An intervention study was carried out with two nine-year-old Greek-speaking dyslexic children. Both children were slow in reading single words and text and had difficulty in spelling irregularly spelled words. One child was also poor in... more
An intervention study was carried out with two nine-year-old Greek-speaking dyslexic children. Both children were slow in reading single words and text and had difficulty in spelling irregularly spelled words. One child was also poor in non-word reading. Intervention focused on spelling in a whole-word training using a flashcard technique that had previously been found to be effective with English-speaking children. Post-intervention assessments conducted immediately at the end of the intervention, one month later and then five months later showed a significant improvement in spelling of treated words that was sustained over time. In addition, both children showed generalisation of improvement to untrained words and an increase in scores in a standardised spelling assessment. The findings support the effectiveness of theoretically based targeted intervention for literacy difficulties.
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The study investigated the outcome of a word-web intervention for children diagnosed with word-finding difficulties (WFDs). Twenty children age 6-8 years with WFDs confirmed by a discrepancy between comprehension and production on the... more
The study investigated the outcome of a word-web intervention for children diagnosed with word-finding difficulties (WFDs). Twenty children age 6-8 years with WFDs confirmed by a discrepancy between comprehension and production on the Test of Word Finding-2, were randomly assigned to intervention (n = 11) and waiting control (n = 9) groups. The intervention group had six sessions of intervention which used word-webs and targeted children's meta-cognitive awareness and word-retrieval. On the treated experimental set (n = 25 items) the intervention group gained on average four times as many items as the waiting control group (d = 2.30). There were also gains on personally chosen items for the intervention group. There was little change on untreated items for either group. The study is the first randomised control trial to demonstrate an effect of word-finding therapy with children with language difficulties in mainstream school. The improvement in word-finding for treated items wa...
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The present study examined whether equivalents of surface and phonological subtypes of developmental dyslexia could be found among a sample of 84 poor readers aged 9-12 years in Greece. Word reading latency was used as a measure of... more
The present study examined whether equivalents of surface and phonological subtypes of developmental dyslexia could be found among a sample of 84 poor readers aged 9-12 years in Greece. Word reading latency was used as a measure of lexical skill, and nonword reading accuracy was used as a measure of nonlexical skill. A simple regression of word reading latencies on nonword reading accuracy scores was performed for 42 developing readers. A total of 2 poor readers with accurate nonword reading plus slow word reading relative to controls (equivalents of surface dyslexia) and 2 poor readers with inaccurate nonword reading plus fast accurate word reading relative to controls (equivalents of phonological dyslexia) were identified from amongst the sample of poor readers. Further testing of these 4 cases on measures of irregular-word and nonword spelling revealed additional evidence of a dissociation between lexical and nonlexical impairments. These results support the notion that dual-route models can be used to explore individual differences among dyslexic readers in transparent orthographic systems such as Greek. An attempt is also made to interpret the results in terms of a double deficit theory of dyslexia.
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In this article, we introduce HelexKids, an online written-word database for Greek-speaking children in primary education (Grades 1 to 6). The database is organized on a grade-by-grade basis, and on a cumulative basis by combining Grade 1... more
In this article, we introduce HelexKids, an online written-word database for Greek-speaking children in primary education (Grades 1 to 6). The database is organized on a grade-by-grade basis, and on a cumulative basis by combining Grade 1 with Grades 2 to 6. It provides values for Zipf, frequency per million, dispersion, estimated word frequency per million, standard word frequency, contextual diversity, orthographic Levenshtein distance, and lemma frequency. These values are derived from 116 textbooks used in primary education in Greece and Cyprus, producing a total of 68,692 different word types. HelexKids was developed to assist researchers in studying language development, educators in selecting age-appropriate items for teaching, as well as writers and authors of educational books for Greek/Cypriot children. The database is open access and can be searched online at www.helexkids.org .
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We investigated the relationship between semantic knowledge and word reading. A sample of 27 6-year-old children read words both in isolation and in context. Lexical knowledge was assessed using general and item-specific tasks. General... more
We investigated the relationship between semantic knowledge and word reading. A sample of 27 6-year-old children read words both in isolation and in context. Lexical knowledge was assessed using general and item-specific tasks. General semantic knowledge was measured using standardized tasks in which children defined words and made judgments about the relationships between words. Item-specific knowledge of to-be-read words was assessed using auditory lexical decision (lexical phonology) and definitions (semantic) tasks. Regressions and mixed-effects models indicated a close relationship between semantic knowledge (but not lexical phonology) and both regular and exception word reading. Thus, during the early stages of learning to read, semantic knowledge may support word reading irrespective of regularity. Contextual support particularly benefitted reading of exception words. We found evidence that lexical-semantic knowledge and context make separable contributions to word reading.
