Phonological processing skills, such as phonological awareness, are known predictors of reading acquisition in alphabetic languages with varying degrees of orthographic complexity. However, the role ...of multi-letter-sound knowledge, an important foundation for early reading development, in supporting reading fluency development remains to be determined. This study examined whether two core foundational skills, phonemic awareness and grapheme sounding, have a predictive role in reading fluency development in an intermediate-depth orthography. The participants were 62 children learning to read in European Portuguese, and they were longitudinally assessed on phonemic awareness, complex grapheme sounding, and reading fluency (decoding, word, and text) from Grade 2 to Grade 3. The results showed that grapheme sounding predicted reading fluency development controlled for nonverbal intelligence and vocabulary, short-term verbal memory, and phonemic awareness. Grapheme sounding plays a prominent role in predicting reading fluency outcomes, whereas phonemic awareness (both accuracy and time per correct item) did not contribute to any of the three types of reading fluency. The fact that grapheme-sounding predicted reading fluency is likely due to complex grapheme-phoneme correspondences being required to achieve proficient reading. These findings provide insights into the cognitive processes underlying reading development in intermediate-depth orthographies and have implications for early literacy instruction.
The rising demographic of older adults worldwide has led to an increase in dementia cases. In order to ensure the proper allocation of care and resources to this clinical group, it is necessary to ...correctly distinguish between simulated versus bona-fide cognitive deficits typical of dementia. Performance Validity Tests (PVTs) are specifically designed to assess a lack of effort and the possible simulation of cognitive impairment. Previous research demonstrates that PVTs may be sensitive to dementia, thus inaccurately classifying real memory impairment as simulation. Here, we analyzed the sensitivity of PVTs in discriminating between dementia and simulation using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses. Further, we examined the potential need for adjusting cut-off scores for three stand-alone (Test of Memory Malingering, Rey-15 Item Memory Test, and Coin in Hand-Extended Version) and one embedded (Reliable Digit Span) PVT for Portuguese older adults with dementia. The results showed that (1) all measures, except for the Coin in Hand— Extended version (CIH-EV), were sensitive to one or more sociodemographic and/or cognitive variables, and (2) it was necessary to adjust cut-off points for all measures. Additionally, the Rey-15 Item Memory Test did not demonstrate sufficient discriminating capacity for dementia. These results present important implications for clinical practice and the daily life of patients, as the use of incorrect cut-off points could impede patients from getting the resources they need.
This study investigated direct and indirect effects between oral reading fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension across reading development in European Portuguese. Participants were 329 ...children attending basic education, from grade 1 to grade 6. The results of path analyses showed that text reading fluency is much more dependent on the foundational skills of word recognition than reading comprehension, and the later, in turn, depends crucially on the specific constituent skill of text reading fluency. Text reading fluency has a significant influence on vocabulary from the beginning, but vocabulary contributed to reading comprehension only in more advanced grades. These results, obtained with an orthography of intermediate depth, are in line with the Simple View of Reading (SVR). However, they also highlight the importance of textual cues—besides the pivotal role of decoding—from the beginning of learning to read, which must be taken into account in the SVR.
We examined phonological priming in illiterate adults, using a cross-modal picture-word interference task. Participants named pictures while hearing distractor words at different Stimulus Onset ...Asynchronies (SOAs). Ex-illiterates and university students were also tested. We specifically assessed the ability of the three populations to use fine-grained, phonemic units in phonological encoding of spoken words. In the phoneme-related condition, auditory words shared only the first phoneme with the target name. All participants named pictures faster with phoneme-related word distractors than with unrelated word distractors. The results thus show that phonemic representations intervene in phonological output processes independently of literacy. However, the phonemic priming effect was observed at a later SOA in illiterates compared to both ex-illiterates and university students. This may be attributed to differences in speed of picture identification.
The relevance of reading prosody on reading comprehension has been theoretically proposed and empirically recognised. The present study aimed to investigate longitudinal and concurrent relationships ...between reading prosody and reading comprehension processes, beyond decoding and word reading efficiency. Two cohorts of Portuguese children, ranging different grade levels (grades 2 to 3 and 4 to 5), were tested. Reading prosody was assessed through a rating scale, and text reading comprehension and context fluency effect were used to measure effortful and effortless reading comprehension processes, respectively. Results showed no bidirectional longitudinal effects between reading prosody and reading comprehension processes. In contrast, they revealed a concurrent contribution of reading prosody to the measure that mainly captures the effortless processes of reading comprehension from grades 2 to 5 but not for effortful ones. Results also highlighted the key role of decoding and word reading efficiency in the relationship between reading prosody and reading comprehension.
