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Reading is a highly complex skill that is prerequisite to success in many societies in which a great deal of information is communicated in written form. Since the 1970s, much has been learned about the reading process from research by cognitive psychologists. This book summarizes that important work and puts it into a coherent framework. The book’s central theme is how readers go about extracting information from the printed page and comprehending the text. Like its predecessor, this thoroughly updated 2nd Edition encompasses all aspects of the psychology of reading with chapters on writing systems, word recognition, the work of the eyes during reading, inner speech, sentence processing, discourse processing, learning to read, dyslexia, individual differences and speed reading. Psychology of Reading, 2 nd Edition , is essential reading for undergraduates, graduates, and researchers in cognitive psychology and could be used as a core textbook on courses on the psychology of reading and related topics. In addition, the clear writing style makes the book accessible to people without a background in psychology but who have a personal or professional interest in the process of reading. Keith Rayner is the Atkinson Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego and Emeritus Distinguished University Professor at the University of Massachusetts.　 He has published widely on topics related to reading, eye movements, and language processing. Alexander Pollatsek is Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Research Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.　 His primary research interests are in reading, word recognition, scene perception, and driving behavior.　 He has published widely in each area. Jane Ashby is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Central Michigan University. Her primary interests are in skilled reading, phonological processing, dyslexia, and reading development. Charles Clifton, Jr is Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Research Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.　 He is primarily interested in psycholinguistics and has published numerous papers dealing with linguistic processing, parsing, and syntactic ambiguity. Preface. Part 1. Background Information. 1. Introduction and Preliminary Information. 2. Writing Systems. 3. Word Perception I: Some Basic Issues and Methods. Part 2. Skilled Reading of Text. 4. The Work of the Eyes. 5. Word Perception II: Word Identification in Text. 6. A Model of Eye Movements in Reading. Part 3. Understanding Text. 7. Inner Speech. 8. Words and Sentences. 9. Comprehension of Discourse. Part 4. Beginning Reading, Reading Disability, Individual Differences. 10. Stages of Reading Development. 11. Learning to Read. 12. Reading Disorders. 13. Speed Reading, Proofreading, and Individual Differences. 14. Overview. \"I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the importance of this book. It’s written by some of the very best-known and respected researchers in the field who, to a very large degree, have defined the field itself. In short, reading research would not have been the same without these authors, and to the present day they’re still amongst the most prominent scholars in the world.\" -Steven Frisson, Ph.D., University of Birmingham, UK \"I absolutely loved reading this book. The level of detail and analysis provided in several of the chapters was exceptional. In fact, given the attention to detail, and the continual use of presenting data followed by argument/criticism to build a position, results in a book that will be valuable at many levels.\" -Edward O’Brien, Ph.D., University of New Hampshire, US \"The original Psychology of Reading by Rayner and Pollatsek - of which this current book is a thoroughly revised and updated version - has often been described as a seminal book. Only too frequently this term is used to describe books which have received considerable attention in the field but in hindsight fail to meet the criterion for using that specific, powerful epithet . . . The current book is a rightful heir to the throne of the [first edition].\" -Denis Drieghe, Ph.D., University of Southampton, UK

The aim of the study was to elucidate the nature and efficiency of the strategies that readers with phonological dyslexia use for temporary retention of written words in Working Memory (WM). Data was gathered through a paradigm whereby participants had to identify serially presented written (target) words from within larger word pools according to their presentation order, with word pools containing code-specific distracter (CSD) words and non-code-specific distracter (NCSD) words. Analyses focused on three aspects of performance: (1) false recognition of target words; (2) correct recognition of target words; and (3) retention of word presentation order. Participants were readers with diagnosed phonological dyslexia (n=20, mean grade level=9.05 [0.89]) and a control group of regular readers (n=25, mean grade level=9.00 [0.76]). Results provide direct evidence that the dyslexic readers and the regular readers used essentially different memory coding strategies for the temporary retention of written words, with the former predominantly relying on a visual strategy and the latter on a phonological strategy. Findings further pinpointed a notably impoverished ability of the dyslexic readers to retain word presentation order. The implication of these findings is discussed in relation to theories predicting the acquisition and mastery of reading.

