09541-0. £32.50 (hardback); ISBN 0-335-09540-2. £10.99 (paperback).

Altmann, G.T.M. (Ed.) (1990). Cognitive models of Speech processing: Psycholinguistic and computational perspectives. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. Pp. 552. ISBN 0-262-01117-4. £49.50.

Watt, R. (1991). Understanding vision. London: Academic Press. Pp. 301. ISBN 012-738501-0. £18.95.

Hunt, R.W.G. (1991). Measuring Colour (second edition). Chichester: Ellis Horwood. Pp. 313. ISBN 0-13-567686-X. £55.50.

Davidoff, J. (1991). Cognition through color. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 217. ISBN 0-262-04115-4. £24.95.