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Semantics, Vocabulary, Reading, and 6 moreLanguage, Learning, Humans, Child, Judgment, and Female
We investigated the relationship between semantic knowledge and word reading. A sample of 27 6-year-old children read words both in isolation and in context. Lexical knowledge was assessed using general and item-specific tasks. General... more
We investigated the relationship between semantic knowledge and word reading. A sample of 27 6-year-old children read words both in isolation and in context. Lexical knowledge was assessed using general and item-specific tasks. General semantic knowledge was measured using standardized tasks in which children defined words and made judgments about the relationships between words. Item-specific knowledge of to-be-read words was assessed using auditory lexical decision (lexical phonology) and definitions (semantic) tasks. Regressions and mixed-effects models indicated a close relationship between semantic knowledge (but not lexical phonology) and both regular and exception word reading. Thus, during the early stages of learning to read, semantic knowledge may support word reading irrespective of regularity. Contextual support particularly benefitted reading of exception words. We found evidence that lexical-semantic knowledge and context make separable contributions to word reading.
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Semantics, Vocabulary, Reading, and 6 moreLanguage, Learning, Humans, Child, Judgment, and Female
Research Interests: Psychology, Semantics, Humans, Evaluation methods, Female, and 15 moreMale, Reaction Time, Names, Nouns, Noun, Stimuli, Qualitative Analysis, Aged, Brain Structure, Alzheimer Disease, Cognition disorders, Severity of Illness Index, Neuropsychological Tests, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, and Medical and Health Sciences
A case study is reported of a ten year old girl (NT) who was a fluent speaker of a Turkish origin alphabetic language as well as Greek and English. The study focuses on NT’s reading and spelling in English and Greek as she did not have... more
A case study is reported of a ten year old girl (NT) who was a fluent speaker of a Turkish origin alphabetic language as well as Greek and English. The study focuses on NT’s reading and spelling in English and Greek as she did not have literacy skills in her mother tongue. NT had average reading ability in Greek and English, but her spelling ability for both familiar words and pseudowords was impaired in both languages. Assessments revealed that NT did not appear to have a deficit of phonological awareness, however visual attention span was impaired. An intervention was conducted with the aim of improving whole-word (lexical) spelling processes in English and Greek. Post-intervention assessments carried out immediately at the end of the intervention and one month and four months later showed a significant improvement in spelling that was sustained over time. The findings support the notion of specific profiles of dyslexia/dysgraphia not only in monolingual English speakers (Castles ...
We report an experiment designed to investigate 6-to-7-year-old children's ability to acquire knowledge of sublexical correspondences between print and sound from their reading experience. A computer database containing the... more
We report an experiment designed to investigate 6-to-7-year-old children's ability to acquire knowledge of sublexical correspondences between print and sound from their reading experience. A computer database containing the printed word vocabulary of children taking part in the experiment was compiled and used to devise stimuli controlled for grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) frequency and rime neighbourhood consistency according to the children's reading experience. Knowledge of GPC rules and rime units was compared by asking children to read aloud three types of nonword varying in regularity of GPC and consistency of rime pronunciation. Results supported the view that children can acquire knowledge of both GPC rules and rime units from their reading experience. GPC rule strength affects the likelihood of a GPC response; rime consistency affects the likelihood of a rime response.
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A case study is reported of a ten year old girl (NT) who was a fluent speaker of a Turkish origin alphabetic language as well as Greek and English. The study focuses on NT’s reading and spelling in English and Greek as she did not have... more
A case study is reported of a ten year old girl (NT) who was a fluent speaker of a Turkish origin alphabetic language as well as Greek and English. The study focuses on NT’s reading and spelling in English and Greek as she did not have literacy skills in her mother tongue. NT had average reading ability in Greek and English, but her spelling ability for both familiar words and pseudowords was impaired in both languages. Assessments revealed that NT did not appear to have a deficit of phonological awareness, however visual attention span was impaired. An intervention was conducted with the aim of improving whole-word (lexical) spelling processes in English and Greek. Post-intervention assessments carried out immediately at the end of the intervention and one month and four months later showed a significant improvement in spelling that was sustained over time. The findings support the notion of specific profiles of dyslexia/dysgraphia not only in monolingual English speakers (Castles ...
