Why Some Children Encounter Reading Problems: The Contribution of Difficulties with Language Processing and Phonological Sophistication to Early Reading Disability.
| Number | 539 |
|---|---|
| Year | 1986 |
| Drawer | 9 |
| Entry Date | 11/18/1999 |
| Authors | Mann, V. A. |
| Contact | |
| Publication | In : Psychological and Educational Perspectives on Learning Disabilities, Torgesen, J.K., Wong, B. Y., Academic Press, 133-159. |
| url | http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0539.pdf |
| Abstract | [Introduction] Learning to read involves learning to decode a written representation of one’s spoken language. Although it is a task which most children accomplish quite readily, it poses a specific difficulty for some 4-10 % of children whom we refer to as dyslexic or reading-disabled. Such children tend not to be distinguished from their more successful cohorts by general intelligence, motivation, or prior experience. Yet, something limits their success in learning to read. Many studies have been directed toward identifying the basis of early reading difficulty, and always they have been implicitly, if not explicitly, guided by certain assumptions as to what skilled reading is “all about.” One such assumption, traditionally held by psychologists and educators alike, is that reading is primarily a complex visual skill which places certain demands on differentiation and recognition of visual stimuli. Owing to this assumption, models of skilled reading often have been biased toward clarification of the visual stages of the reading process, and many investigators have sought to blame early reading difficulty on some malfunction in the visual domain. Recently however, visual theories of reading disability have reached something of a cul-de-sac, for it seems that, at best, only a few of the children who encounter early reading difficulty suffers room perceptual malfunctions, which somehow prevent recognition, differentiation, or memory of the various orthographic forms (c.f. Rutter, 1978; Stanovich, 1982a; Velluntino, 1979; for recent reviews of these findings). At present, a more fruitful approach to the problem of early reading disability is being guided by the assumption that reading is, firs and foremost, predicated on language skills. In particular, recent research has shown that effectiveness of processes underlying spoken language as well as one’s degree of sophistication about phonological structure are critical parameters in successfully learning to read. My goal in what follows will be to elucidate and discuss the consequences of this research and to see how it informs our understanding of specific reading difficulty. I will begin with a review of the requirements of skilled reading, as a way of introducing the role of language skills. From there I will consider some language skills that are essential to beginning reading, and then review findings that link many instances of early reading difficulty to linguistic difficulties. This will be followed by a consideration of the origins of the language deficiencies found among poor beginning readers, and finally, by some concluding remarks about their implications. |
| Notes |
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