Highlights
What is already known about this topic
Prosody is an important component of oral reading fluency.
Decoding is crucial for reading prosody and reading comprehension.
Reading prosody is associated with reading comprehension.
What this paper adds
The relation between reading prosody and reading comprehension may depend on grade level and may vary according to orthographic depth.
Prosodic reading has a concurrent predictive role on the effortless processes of reading comprehension.
There is no bidirectional links between reading prosody and reading comprehension in European Portuguese until fifth grade.
Implications for theory, policy or practice
Regarding the relationship between reading prosody and reading comprehension, theory must take into account, beyond the grade level, the consistency level of the orthographic system.
Instructional programmes must take into account the important role of decoding for achieving efficient reading.
Learning to read in European Portuguese would benefit from reading texts for practice in reading fluency with prosody.
Abstract
Objective
The current study aimed to validate the Performance Validity Test Coin in Hand-Extended Version (CIH-EV) in groups of healthy older adults and older adults with dementia.
Method
...Using an analog simulation paradigm, the healthy control group and the clinical group were instructed to perform to the best of their ability, whereas the feigning older adults were instructed to simulate a memory deficit to obtain allowance, financial aid, or early retirement.
Results
Results showed that the control and clinical groups performed more optimally than the feigning group, although the clinical group had superior response times. The CIH-EV was insensitive to sociodemographic variables and neurocognitive functioning in all groups, demonstrated good convergent validity with other performance validity measures, and showed a reduced rate of false positives.
Conclusions
This study corroborates the CIH-EV’s effectiveness in detecting the simulation of cognitive deficits in healthy older adults and older adults with dementia.
Orthographic knowledge is an important contributor to reading and spelling. However, empirical research is unclear about its long-lasting influence along with literacy development. We examined ...whether reading and spelling benefitted from an independent contribution of lexical and sublexical orthographic knowledge in European Portuguese, an intermediate depth orthography. This was investigated longitudinally from Grade 2 to 5 with two cohorts of Portuguese children, using common measures of orthographic knowledge, and word and pseudoword reading and spelling tasks. Regression analyses showed that lexical orthographic knowledge assessed at the beginning of Grade 2 predicted word reading at the beginning of Grade 3 (p < .05, variance explained = 6%), word spelling at the end of Grade 2 (p < .05, variance explained = 6%) and pseudoword spelling at the beginning of Grade 3 (p < .05, variance explained = 8%). They also revealed that lexical orthographic knowledge assessed at the beginning of Grade 4 predicted word spelling at the end of Grade 4 (p < .001, variance explained = 21%). Differently, sublexical orthographic knowledge evaluated at the beginning of Grade 2 and of Grade 4 only contributed to pseudoword spelling at the beginning of Grade 3 (p < .01, variance explained = 12%), and to pseudoword reading at the end of Grade 5 (p < .01, variance explained = 9%), respectively. Therefore, orthographic knowledge predicted spelling more often and earlier than reading. Furthermore, the results suggest that the influence of orthographic knowledge may vary during literacy development and, along with findings from other studies, that this influence at the lexical level may depend on orthographic consistency.
The acquisition of reading has an extensive impact on the developing brain and leads to enhanced abilities in phonological processing and visual letter perception. Could this expertise also extend to ...early visual abilities outside the reading domain? Here we studied the performance of illiterate, ex‐illiterate and literate adults closely matched in age, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics, on a contour integration task known to depend on early visual processing. Stimuli consisted of a closed egg‐shaped contour made of disconnected Gabor patches, within a background of randomly oriented Gabor stimuli. Subjects had to decide whether the egg was pointing left or right. Difficulty was varied by jittering the orientation of the Gabor patches forming the contour. Contour integration performance was lower in illiterates than in both ex‐illiterate and literate controls. We argue that this difference in contour perception must reflect a genuine difference in visual function. According to this view, the intensive perceptual training that accompanies reading acquisition also improves early visual abilities, suggesting that the impact of literacy on the visual system is more widespread than originally proposed.
PDF