Haskins Publications

Number	223
Year	1977
Drawer	4
Entry Date	06/03/1999
Authors	Mark, L. S., Shankweiler, D., Liberman, I. Y., & Fowler, C. A.
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Publication	Memory & Cognition, 5, 623-629
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0223.pdf
Abstract	The results of a recent study by I. Y. Liberman et al (1977) suggest that good beginning readers are more affected than poor readers by the phonetic characteristics of visually presented items in a recall task. The good readers made significantly more recall errors on strings of letters with rhyming letter names than on nonrhyming sequences; in contrast, the poor readers made roughly equal numbers of errors on the rhyming and nonrhyming letter strings. The purpose of the present study with 29 2nd graders was to determine whether the interaction between reading ability and phonetic similarity is solely determined by different rehearsal strategies of the 2 groups. Accordingly, 19 good readers and 18 poor readers (who had been rated on the word recognition subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test) were tested on rhyming and nonrhyming words using a recognition memory paradigm that minimized the opportunity for rehearsal. Performance of the good readers was more affected by phonetic similarity than that of the poor readers, in agreement with the earlier study. Present findings support the hypothesis that good and poor readers do differ in their ability to access a phonetic representation.
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