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Poor readers' use of orthographic information in learning to read new words: A visual bias or a phonological deficit?

McNeil, Alan M.; Johnston, Rhona S.

Authors

Alan M. McNeil

Rhona S. Johnston



Abstract

In this study, we examined the ability of 11-year-old poor readers and reading age controls to learn new print vocabulary. It was found that the poor readers were slower than the controls to learn to read a set of nonwords accurately but that, when asked to pick out the nonwords in a visual recognition memory task, they reached criterion much more quickly than did the controls. However, when the groups were compared on auditory recall of the items being learned, the poor readers were at a disadvantage. Thus, the poor readers developed a visual store for the nonwords more quickly than did the controls but were slower to establish phonological representations for the nonwords. It was concluded that the poor readers were slower to establish a form of sight word reading that was well underpinned in memory by connections between the letters in the spelling and the phonemes in the pronunciation, suggesting that they had a greater reliance on an orthographic-semantic pathway in word recognition than did the controls.

Citation

McNeil, A. M., & Johnston, R. S. (2008). Poor readers' use of orthographic information in learning to read new words: A visual bias or a phonological deficit?. Memory & cognition, 36(3), 629-640. https://doi.org/10.3758/mc.36.3.629

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 5, 2007
Publication Date 2008-04
Deposit Date Nov 13, 2014
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Memory & Cognition
Print ISSN 0090-502X
Electronic ISSN 1532-5946
Publisher Springer Verlag
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 36
Issue 3
Pages 629-640
DOI https://doi.org/10.3758/mc.36.3.629
Keywords Experimental and Cognitive Psychology; Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous); Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/461127
Publisher URL https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2FMC.36.3.629