Development of phonological and orthographic processing in reading aloud,in silent reading,and in spelling: a four-year longitudinal study

The development of phonological and orthographic processing was studied from the middle of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 4 (age 6; 6-10 years) using the effects of regularity and of lexicality in reading aloud and in spelling tasks, and using the effect of pseudohomophony in a silent reading task. In all the tasks, signs of reliance on phonological processing were found even when indicators of reliance on orthographic processing appeared. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine which early skills predict later reading achievement. Pseudoword and irregular word scores were used as measures for phonological and orthographic skills, respectively. Only middle of Grade 1 phonological reading skills accounted for independent variance in end of Grade 4 orthographic skills. Conversely, from the middle to the end of Grade 1, and from the end of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 4, both orthographic and phonological skills accounted for independent variance in later orthographic skills. In the prediction of phonological skills, only the unique contribution of earlier phonological skills was significant. Thus, phonological and orthographic processing appear to be reciprocally related, rather than independent components of written word recognition. However, very early reliance on the phonological procedure seems to be the bootstrapping mechanism for reading acquisition.     

L’adaptation de l’Irvine-Minnesota Inventory-IMI au contexte français

It is widely acknowledged that encouraging walking in urban environments should be a major public health goal. This view is supported by many studies in environmental psychology, in particular those designed to identify characteristics of the urban environment that support and encourage healthy walking. This article proposes to translate the Irvine-Minnesota Inventory (IMI), a well-established instrument, carefully developed to measure the potential walkability of city districts and neighborhoods, and to adapt this tool to so that it captures the unique historic and cultural features of French cities while still retaining the items that have made it so useful in the United States. A new French/American version of the IMI was developed, comprising 203 items. This version was tested in neighborhoods in a mid-size French city and yielded very good internal and inter-judge reliability and good discrimination.     

MANULEX: a grade-level lexical database from French elementary school readers.

This article presents MANULEX, a Web-accessible database that provides grade-level word frequency lists of nonlemmatized and lemmatized words (48,886 and 23,812 entries, respectively) computed from the 1.9 million words taken from 54 French elementary school readers. Word frequencies are provided for four levels: first grade (G1), second grade (G2), third to fifth grades (G3-5), and all grades (G1-5). The frequencies were computed following the methods described by Carroll, Davies, and Richman (1971) and Zeno, Ivenz, Millard, and Duvvuri (1995), with four statistics at each level (F, overall word frequency; D, index of dispersion across the selected readers; U, estimated frequency per million words; and SFI, standard frequency index). The database also provides the number of letters in the word and syntactic category information. MANULEX is intended to be a useful tool for studying language development through the selection of stimuli based on precise frequency norms. Researchers in artificial intelligence can also use it as a source of information on natural language processing to simulate written language acquisition in children. Finally, it may serve an educational purpose by providing basic vocabulary lists.     

Ontologie du signifier

Sans résumé     

Exit Dora: Freud's Patient Takes Leave

Why did “Dora” leave Sigmund Freud—why did she end her psychoanalytic treatment with him prematurely? This question haunts Freud's Dora study, his first extensive and perhaps most famous narrative of a psychoanalytic treatment. I pursue this question through a close reading of Freud's text. I focus not only on the interaction between Freud and Dora but also on the literary qualities of “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” (1905)—qualities that place this work firmly in the tradition of Viennese fin de siècle drama and prose.     

EQUIVALENCE CLASS FORMATION: A METHOD FOR TEACHING STATISTICAL INTERACTIONS

Many students struggle with statistical concepts such as interaction. In an experimental group, participants took a paper‐and‐pencil test and then were given training to establish equivalent classes containing four different statistical interactions. All participants formed the equivalence classes and showed maintenance when probes contained novel negative exemplars. Thereafter, participants took a second paper‐and‐pencil test. Participants in the control group received two versions of the paper‐and‐pencil test without equivalence‐based instruction. All participants in the experimental group showed increased paper‐and‐pencil test scores after forming the interaction‐indicative equivalence classes. Class‐indicative responding also generalized to novel exemplars and the novel question format used in the paper‐and‐pencil test. Test scores did not change with repetition for control group participants. Implications for behavioral diagnostics and teaching technology are discussed.     

MANULEX: A grade-level lexical database from French elementary school readers

This article presents MANULEX, a Web-accessible database that provides grade-level word frequency lists of nonlemmatized and lemmatized words (48,886 and 23,812 entries, respectively) computed from the 1.9 million words taken from 54 French elementary school readers. Word frequencies are provided for four levels: first grade (G1), second grade (G2), third to fifth grades (G3-5), and all grades (G1-5). The frequencies were computed following the methods describedby Carroll, Davies, and Richman (1971) and Zeno, Ivenz, Millard, and Duwuri (1995), with four statistics at each level (F, overall word frequency;D, index of dispersion across the selectedreaders;U, estimated frequencyper million words; andSFI, standard frequency index). The database also provides the number of letters in the word and syntactic category information. MANULEX is intended to be a useful tool for studying language development through the selection of stimuli based on precise frequency norms. Researchers in artificial intelligence can also use it as a source of information on natural language processing to simulate written language acquisition in children. Finally, it may serve an educational purpose by providing basic vocabulary lists.     

Vérification de la structure factorielle et de la fiabilité des preqis en France et test d’un modèle de prédiction de l’attachement au quartier : une étude sur un échantillon parisien

This paper has two aims: testing the Perceived Residential Environment Quality Indicators (PREQIs’, Bonaiuto et al., 2003) factorial structure and reliability in the French context and testing a three-level model where more specific PREQIs cover the first level, more molar PREQIs about pace of life (i.e., the attribution of qualities such as stimulating vs. boring and relaxing vs. distressing) cover the second level, and neighbourhood attachment represents the final outcome variable. Participants (n = 383) were residents of Paris who filled in a questionnaire including the French version of the extended PREQIs and Neighbourhood Attachment (NA) scales (Bonaiuto et al., 2006). PREQIs are validated in France with 139 items and 19 indicators (plus one indicator composed of 8 items for place attachment). The path analysis model presents an indirect connection between some PREQIs and NA via pace of life indicators, which are influenced by PREQIs and are directly associated to NA. More specifically, different PREQIs affect different pace of life dimensions: the perception of a more relaxed neighbourhood is associated to a high quality of design features, environmental health, and safety, whereas the perception of a more stimulating neighbourhood is connected to the presence of human activities and services.