Scores from the phonological awareness, phonological coding, and spelling tests were used in quantitative trait variance component linkage analyses, after conversion to standard scores (for phonological coding and spelling) or age adjustment (for phonological awareness). Multipoint variance component linkage analyses of the phonological awareness, phonological coding, and spelling measures produced the most significant results under a model that included QTL additive and dominance variance, polygenic additive variance, and environmental variance.

Contact author: D. Kimbrough Oller, School of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, The University of Memphis, 807 Jefferson Avenue, Memphis, TN 38105. E-mail: koller{at}memphis.edu . PURPOSE: The purpose of the present work is to describe and illustrate the utility of a new tool for assessment of transcription agreement. Traditional measures have not characterized overall transcription agreement with sufficient resolution, specifically because they have often treated all phonetic differences between segments in transcriptions as equivalent, thus constituting an unweighted approach to agreement assessment. The measure the authors have developed calculates a weighted transcription agreement value based on principles derived from widely accepted tenets of phonological theory. METHOD: To investigate the utility of the new measure, 8 coders transcribed samples of speech and infant vocalizations. Comparing the transcriptions through a computer-based implementation of the new weighted and the traditional unweighted measures, they investigated the scaling properties of both. RESULTS: The results illustrate better scaling with the weighted measure, in particular because the weighted measure is not subject to the floor effects that occur with the traditional measure when applied to samples that are difficult to transcribe. Furthermore, the new weighted measure shows orderly relations in degree of agreement across coded samples of early canonical-stage babbling, early meaningful speech in English, and 3 adult languages. CONCLUSIONS: The authors conclude that the weighted measure may provide improved foundations for research on phonetic transcription and for monitoring of transcription reliability. KEY WORDS: phonetic transcription, weighted agreement measure, phonological coding, transcription agreement, transcription reliability CiteULike     Connotea     Del.icio.us     Digg     Facebook     Reddit     Technorati     Twitter     What's this?

There is a compelling body of evidence that developmental dyslexia runs in families and seems to be highly inheritable. Several investigations during the last two decades have shown possible locations of genes that might be involved in dyslexia, including regions of chromosomes 1, 2, 3, 6, 11, 13, 15 and 18. In addition, six candidate genes (KIAA0319, DYX1C1, DCDC2, ROBO1, MRPL19 and C2ORF3) seem to be related to dyslexia. The present study carried out a whole genome scan in a six-generation pedigree. In addition to literacy skills the assessment included cognitive skills and records concerning the history of reading and writing ability. Thirty-five percent were regarded as dyslexic in the family. A linkage analysis using both a quantitative and a qualitative approach has been performed. No evidence was obtained to support the hypothesis that the transmission of dyslexia in this pedigree is due to a highly penetrant major gene, and previous linkage findings were not replicated; however, power in this small study was not adequate to confirm linkage of genes with small to moderate effects. The results were discussed in relation to diagnostic procedures and sample characteristics.

School-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) and age-matched controls were tested for immediate recall of digits presented visually, auditorily, or audiovisually. Recall tasks compared speaking and pointing response modalities. Each participant was tested at a level that was consistent with her or his auditory short-term memory span. Traditional effects of primacy, recency, and modality (an auditory recall advantage) were obtained for both groups. The groups performed similarly when audiovisual stimuli were paired with a spoken response, but children with SLI had smaller recency effects together with an unusually poor recall when visually presented items were paired with a pointing response. Such results cannot be explained on the basis of an auditory or speech deficit per se, and suggest that children with SLI have difficulty either retaining or using phonological codes, or both, during tasks that require multiple mental operations. Capacity limitations, involving the rapid decay of phonological representations and/or performance limitations related to the use of less demanding and less effective coding and retrieval strategies, could have contributed to the working memory deficiencies in the children with SLI.

This study examined the effectiveness of nonprofessional tutors in a phonologically based reading treatment similar to those in which successful reading outcomes have been demonstrated. Participants were 23 first graders at risk for learning disability who received intensive one-to-one tutoring from noncertified tutors for 30 minutes, 4 days a week, for one school year. Tutoring included instruction in phonological skills, letter-sound correspondence, explicit decoding, rime analysis, writing, spelling, and reading phonetically controlled text. At year end, tutored students significantly outperformed untutored control students on measures of reading, spelling, and decoding. Effect sizes ranged from .42 to 1.24. Treatment effects diminished at follow-up at the end of second grade, although tutored students continued to significantly outperform untutored students in decoding and spelling. Findings suggest that phonologically based reading instruction for first graders at risk for learning disability can be delivered by nonteacher tutors. Our discussion addresses the character of reading outcomes associated with tutoring, individual differences in response to treatment, and the infrastructure required for nonprofessional tutoring programs.