ABSTRACT In this study we investigate the relative frequencies of female and male terms in early reading material for children using the Children’s Printed Word Database as a resource. As roles of females and males have changed over time... more
ABSTRACT In this study we investigate the relative frequencies of female and male terms in early reading material for children using the Children’s Printed Word Database as a resource. As roles of females and males have changed over time it is of interest to see if there has been a corresponding change in representations of females and males in children’s books. We carried out analyses regarding different words related to gender. Except for nouns referring to relatives, we found in all word groups a preponderance of male terms. The imbalance of male and female pronouns is equivalent to that reported by Carroll, Davies, and Richman (1971) in a frequency count of printed words in children’s book in the USA conducted some 40 years ago. The results are discussed in terms of gender inequality in reading materials and the development of social mores and stereotypical ideas.
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We describe a lexical database consisting of morphologically and phonetically tagged words that occur in the texts primarily used for language arts instruction in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia in the initial period of primary... more
We describe a lexical database consisting of morphologically and phonetically tagged words that occur in the texts primarily used for language arts instruction in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia in the initial period of primary education (up to grade 4 or 5). The database aims to parallel the contents and usage of the British English Children's Printed Word Database.
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T T e present study uses the cognitive-psycholin-guistic framework to investigate the decoding of novel printed letter strings in young readers. This approach involves delineating the cognitive processing systems (such as the visual word... more
T T e present study uses the cognitive-psycholin-guistic framework to investigate the decoding of novel printed letter strings in young readers. This approach involves delineating the cognitive processing systems (such as the visual word recognition system and sublexical ...
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Masked priming in a lexical decision task was used to investigate representations of cognates in Greek-English bilingual participants. Experiment 1 involved adults who had English or Greek as their dominant L1. The task involved cognates... more
Masked priming in a lexical decision task was used to investigate representations of cognates in Greek-English bilingual participants. Experiment 1 involved adults who had English or Greek as their dominant L1. The task involved cognates (words similar in form and meaning) and non-cognates (words similar in meaning, as well as word unrelated primes. Priming for cognates was found only when the prime was in participants’ dominant language and the target was in L2. In Experiment 2 the task was the same but participants were 9 to 11 year old bilingual children, with Greek or English as their dominant language. Priming was symmetrical with priming cognate effects from L1 to L2 being larger than from L2 to L1. Priming was not observed for non-cognates in either Experiment 1 or Experiment 2. Findings are discussed within the framework of theories of cognate and non-cognate word representation in bilinguals.
We evaluated a simple computational model of productive vocabulary acquisition, applied to simulating two case studies of 7-year-old children with developmental word-finding difficulties across four core behavioural tasks. Developmental... more
We evaluated a simple computational model of productive vocabulary acquisition, applied to simulating two case studies of 7-year-old children with developmental word-finding difficulties across four core behavioural tasks. Developmental models were created, which captured the deficits of each child. In order to predict the effects of intervention, we exposed the computational models to simulated behavioural interventions of two types, targeting the improvement of either phonological or semantic knowledge. The model was then evaluated by testing the predictions from the simulations against the actual results from an intervention study carried out with the two children. For one child it was predicted that the phonological intervention would be effective, and the semantic intervention would not. This was borne out in the behavioural study. For the second child, the predictions were less clear and depended on the nature of simulated damage to the model. The behavioural study found an ef...
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Patterson and Morton (1985) proposed a model for the skilled reading of words and non-words that accommodates two non-lexical routines. One is the grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence system which utilizes the regularity of letter to sound... more
Patterson and Morton (1985) proposed a model for the skilled reading of words and non-words that accommodates two non-lexical routines. One is the grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence system which utilizes the regularity of letter to sound correspondences for single letters and digraphs. The other is a system of “bodies”–-the vowel and terminal letters of a monomorphemic, monosyllabic word. The idea of the
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... Bilingual Biscriptal Deep Dyslexia 419 ... material intended for adults, most content words are written in kanji characters, whilst function words and derivational and inflectional ... models of the reading of alphabetic scripts have... more
... Bilingual Biscriptal Deep Dyslexia 419 ... material intended for adults, most content words are written in kanji characters, whilst function words and derivational and inflectional ... models of the reading of alphabetic scripts have p-oposed that there are at least two processing routes, a ...
