Abstract: Subjects can classify, as not making sense, phrases which sound as though they make sense, e.g. “tie the not”, as quickly as other phrases which do not even sound right, although they make more err...

Abstract: Volume 1 under this title, published in 1965, was concerned mainly with the development of a "Picture Story Language Test." The present volume includes further analyses of the results for normal children and comparative findings for exceptional children: those with reading disability, mental retardation, social and emotional disturbance, speech handicaps, and learning disability. Specific disability in acquiring facility with spoken, read, and written words has been recognized as a syndrome in children since the end of the last century, although speech disorders were recognized long before that time. Difficulties in all three fields frequently occur in varying degrees in the same child. Speech disorders are obvious and reading disability is being recognized more and more, but writing disability has been neglected, probably because it is not so obviously handicapping. Samuel T. Orton, in his classic book, Reading, Writing and Speech Problems in Children , published in 1937, called attention to the

Abstract: John Domonic Crossan boldly attempts to understand the parables from inside their own world. In Parables sets the reading and study of the parables in an entirely new context.

Abstract: THREE LINES OF EVIDENCE are developed relating to the proposition that performance in reading, at least after the basic decoding skills are mastered, is primarily an indicator of the general level of the individual's thinking and reasoning processes rather than a set of distinct and specialized skills. Evidence is cited from 1) factorial analyses of specific reading tasks, 2) the correlations between reading tasks and both measures of general intelligence and measuring of later academic progress, and 3) the stability of difficulty in reading test items under translation from one language to another. If reading is to be thought of primarily as a reasoning process, this may have implications for the teaching of reading and for education in general.

Abstract: P EOPLE, objects, and events are pictured, or depicted, in representational paintings. In novels, by contrast, such things are described. Novels employ "verbal" symbols, whereas (we might say) paintings and other pictures use "visual" ones. This difference is both obvious and elusive. That there is a distinction of a fundamental sort between depicting and describing seems beyond question. But the difference threatens to vanish when we reach for it. In reading a novel to ourselves we look at the print on the pages. We examine a copy of Brothers Karamazov with our eyes in order to find out about Alyosha, as we visually investigate the canvas in order to learn about the peasants in Breughel's painting "Haymaking." Why then don't the marks on the pages of the novel count as "visual" symbols, and the novel as a "visual" art? Of course novels, unlike pictures, can be heard as well as seen, when they are read aloud. Does that mean that the novel is, indifferently, an aural or a visual art? The trouble is that novels seem not to be perceptual at all, in some sense in which paintings (and sculptures) are perceptual, despite the fact that novels, or copies or readings of them, are to be perceived. A too easy explanation is that paintings, or parts of them, look like or resemble what they picture-"Haymaking" looks like fields, peasants at work, haystacks, and so forth. But a copy of Brothers Karamazov does not look like the people and events it describes, nor does any of the print it contains. And neither do the sounds of an oral reading of the novel sound like what is described. There are serious difficulties in this proposal, some

Abstract: There is growing interest in differentiating developmental dyslexia,1 as a specific psychoneurological learning disorder, from nonspecific reading retardation. Such differentiation has immediate practical bearing since spe cific dyslexia calls for remedial reading techniques that are not required in the management of nonspecific reading disorders. Moreover, early diag nosis of developmental dyslexia is essential for successful remediation and to prevent school failure with concomitant loss of self-esteem. The need for practical direct diagnostic criteria that would facilitate the early identification of developmental dyslexia has come into the fore front. This need is felt especially by physicians and psychologists, who are often the first to be consulted about the child's inability to read. It is also recognized that the diagnosis cannot be relevant to the educator unless it has immediate implications for remediation. The objectives of this paper are: (1) to present a critical review of pre vailing diagnostic concepts of developmental dyslexia and (2) to briefly describe three atypical patterns of reading and spelling, revealed through

Abstract: Four studies revealed that a 2½-year-old chimpanzee (Pan), after 6 months of computer-controlled language training, proficiently reads projected word-characters that constitute the beginnings of sentences and, in accordance with their meanings and serial order, either finishes the sentences for reward or rejects them.

Abstract: Previous studies have demonstrated that a letter is better identified when embedded in a valid spelling pattern than when presented alone. The present results replicated earlier findings in a paradigm that controls for redundancy by presenting the response alternatives after the stimulus presentation. However, this study failed to find an effect of visual similarity. This result suggests that presenting the alternatives right after the stimulus presentation does not control for redundancy since alternatives are eliminated during perception of the stimulus, not after the visual information has been completely analyzed. Identification was, therefore, examined in a task in which 5s were given the letter and word alternatives prior to the experimental session. This task eliminated the spelling pattern advantage and also provided evidence for visual similarity effects in letter and word identification. The findings are consonant with a visual identification process that analyzes visual features of letters in both letter and word recognition.

