Exploring Differential Effects Across Two Decoding Treatments on Item-Level Transfer in Children with Significant Word Reading Difficulties: A New Approach for Testing Intervention Elements

What We Know and Need to Know about Literacy Interventions for Elementary Students with Reading Difficulties and Disabilities, including Dyslexia

The purpose of this paper is to describe what we know and what we still need to learn about literacy intervention for children who experience significant difficulties learning to read. We reviewed 14 meta-analyses and systematic reviews of experimental and quasi-experimental studies published in the last decade that examined the effects of reading and writing interventions in the elementary grades, including research focused on students with reading difficulties and disabilities, including dyslexia. We attended to moderator analyses, when available, to further refine what we know and need to learn about interventions. Findings from these reviews indicate that explicit and systematic intervention focusing on the code and meaning dimensions of reading and writing, and delivered one-to-one or in small groups, are likely to improve foundational code-based reading skills, and to a lesser extent, meaning-based skills, across elementary grade levels. Findings, at least in the upper elementary grades, indicate that some intervention features including standardized protocols, multiple components, and longer duration can yield stronger effects. And, integrating reading and writing interventions shows promise. We still need to learn more about specific instructional routines and components that provide more robust effects on students' ability to comprehend and individual differences in response to interventions. We discuss limitations of this review of reviews and suggest directions for future research to optimize implementation, particularly to understand for whom and under what conditions literacy interventions work best.

Predicting and Evaluating Treatment Response: Evidence Toward Protracted Response Patterns for Severely Impacted Students With Dyslexia

Great strides have been made in the development of effective methods of instruction for children with dyslexia. However, individual response to treatment varies, and weaknesses persist for some students with dyslexia despite otherwise effective instruction. Continued efforts are needed to support the prospective identification of poor response, particularly in routine intervention settings. The current study addressed whether indicators of dyslexia risk as outlined by hybrid diagnostic models predict response in children who received Tier 3 dyslexia intervention in their schools. The program's efficacy has been previously documented in remediating reading abilities in children with dyslexia. Data were examined from 115 elementary-age children who received routine Tier 3 dyslexia intervention in their schools. Logistic regression revealed powerful effects of preintervention fluency and gender in predicting response, with weaker effects of decoding and rapid naming. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder status also played a role in predicting response. Phonological awareness and listening-reading comprehension discrepancy did not predict response. Profile analyses indicated near- and far-transfer of skill for the adequate response group, whereas growth in the poor response group was limited to near-transfer. Findings support a continuum of severity that may be associated with less robust growth and generalization over the course of the intervention.

Character and child factors contribute to character recognition development among good and poor Chinese readers from grade 1 to 6

In light of the dramatic growth of Chinese learners worldwide and a need for a cross-linguistic research on Chinese literacy development, this study investigated (a) the effects of character properties (i.e., orthographic consistency and transparency) on character acquisition, and (b) the effects of individual learner differences (i.e., orthographic awareness and phonological awareness) on character recognition. Chinese native-speaking children (over N = 100 for each of grade 1 to 6) completed a lexical decision task. Crossed random effects models suggested (a) character-level orthographic and phonological effects contributed to character recognition development in an asymptotic way from grade 1 to 6, with a moderate effect at earlier ages of acquisition and a stronger facilitation after grade 3; (b) child-level effects of orthographic awareness and character-reading level contributed to all types of characters; (c) the interaction between orthographic consistency and orthographic awareness grew more pronounced among typically developing children progressively from grade 1 to grade 6; and (d) this interaction of character- and child-level factors was not significantly associated with literacy development among children with poor reading skills. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for character development among typically and nontypically developing children.

Predicting Arabic word reading: A cross-classified generalized random-effects analysis showing the critical role of morphology

The distinctive features of the Arabic language and orthography offer opportunities to investigate multiple word characteristics at the item level. The aim of this paper was to model differences in word reading at the item level among 3rd grade native Arabic-speaking children (n = 303) using cross-classified generalized random-effects (CCGRE) analysis. The participants read 80 vowelized words that varied in multiple elements that may contribute to their decodability: number of letters, number of syllables, number of morphemes, ligaturing (connectivity), semantics (concrete vs. abstract), orthographic frequency, root type frequency, and part of speech. Morphological awareness (MA) was included as a person-level predictor. Results of individual models showed that MA, number of letters, number of syllables, number of morphemes, number of ligatures, orthographic frequency, and part of speech were significantly related to the probability of a correct response. However, when all predictors were entered simultaneously, only MA and number of morphemes remained significant. These results underscore the important role of morphology in the lexical structure of Arabic words and in Arabic word reading. Discussion focuses on the role of morphology in Arabic reading and the implications for intervention to improve word recognition in children learning to read Arabic.

Capitalizing on the promise of item-level analyses to inform new understandings of word reading development

This special issue was expressly designed to illustrate how item-level analytic models can be employed to answer new questions in the field of reading. To accomplish this, we present a compilation of six empirical studies that explore how item-level analyses can be used to advance the field's understanding of word reading development. In this introduction to the special issue, I summarize the unique advantages of item-level analyses and discuss how the papers in this special issue are valuable examples of how item-focused analyses can be used in a variety of ways to address important questions across orthographies, word characteristics, and tasks.

