PS2011 & PS2016 Cognitive
Psychology. Dr John Beech
Learning to read
Learning to read: phonology
• There is a link between problems in processing sounds in
words and subsequent reading, as will be seen.
• Early work simply looked at correlations between reading
and phonology. E.g. Rosner & Simon (1971).
• Phonology: “Steam without the /s/ = team”. At various
levels of difficulty. From 6 yrs on, ranged between r = .59
to .84 with reading. Persisted even when effects of IQ
subtracted.
• Thus a connection between the ability to hear and
manipulate the sounds in words and the ability to read.
• There are now hundreds of studies showing connections
between various types of language abilities, especially at
the level of processing phonemes and reading. The
results are very consistent.
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Learning to read: phonology
• Some have suggested that sensitivity to rhyming and the
use of analogy is important, based on work by Goswami
& Bryant (1990). They suggest early experiences with
nursery rhyme leads to the use of this knowledge in
reading.
• However, several studies (e.g. Nation & Hulme, 1997)
show that children do not use rhyming and rarely use
analogy in order to read.
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Learning to read: phonology
• Stuart & Coltheart (1988) tested children before going to
school on their phonology and letter-sound knowledge.
These were significant predictors of reading age.
• Wagner (1988): meta-analysis on 16 longitudinal and
training studies. All tested reading and phonology at
kindergarten. Found:
1.
IQ was not important
2.
training phonological skills improved reading
3.
The following skills had a causal influence on
subsequent word analysis skills: Analysis of
phonemes (segmenting words); blending phonemes;
working memory.
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Learning to read: phonology
• Bradley & Bryant (1983) chose 65 out of 400 who had
poor phonemic awareness at 4-5yrs. Then put in 4
groups:
1. Training on sound categorisation
2. Training on sound category+plastic letters
3. Placebo control - trained on semantic classes
4. Control - just left alone
• Groups 1-3 trained 40 x 15 min over 2 yrs. Found that
Group 1 ahead of 3, but not sig. Group 2 were 8 mth
ahead and sig diff from Group 3. [Thus rank order: 2 > 1
> 3 > 4]
• Thus need to train sounds and connections with letters. 5
Learning to read: phonology
• Lundberg et al. (1988) in Sweden found intensive
training for 8 mth of just phonemic awareness, before
learning to read, did improve reading later relative to
controls. But in Sweden spelling is regular.
• Cunningham (1990) compared 2 methods of teaching
phonemic awareness and letter-sound coding.
Compared “skill and drill” method with one involving
explaining the context of such skills. The “metalinguistic”
method better than skill and drill.
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Summary so far
• There is a good correlation between awareness of the
sounds in words and reading performance.
• However, reading does not appear to be connected with
early rhyming. Also analogy is rarely used.
• Evidence that training phonological skills improves
reading. Bradley & Bryant showed that training lettersound knowledge is important.
• Cunningham showed that it is better to show children the
context in which letter-sound connections should be
used.
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Theories of reading: stage models
A stages view of reading
Several theorists have suggested reading
develops in stages:
e.g. Frith (1985), Ehri (1994, 2002).
Frith suggested 3 stages:
1. Logographic (or whole word) skills
2. Alphabetic skills
3. Orthographic skills.
She suggested that they followed in strict
order.
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1. Logographic stage
• Marsh et al (1981) “Glance and guess” phase.
• Frith (1985): memorises important features, but letter
order ignored. Discrimination in limited set easy until 2
very similar words (house and horse).
• Marsh et al suggested “discrimination net guessing” and
viewed this as a second phase.
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1. Logographic stage
Seymour & Elder (1986): Examined a class of children
taught by “whole word” method with no phonics for a year.
But when presented vertical or zigzagged words – e.g:
c
a
or
apple
t
…most of them were only mildly disrupted – indicating that
they didn’t store visual “gestalts”. But some children were
very disrupted suggested that in contrast, these did store
words as gestalts.
Seymour and Elder also suggested that analysis covers word
length, shape of about 12 letters and their position. Could
discriminate large vocabulary on this basis.