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In Experiment 1 children aged 8-9 and 9-10 years were tested for neighbourhood and pseudohomophone effects in nonword reading. Neighbourhood effects (N effects) were robust irrespective of group or type of nonword. Pseudohomophones were... more
In Experiment 1 children aged 8-9 and 9-10 years were tested for neighbourhood and pseudohomophone effects in nonword reading. Neighbourhood effects (N effects) were robust irrespective of group or type of nonword. Pseudohomophones were read more accurately than other nonwords but this finding was robust only for the younger 8-9-year-olds. High-frequency words were read more accurately than low-frequency words, but the reverse applied to pseudohomophones based on high- and low-frequency words, although this was not robust. Error rates for the 9-10-year-olds in Experiment 1 were low, and so it was difficult to interpret the lack of a pseudohomophone advantage for reading nonwords in this age group. Experiment 2 was therefore carried out, which consisted of a replication of the first study with a further group of 9-10-year-olds, but pronunciation latencies were measured, as well as accuracy. All the effects obtained in Experiment 1 were replicated but, in addition, an advantage for pseudohomophones in terms of pronunciation latencies was observed. The implications for accounts of reading development are discussed.
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... Citation. Database: PsycINFO. [Journal Article]. Surface dyslexia. Coltheart, Max; et al. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology, Vol 35(3-A), Aug 1983, 469-495. Abstract. Describes 2 cases... more
... Citation. Database: PsycINFO. [Journal Article]. Surface dyslexia. Coltheart, Max; et al. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology, Vol 35(3-A), Aug 1983, 469-495. Abstract. Describes 2 cases of surface dyslexia. ...
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Paap and Noel (1991) found that participants' pronunciation latencies were faster for low-frequency irregular words when named under a concurrent high digit memory load than when named under a low load. The effects... more
Paap and Noel (1991) found that participants' pronunciation latencies were faster for low-frequency irregular words when named under a concurrent high digit memory load than when named under a low load. The effects reported by Paap and Noel haveproved difficult to replicate in subsequent studies. The present research suggests that individual differences in word recognition skill relate to who will or will not show these effects. In two experiments, participants were allocated to skill groups on the basis of latency in tasks tapping lexical and sub-lexical reading processes. In both studies, only one group (the "intermediate skilled"), showed evidence of such effects. A combined analysis of the data from Experiments 1 and 2 was carried out. This confirmed and extended the analyses of the individual experiments. The results are discussed in relation to contemporary models of word recognition.
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PM, an adult developmental dyslexic, was markedly slower than controls in her reading speed of single words, connected text, and non‐words. A remediation programme was implemented that involved repeated presentation of a set of 160 words,... more
PM, an adult developmental dyslexic, was markedly slower than controls in her reading speed of single words, connected text, and non‐words. A remediation programme was implemented that involved repeated presentation of a set of 160 words, together with a gradual reduction in exposure time. Post‐intervention testing revealed that the programme successfully increased PM's reading speed. A significant effect of word
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... reading words based on context or on features of the word such as length or salient ... by close orthographic neighbours (this should be predicted by models with local representations of words ... The 20 children who comprised Group A... more
... reading words based on context or on features of the word such as length or salient ... by close orthographic neighbours (this should be predicted by models with local representations of words ... The 20 children who comprised Group A had a mean reading age, as measured by the ...
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ABSTRACT The aim of the present study was to examine the spelling development of Greek-speaking children in the early school grades. Although Greek orthography is regular for reading, it is much less transparent as far as spelling is... more
ABSTRACT The aim of the present study was to examine the spelling development of Greek-speaking children in the early school grades. Although Greek orthography is regular for reading, it is much less transparent as far as spelling is concerned. Spelling development was investigated using a word spelling task designed to explore the effects of word length, familiarity and spelling regularity. One hundred and fifty normally developing primary school children living in Cyprus took part in the study. Results suggest that the children employed both phonological and lexical strategies in spelling Greek words. Results indicated that sub-lexical procedures were more marked for younger children, whereas lexical processing was employed more widely by older children. The findings are interpreted in terms of stage developmental models.