Abstract: USE OF THE SYLLABLE as a unit for initial acquisition of reading is advocated. It is argued that since English alphabetic writing is based on a mapping between sound-stream and symbol, a decoding approach is necessary at early stages of the acquisition process. However, conventional "phonics" methods confound two very difficult tasks in initial learning: 1) acquiring the notion that the orthography tracks sound directly, and meaning only indirectly; and 2) understanding that the alphabetic unit corresponds to the highly abstract phonological unit "phoneme," which is both difficult to pronounce in isolation and difficult to recognize and "blend." It is suggested on the basis of research in speech perception that syllables are more natural units than phonemes, because they are easily pronounceable in isolation and easy to recognize and to blend. It is claimed that introduction to a syllabary will teach children the basic notion of sound-tracking uncontaminated by simultaneous introduction of the difficult and inaccessible phoneme unit. Preliminary evidence that a simple 23-element syllabary can be acquired with ease by inner-city and suburban kindergartners is presented. In particular, it is shown that this population can blend previously untaught combinations of known syllables to form and comprehend new multisyllabic words.

Abstract: interest comes from the indisputable fact that speakers of low status dialects of English have much higher rates of reading failure than high status dialect speakers. Analyses of contrasts between high and low status dialects suggest that the problem in reading acquisition could be due to mismatches between the dialect of the learner and that of the writer. In fact, this writer hypothesized some years ago that there would be a direct relationship between the degree of dialect divergence and suc cess in learning to read (Goodman, 1965). Because that article has been widely reprinted and the hypothesis widely quoted, it is doubly important that I report that evidence from several years of miscue research has convinced me that the hypothesis, at least as it applies to the range of dialects spoken by White and Black urban Americans, is untrue. In the article cited above, I con cluded that of several alternatives the approach most likely to solve the reading problems of speakers of low status dialects is the acceptance by teachers of the use in oral reading of the dialect of the learners. The same data which causes me to abandon my own hypothesis causes me to believe even more strongly that the solution to reading problems of divergent speakers lies in changing the attitudes of teachers and writers of instructional programs toward the language of the learners.

Abstract: : READNEED research was concerned with the development of methodologies for determining reading requirements of Army MOSs. Three approaches for assessing MOS literacy demands are decribed: (a) analysis using a newly developed readability formula; (b) use of information currently in Army data banks to study relationships between reading ability and job proficiency; and (c) direct assessment by means of job reading task tests. Feasibility studies that indicate the relative merits of each approach, and certain conceptual and operational problems in determining literacy requirements of jobs are described. (Author Modified Abstract)

Abstract: A SURVEY OF THE READING HABITS of a national sample of 5,067 adults was conducted in order to determine what is being read -by whom, for how long, and for what reason and to determine how reading fits into people's daily activities. The results indicate that reading is a ubiquitous activity of American adults. A substantial portion of the waking hours of many persons is spent in reading, frequently during daily activities such as working; shopping; attending school, church, or theater; and traveling or commuting-and during recreational or free-time activities. Most reading time is spent on newspapers, magazines, books, and job-related matter. Many types of reading on which a relatively short time is spent, however, are an integral part of other activities of the individual, such as reading street or traffic signs while traveling. Although the average person reads for almost 2 hours on a typical day, people differ greatly in the amount that they read. Persons with high socioeconomic status tend to read more of all kinds of printed matter than those with low status. The 5 per cent of all adults who are unable to read have an extremely low socioeconomic status and frequently depend on others to read to them.

Abstract: Summary. Multiple regression techniques have been used very infrequently to define samples of children with reading difficulties. Earlier studies have shown that children with specific reading retardation differ from generally backward readers on sex distribution, IQ distribution, and other factors. The present paper reports preliminary results of a five-year follow-up of disabled readers and provides evidence that whilst the prognosis for any reading disability is poor, children with specific reading retardation have a poorer prognosis than backward readers. The distinction between backwardness and retardation in reading is therefore seen to be both meaningful and of prognostic importance.