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1. Logographic stage
Henderson & Chard (1980) Grade 2 & 4 in a lexical
RT task sensitive to positional letter frequency in
non-words, as well as to presence of vowels. E.g.
shrnld has high positional frequency, but dtscfk is
low. This suggests that even 6-yr olds aware of
spelling structure.
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2. Alphabetic stage
• As we have seen mastering phonic (letter-sound) skills improves
reading.
• Having this skill means that one can decode unfamiliar words when
reading text.
• Snowling (1980) argued that children with dyslexia have poor
phonic skills, but develop sight vocabulary despite this, but slowly.
Those with dyslexia were worse reading non-words compared with
RA controls.
• Campbell & Butterworth (1985) tested a developmental
phonological dyslexic: problems reading non-words. She’d learned
to read but with problems in phonemic processing and impaired
grapheme-phoneme conversion (GPC).
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3. Othographic stage
Automatic analysis of orthographic units without phonological
conversion.
Frith suggests we have morphemic units (e.g. ride, riding). These
morphemes are represented by abstract string of letters.
The orthographic phase is not visual, but involves abstract codes.
Once established the previous strategies become less accessible.
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Dual route theory
• Two independent routes to reading (e.g.
Coltheart, 1978). Lexical route and one
translating letters to sounds.
• Use of the 2 routes depends on skill. E.g. a
regular frequent word (e.g. get): learner uses
GPC, expert uses lexical route. Highly
irregular word (e.g. choir) might only be lexical
for both.
• The lexical route could be considered to be
like logographic initially. But eventually
automated.
• Letter-to-sound route called grapheme-tophoneme conversion (GPC). Because
sometimes not simple 1-to-1 (e.g. ch, th, sh).
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Dual route theory
• Spelling regularity and words vs nonwords are
ways to examine operation of 2 routes. (e.g.
regular - singer; irregular - yacht; clarf nonword)
• Non-words read by GPC alone. Words are
read by a combination of 2 routes. Predicts
irregular read more slowly than regular. The
two routes generate 2 different phonological
codes for irregular words.
• In terms of reading development, reading
begins with the lexical route, but helped
increasingly by the GPC route. It all depends
on the method of teaching, of course.
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Dual route theory
• Stuart & Coltheart (1988) - mentioned
before - found letter-sound knowledge before
learning to read predicts later reading age.
This challenges Frith’s model of processing
in strict stages. Here GPC knowledge was
helping reading, not just logographic
knowledge.
• Evidence from acquired reading disorders
suggest selective impairment of either a
visual/lexical route or to a GPC.
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Evaluation
• The Frith model has similarities to the dual-route model
as both proposed a GPC route and a lexical route.
However, the Frith model subdivides lexical processing
between a logographic process and later, an
orthographic one.
• Frith is probably incorrect to assume that there is a strict
sequence of stages. It is likely that the alphabetic (or
GPC) phase runs in parallel.
• Frith makes a valuable contribution on the nature of the
early stages of word recognition, which she calls
“logographic”.
• It is difficult to produce the definitive model as reading is
a collection of skills and these skills may well depend on
the strategies of the learner and the learning
environment.
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Evaluation
• Connectionist modellers have challenged the dual-route
model arguing that the distinctions produced by spelling
regularity and by words vs non-words can be explained
by frequency of usage effects. Irregular spelling patterns
are encountered infrequently.
• However, the dual-route model probably provides a good
working model for educators. It shows that children
need to develop a sight vocabulary (a lexicon) and also
need to develop skills for the GPC.
• Furthermore, dual route theory gives a good account of
the acquired dyslexias.
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Summary so far
• Training letter-sound skills improves reading. The
improvement is even better if context explained.
• Frith has suggested: logographic, alphabetic and
orthographic stages in reading occurring in strict order.
But it is more likely that alphabetic processes occur early
on, depending on the learning environment.
• Dual route theory suggests a lexical route and a GPC
route which operate independently and change according
to the level of skill.
• Connectionist theorists suggest frequency of usage may
be a more likely explanation of some differences found
when manipulating spelling regularity and words vs nonwords.
