Search results for "Fluency"
showing 10 items of 211 documents
Breaking down the word length effect on readers’ eye movements
2015
Previous research on the effect of word length on reading confounded the number of letters (NrL) in a word with its spatial width. Consequently, the extent to which visuospatial and attentional-linguistic processes contribute to the word length effect on parafoveal and foveal vision in reading and dyslexia is unknown. Scholars recently suggested that visual crowding is an important factor for determining an individual’s reading speed in fluent and dyslexic reading. We studied whether the NrL or the spatial width of target words affects fixation duration and saccadic measures in natural reading in fluent and dysfluent readers of a transparent orthography. Participants read natural sentences …
Sentence judgments and the grammar of poetry: Linking linguistic structure and poetic effect
2018
The present article aims to show that the elicitation of intuitive literary-aesthetic sentence judgments taps into readers’ poetry-specific linguistic register, and how such judgment methods can be used to support and constrain future theory formation in experimental poetics. In two experiments, we examined effects of deviant and parallelistic linguistic features on readers’ grammatical and literary-aesthetic evaluation of single sentences.In Experiment 1, participants rated carefully selected and modified lines of German poetry for either acceptability or poeticity (n = 40 each) on a 7-point scale; original lines featured grammatical deviations that were absent in modified versions. All in…
Learning to read: English in comparison to six more regular orthographies
2003
Reading performance of English children in Grades 1–4 was compared with reading performance of German-, Dutch-, Swedish-, French-, Spanish-, and Finnish-speaking children at the same grade levels. Three different tasks were used: numeral reading, number word reading, and pseudoword reading. The pseudowords shared the letter patterns for onsets and rimes with the number words. The results showed that with the exception of English, pseudowords in the remaining orthographies were read with a high level of accuracy (approaching 90%) by the end of Grade 1. In contrast to accuracy, reading fluency for pseudowords was affected not only by regularity but also by other orthographic differences. The …
Exploring the cross-linguistic transfer of reading skills in Spanish to English in the context of a computer adaptive reading intervention
2017
ABSTRACTWe explore the potential of a computer-adaptive decoding game in Spanish to increase the decoding skills and oral reading fluency in Spanish and English of bilingual students. Participants were 78 first-grade Spanish-speaking students attending bilingual programs in five classrooms in Texas. Classrooms were randomly assigned to the treatment (i.e., where students played Graphogame Spanish) for 16 weeks for ten minutes per day (n = 3) versus business as usual instruction (n = 2). Results indicate that students at some risk on Spanish pseudoword reading appeared to benefit the most from playing the game. Analysis of gains suggests a potentially small, but meaningful educational effect…
Dual-stage and dual-deficit? Word recognition processes during text reading across the reading fluency continuum
2021
AbstractCentral questions in the study of visual word recognition and developmental dyslexia are whether early lexical activation precedes and supports decoding (a dual-stage view) or not (dual-route view), and the locus of deficits in dysfluent reading. The dual-route view predicts early word frequency and length interaction, whereas the dual-stage view predicts word frequency effect to precede the interaction effect. These predictions were tested on eye movements data collected from (n = 152) children aged 9–10 among whom reading dysfluency was overrepresented. In line with the dual-stage view, the results revealed an early word frequency effect in first fixation duration followed by robu…
Cognitive predictors of single-digit and procedural calculation skills and their covariation with reading skill.
2006
Abstract This study examined the extent to which children’s cognitive abilities in kindergarten and their mothers’ education predict their single-digit and procedural calculation skills and the covariance of these with reading skill in Grade 4. In kindergarten, we assessed children’s (N = 178) basic number skills, linguistic skills, and visual attention. In Grade 4, we assessed their calculation and reading skills. Data on children’s cognitive ability at 5 years of age and their mothers’ level of education were also collected. The results showed that both of the core components of calculation, single-digit and procedural calculation, as well as their covariance with reading, were predicted …
How Are Practice and Performance Related? Development of Reading From Age 5 to 15
2021
Does reading a lot lead to better reading skills, or does reading a lot follow from high initial reading skills? The authors present a longitudinal study of how much children choose to read and how well they decode and comprehend texts. This is the first study to examine the codevelopment of print exposure with both fluency and comprehension throughout childhood using autocorrelations. Print exposure was operationalized as children’s amount of independent reading for pleasure. Two hundred children were followed from age 5 to age 15. Print exposure was assessed at ages 5, 7, 8, 9, and 13. Prereading skills were tested at age 5 and reading skills at ages 7, 8, 9, 14, and 15 (the latter with t…
Training Reading Skills in Finnish: From Reading Acquisition to Fluency and Comprehension
2016
This chapter outlines the approaches for supporting reading development in Finnish that have been developed on the basis of current knowledge on reading development and reading disabilities in Finnish. We discuss also the challenges that the features of Finnish language and orthography pose for the reader at various points of development. We also describe the means for supporting the acquisition of the earliest milestones in reading development, that are being used widely within the Finnish elementary schools, and that have been based on findings of a large longitudinal research project (Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia, JLD). Although the knowledge on the development of reading flu…
Counting and RAN: Predictors of arithmetic calculation and reading fluency.
2013
This study examined whether counting and rapid automatized naming (RAN) could operate as significant predictors of both later arithmetic calculation and reading fluency. The authors also took an important step to clarify the cognitive mechanisms underlying these predictive relationships by controlling for the effect of phonological awareness and verbal short-term memory. Due to rather strong covariance between verbal short-term memory and phonological awareness, short-term memory could be controlled only partially. Participants, 200 children from a longitudinal study, were followed from age 5 to 10 years. Structural equation modeling showed counting to be a strong predictor, not only of lat…
Parental Literacy Predicts Children's Literacy: A Longitudinal Family-Risk Study
2011
This family-risk (FR) study examined whether the literacy skills of parents with dyslexia are predictive of the literacy skills of their offspring. We report data from 31 child-parent dyads where both had dyslexia (FR-D) and 68 dyads where the child did not have dyslexia (FR-ND). Findings supported the differences in liability of FR children with and without dyslexia: the parents of the FR-D children had more severe difficulties in pseudoword reading and spelling accuracy, in rapid word recognition, and in text reading fluency than the parents of the FR-ND children. Finally, parental skills were found to be significant predictors of children's Grade 3 reading and spelling. Parental skills p…