Cross-Linguistic Word Recognition Development Among Chinese Children: A Multilevel Linear Mixed-Effects Modeling Approach

The effects of psycholinguistic variables on reading development are critical to the evaluation of theories about the reading system. Although we know that the development of reading depends on both individual differences (endogenous) and item-level effects (exogenous), developmental research has focused mostly on average-level performance, ignoring individual differences. We investigated how the development of word recognition in Chinese children in both Chinese and English is affected by (a) item-level, exogenous effects (word frequency, radical consistency, and curricular grade level); (b) subject-level, endogenous individual differences (orthographic awareness and phonological awareness); and (c) their interactive effect. We tested native Chinese (Putonghua)-speaking children (n = 763) in grades 1 to 6 with both Chinese character and English word identification (lexical) decision tasks. Our findings show that (a) there were effects of both word frequency and age of acquisition in both Chinese and English, but these item-level effects generally weakened with increasing age; (b) individual differences in phonological and orthographic awareness each contributed to successful performance; and (c) in Chinese, item-level effects were weaker for more proficient readers. We contend that our findings can be explained by theoretical models that incorporate cumulative learning as the basis for development of item-level effects in the reading system.

Phonics training for English-speaking poor readers

BACKGROUND

The reading skills of 16% of children fall below the mean range for their age, and 5% of children have significant and severe reading problems. Phonics training is one of the most common reading treatments used with poor readers, particularly children.

OBJECTIVES

To measure the effect of phonics training and explore the impact of various factors, such as training duration and training group size, that might moderate the effect of phonics training on literacy-related skills in English-speaking poor readers.

SEARCH METHODS

We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, 12 other databases, and three trials registers up to May 2018. We also searched reference lists of included studies and contacted experts in the field to identify additional studies.

SELECTION CRITERIA

We included studies that used randomisation, quasi-randomisation, or minimisation to allocate participants to a phonics intervention group (phonics training only or phonics training plus one other literacy-related skill) or a control group (no training or non-literacy training). Participants were English-speaking poor readers with word reading one standard deviation below the appropriate level for their age (children, adolescents, and adults) or one grade or year below the appropriate level (children only), for no known reason. Participants had no known comorbid developmental disorder, or physical, neurological, or emotional problem.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

We used standard methodological procedures expected by Cochrane.

MAIN RESULTS

We included 14 studies with 923 participants in this review. Studies took place in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA. Six of the 14 included studies were funded by government agencies and one was funded by a university grant. The rest were funded by charitable foundations or trusts. Each study compared phonics training alone, or in conjunction with one other reading-related skill, to either no training (i.e. treatment as usual) or alterative training (e.g. maths). Participants were English-speaking children or adolescents, of low and middle socioeconomic status, whose reading was one year, one grade, or one standard deviation below the level expected for their age or grade for no known reason. Phonics training varied between studies in intensity (up to four hours per week), duration (up to seven months), training group size (individual and small groups), and delivery (human and computer). We measured the effect of phonics training on seven primary outcomes (mixed/regular word reading accuracy, non-word reading accuracy, irregular word reading accuracy, mixed/regular word reading fluency, non-word reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling). We judged all studies to be at low risk of bias for most risk criteria, and used the GRADE approach to assess the quality of the evidence.There was low-quality evidence that phonics training may have improved poor readers' accuracy for reading real and novel words that follow the letter-sound rules (standardised mean difference (SMD) 0.51, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.13 to 0.90; 11 studies, 701 participants), and their accuracy for reading words that did not follow these rules (SMD 0.67, 95% CI 0.26 to 1.07; 10 studies, 682 participants). There was moderate-quality evidence that phonics training probably improved English-speaking poor readers' fluency for reading words that followed the letter-sounds rules (SMD 0.45, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.72; 4 studies, 224 participants), and non-word reading fluency (SMD 0.39, 95% CI 0.10 to 0.68; 3 studies, 188 participants), as well as their accuracy for reading words that did not follow these rules (SMD 0.84, 95% CI 0.30 to 1.39; 4 studies, 294 participants). In addition, there was low-quality evidence that phonics training may have improved poor readers' spelling (SMD 0.47, 95% CI -0.07 to 1.01; 3 studies, 158 participants), but only slightly improve their reading comprehension (SMD 0.28, 95% CI -0.07 to 0.62; 5 studies, 343 participants).

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS

Phonics training appears to be effective for improving literacy-related skills, particularly reading fluency of words and non-words, and accuracy of reading irregular words. More studies are needed to improve the precision of outcomes, including word and non-word reading accuracy, reading comprehension, spelling, letter-sound knowledge, and phonological output. More data are also needed to determine if phonics training in English-speaking poor readers is moderated by factors such as training type, intensity, duration, group size, or administrator.

Development and Prediction of Context-Dependent Vowel Pronunciation in Elementary Readers

As children learn to read they become sensitive to context-dependent vowel pronunciations in words, considered a form of statistical learning. The work of Treiman and colleagues demonstrated that readers' vowel pronunciations depend on the consonantal context in which the vowel occurs and reading experience. We examined child- and nonword-factors associated with children's assignment of more vs. less frequent grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPC) to vowel pronunciations as a function of rime coda in monosyllabic nonwords. Students (N=96) in grades 2-5 read nonwords in which more vs. less frequent vowel GPCs were wholly supported or partially favored by the rime unit. Two explanatory item-response models were developed using alternative nonword scoring procedures. Use of less frequent vowel GPCs was predicted by set for variability, word reading, and rime support for the context-dependent vowel pronunciation. We interpret the results within a developmental word reading model in which initially incomplete and oversimplified GPC representations become more context-dependent with reading experience.