• Dual-route theory is still likely to be useful for educators.19
Vision and reading
• There has been a lot of research on this and generally
there is not much of a connection between visual
problems and reading.
• Raynor (1985) had poor readers read easy text and
found no eye movement problems, but erratic patterns
with harder material.
• Then, testing good readers with difficult material, their
patterns became erratic as well. Thus erratic patterns
due to level of difficulty.
• Small minority have problems with binocular fusion
(keeping both eyes in focus).
• Stein & Fowler (1993) had group with severe reading
problems matched in RA (Reading Age) to younger good
readers. The older group had binocular fusion problems
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and visual training by itself improved reading.
Vision and reading
• Aasved (1989) comprehensively tested 2,590 children,
259 of whom had dyslexia. He concluded no connection
between visual problems and reading and spelling
problems.
• However, in 1% of the sample he examined he found
children with visual memory and visual processing
problems. They had problems in spelling, copying and
identifying letters and visual confusions when reading text.
Normal in phonological tasks.
• Connecting visual memory to reading problems can be
difficult because of the intervention of phonological
processes.
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Teaching reading
• What are the implications for teaching reading?
• Most children use active strategies but these vary in
effectiveness. Also, they don’t all do what their teachers
tell them.
• They may also find their parents contradict their teachers
when they come home.
• It is important to establish systematic subskills. “Look
and say” and “real book” methods may not teach some
important skills systematically. They may be too
haphazard.
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Skills to learn
Here are some early examples of useful skills to learn:
1. Discrimination of letter shapes. By exercises and by
copying them by hand.
2. Putting letter shapes in the correct sequence from
left to right across the page.
3. Developing awareness of all the phonemic sounds
(43 in English roughly). May require kinaesthetic
(awareness of positions of muscles) awareness.
4. Matching letters-to-sounds and vice versa.
5. Knowing that a letter stands for the same sound
anywhere in the word (e.g. f in fog, in offer and off)
etc.
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Problems and solutions
• Traditional phonic teaching can have problems. E.g.
children given spelling lists of similar groups of words
(Bill, Jill, hill) which out of context may appear to the
child as having little relevance.
• Attention span in some children can be problematic.
• When a proportion of children fall behind, they know that
their class mates are fully aware of this. Slowly slipping
behind their mates and a feeling of lack of success can
lead to behaviour problems.
• The majority of children with attention difficulties have
serious problems in reading or something else.
• Reinforcers have some merits, but “tributes” which
inform a child about his competence is more useful
(Katz, 1987).
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Problems and solutions
• It seems that it is easier to help young poor readers (67yrs) than older ones. Alphabetic rules are learned more
easily and persist for longer as long as back in class they
are taught in the same way.
• Unfortunately assessments for dyslexia do not typically
start until the age of 7 years upwards.
• Older readers tend to develop habits of memorising only
by sight, or parts of words, which can be dysfunctional.
• Children learn much faster in one-to-one sessions than
in small groups (Slavin, 1996)
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Problems and solutions
• Children labelled “dyslexic” or “reading disabled” may
have low expectations foisted on them by parents and
teachers.
• One of the most popular of reading programs is Reading
Recovery developed by Marie Clay. This targets 20% of
the poorest readers in the first year. It has “real books” in
a graded series, training in sound to letter
correspondences in writing. 60 hrs of training at 30
min/day is required to get any gain.
• Assessment on this program has been methodologically
very weak. E.g. testing is on the same materials the
children learned from. Drop out rates are very high at
38%. It is an expensive program, which when tested
objectively does not appear to work (e.g. Center et al,
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1995)
Final summary
• Generally there is not really a connection between visual
problems and reading problems.
• 1% have problems in visual memory and processing,
including having visual confusions when reading text.
• Systematic teaching of subskills is important. This
particularly applies to teaching phonic subskills.
• It is better to start at an early stage teaching these
systematic skills.
• Attention difficulties associated with reading are probably
an effect of reading problems rather than a cause.
• One-to-one learning produces faster results than small
group learning.
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