The effects of phonologic similarity on speech production latencies were investigated to explore the role of articulatory phonetic features and reprogramming operations during pre-motor stages of production. A form-based priming technique was used in five experiments to elicit rapid productions of single words. Subjects responded to visually presented pairs of minimally contrastive monosyllabic words, which varied with respect to the phonetic featural similarity of their onsets. Factors that were systematically manipulated across experiments included stimulus set size, duration of the interstimulus interval, and the use of feedback to subjects concerning their response latencies. Speech onset latencies obtained in a control condition in which no phonetic features were shared were compared to four other conditions in which the word initial phonemes of prime-target pairs did share features. Results revealed that shared manner was the most influential factor associated with the observed inhibitory phonologic similarity effect. In addition, smaller stimulus set size (6 words) yielded significantly slower overall response latencies than experiments employing larger stimulus sets (18 words). These findings suggested that inhibitory phonologic similarity effects did not stem from biomechanical constraints imposed by the articulatory system. Rather the methods employed in this investigation were supported as a means to investigate both the underlying units of representation and the processes involved in pre-motor planning apart from articulatory effects. The results of this investigation also supported the hypothesis that, during phonologic encoding, word form retrieval entails the selection and assembly of sublexical units into word form frames. No evidence of whole word retrieval during pre-motor encoding was obtained. The potential utility of this experimental paradigm in the investigation of pre-motor planning in disorders that putatively affect the processes involved in transforming word meaning into word form is also discussed.

Use of phonological coding during reading and short-term memory tasks was examined in 12 participants with congenital speech impairments who had reading grade levels of 3.0 or better. Six of the participants had no intelligible speech (anarthria) and six had moderate to severe speech production impairments (dysarthria). All 12 participants were capable of judging the homophony of printed words and nonwords, indicating that accurate phonological coding of text can occur in the absence of speech. Moreover, five participants with dysarthria and two with anarthria appeared to employ phonological coding in short-term memory tasks, as indicated by a phonological similarity effect in serial order memory, and also more weakly by a word length effect in serial order memory. These data indicate that persons with severe congenital speech impairments can learn to use phonological coding during reading and short-term memory tasks; articulatory coding is therefore not a necessary part of the phonological coding process in either word identification or short-term memory. In this study, four of the participants with anarthria did not engage in phonological coding during short-term memory tasks. These participants had more severe deficits in identifying printed words than other participants. Possible explanations of these individual differences are discussed.

Naturalistic speech samples of 29 3-year-olds diagnosed with specific expressive language delay (SLI-E) were compared to those produced by 19 age-matched normally developing peers in order to determine their improvement in phonological skills since age 2, when Rescorla and Ratner (1996) studied them. Specifically, the groups were compared with regard to vocalization rate, verbalizations, fully intelligible utterances, phonetic inventories, percentages of consonants correct (PCC), phonological processes, and mean length of utterance (MLU). Results revealed that there was no significant difference between the groups in their numbers of vocalizations (as there had been at age 2), although there continued to be differences in their phonetic inventories, PCC scores, and overall intelligibility. These findings suggest that at age 2 the children with SLI-E were not only less phonologically skilled but less talkative, whereas by age 3 they were equally vocal. Analysis of the phonetic inventories of the children demonstrated that for most consonants, the SLI-E group followed the same pattern of development as the comparison children, but more of the normally developing group had productive control of each consonant, consistent with findings of Rescorla and Ratner. There continued to be differences in intelligibility as measured by rates of verbalization (those utterances with at least one intelligible word) and fully intelligible utterances. Using these measures, we found that approximately half the SLI-E children had caught up with their normally developing peers in terms of articulation, whereas half of them continued to be significantly delayed. Finally, although some of the late-bloomer group had caught up to the comparison children in language skills, as measured by MLU, many had not, suggesting that there was a tendency for the children to catch up in some articulation skills before catching up in language abilities.