Abstract: Intel lectual dysfunct ion in ch i ldhood typically is associated with increased difficulty in learning to read. However, a group of children has been identified in whom defective development in some areas of intellectual functioning is associated with a highly developed ability to recognize printed words. The term \"hyperlexia\" was introduced by Silberberg and Silberberg',2 to refer to such children, who read at a level far beyond what one would expect from their general intellectual performance. In I972 Mehegan and Dreifuss:' described 12 children who exhibited hyperlexia against a background of marked impairment i n other intellectual functions. The authors stressed the presence of abnormalities on neurologic examination and suggested that the syndrome is related to brain damage. Language functions were severely affected in all of these children; in fact, it was impossible to communicate with most of them. U n t i l recently similar cases apparently have been described primarily i n the psychiatric literature as variants of \"atypical development'' o r \"intantile autism.\" Unusual reading ability among autistic children is mentioned in a number of reports.'-: Cain,x in a review ot the psychiatric l i terature o n precocious readers with atypical development, points out that no adequate hypotheses have been proposed to explain such increased reading abi I i ty. We recently have seen three children who exhibited hyperlexia. The disorder was milder than in most reported cases in that communication was possible to some extent. This gave us the opportunity to test the children to find out more about their precocious reading ability and about the nature of their intellectual deficit. In particular, we tested their ability to comprehend spoken language and compared i t with their comprehension of written material. Secondly, we attempted t o explore the sources o f the comprehension deficits we observed. The findings suggest that primary speech functions are intact in these children but that the children have marked difficulty in associating speech sounds to meaning. Case reports C'rrse I . M . K . is a seven year old boy w h o was first evaluated at the age o f three and one-half years because of slow motor and speech development. He is the youngest of five brothers. the product o f a pregnancy which lasted 43 weeks hy date and during

Abstract: College undergraduates read a series of passages each followed by the same type of questions. Groups receiving different questions adopted different reading strategies, picking up different types of information. Factual and higher-order strategies were very similar,.'15ayoff conditions influenced reading speed. For students reading for factual and higherorder information, reading speed affected the amount of incidental information gained, but had no effect on the types of information for which they were specifically reading.

Abstract: Playing of popular instrumental music during a test was distracting and lowered reading-test performance of 14 eighth grade students. Ability statistically significantly interacted with reading performance; 7 less able students were more adversely affected than 7 bright students.

Abstract: In the ideal language program for advanced foreign students, the reading component will not be an adjunct to the teaching of oral skills (since reading may be the most important skill to master) but will instead concentrate on reading for its own sake, and will not attempt to teach the reading skill directly (since no one really knows what reading is or how readers do it) but will instead provide instruction in the critical skills required at each level of the reading process and plenty of practice in reading itself. The model reading program posited here subdivides into an intensive program, comprising in-class instruction, and an extensive program, which is mainly outside reading. (Speed reading constitutes an exception to this rule.) The intensive program is designed to increase the student's mastery of the syntax and lexicon of written English, and to provide him with vital crosscultural information and a brief introduction to English rhetoric. One technique recommended for both the teaching and testing of advanced reading is cloze procedure, which draws on all of the critical skills.

Abstract: STUDIED THE EFFECT of presenting 4 printed words in 4 different ways on the acquisition of reading responses of 164 first and second graders. The printed word was presented alone, in association with a picture, embedded in a sentence, or in a combination of sentence plus a picture. The study attempted to resolve the seeming conflict between Samuels' focal attention theory and Goodman's findings that presenting words in a context facilitates children in identifying the words. The focal attention theory contends that picture and context cues deter acquisition of reading responses because they enable the child to identify the word in practice without focusing on its graphic features. Comparing both on trials to a criterion and on correct responses on test trials, the subjects scored best on word alone, next on word plus picture, third on word plus sentence, and worst on word plus sentence and picture. The results are seen as support for Samuels' theory.

Abstract: It has been a common research finding that girls are generally better readers than boys, and that the magnitude of sex differences in reading is usually found to be greater than for sex differences in other measures of verbal abilities. Girls characteristically learn to read earlier, achieve higher scores on standardized reading tests (more markedly so in the primary grades), and account for a lower percentage of the pupils referred for remedial reading work than do boys. The question of sex differences in reading has received wide attention from researchers and educators since the thirties. Perhaps the scope of this attention is related to the direction of the sex difference. It is possible that sex differences in reading might not be as widely investigated if the difference were in the other direction-if boys were superior to girls. This would imply a tacit assumption among educators and researchers that boys should be superior to girls in everything that counts. Awareness of this possibility is important to the interpretation of much of the research in the area of sex differences.