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Two groups of undergraduate students, matched for reading skill but differing in spelling ability, participated in three experiments with the aim of exploring the causes of differences in spelling skill in this population. In the first... more
Two groups of undergraduate students, matched for reading skill but differing in spelling ability, participated in three experiments with the aim of exploring the causes of differences in spelling skill in this population. In the first experiment participants were presented with a ...
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... The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger. A Darkness More Than Night, Michael Connelly. The Rowan Tree, Iris Gower. Want to Play? PJ Tracy. ... The Van, Roddy Doyle. Notes on a Scandal, Zoe Hellier. The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seierstad.... more
... The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger. A Darkness More Than Night, Michael Connelly. The Rowan Tree, Iris Gower. Want to Play? PJ Tracy. ... The Van, Roddy Doyle. Notes on a Scandal, Zoe Hellier. The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seierstad. Possession: A Romance, AS Byatt. ...
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... All rights reserved 09116044 96 15.00+0.00 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PICTURE NAMING: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN VERBS AND NOUNS JULES DAVIDOFF and JACKIE ... We should also like to thank Judit Druks and Andrew Radford for helpful discussions of... more
... All rights reserved 09116044 96 15.00+0.00 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PICTURE NAMING: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN VERBS AND NOUNS JULES DAVIDOFF and JACKIE ... We should also like to thank Judit Druks and Andrew Radford for helpful discussions of this work. ...
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Five experiments examined nonword pronunciation. As reported by McCann and Besner (1987), accurate, regular pronunciations increased as the number of orthographic neighbors (N) increased. Adults read pseudohomophones (nonwords that sound... more
Five experiments examined nonword pronunciation. As reported by McCann and Besner (1987), accurate, regular pronunciations increased as the number of orthographic neighbors (N) increased. Adults read pseudohomophones (nonwords that sound like a word) more accurately than other nonwords only when the nonwords were low n, shared the consonants with the words on which they were based, and overall accuracy was lower. Children showed a pseudohomophone advantage even when N was high. Adults pronounced nonwords comprised of inconsistent endings (with existing regular and irregular pronunciations) in an irregular fashion when this resulted in a word; this applied to relatively high-N items.
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ABSTRACT The revised Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, the British Ability Scales (BAS) single‐word reading test, the Hertfordshire sentence reading test and the NFER‐Nelson Group Reading Test 6‐12 (GRT 6‐12), were given to infant and... more
ABSTRACT The revised Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, the British Ability Scales (BAS) single‐word reading test, the Hertfordshire sentence reading test and the NFER‐Nelson Group Reading Test 6‐12 (GRT 6‐12), were given to infant and junior children in a primary school. The results were analysed as infant and junior data, then re‐analysed according to reading ability. For the latter analysis two ability groups were formed, those scoring a reading age under 9 on the Neale and those scoring over 9. In practical terms it was considered important to discuss the results in terms of low and high reading ages as well as in terms of infant and junior data. Significantly higher scores were obtained on the BAS, Hertfordshire and GRT 6‐12 tests than on the Neale for the infant children in analysis 1 and for the lower ability group in analysis 2. However, children in the higher ability group in analysis 2 obtained equivalent scores on the BAS and the Neale. In addition to the quantitative analysis, a qualitative analysis of the items in the tests was carried out. It is argued that the discrepancies observed in the test scores are sufficiently large to warrant re‐standardisation of particular tests.
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Research Interests: Psychology, Phonetics, Intelligence, Phonological Awareness, Speech perception, and 21 moreReading, Dyslexia, Early Childhood, England, Speech Processing, Memory, Humans, Child, Evaluation methods, Female, Achievement, Academic achievement, Male, Hearing Loss, Risk factors, Secondary School, Otitis Media, Educational Status, Risk Factors, Age of Onset, and Motor Skills
The phonemic discrimination of subjects with developmental dyslexia was investigated in the present study. Two adult developmental phonological dyslexics are first reported. Both were good at reading real words but had difficulty reading... more
The phonemic discrimination of subjects with developmental dyslexia was investigated in the present study. Two adult developmental phonological dyslexics are first reported. Both were good at reading real words but had difficulty reading and spelling novel stimuli. Further ...