Children's and adults' reading of nonwords: effects of regularity and consistency.
The procedures used by novice readers to assemble pronunciations for nonwords were investigated. Children in Grades 1-3 read aloud consonant-vowel-consonant and longer monosyllabic nonwords. By the end of Grade 1, children displayed a good grasp of grapheme-phoneme (G-P) correspondences (e.g., ai, ow). Grade 2 and 3 readers increasingly used larger orthographic correspondences termed rimes (e.g., -ook, -ild). However, G-P correspondences determined most responses. Adults likewise used G-P rules when reading aloud nonwords and were more accurate at applying the rules. The strong reliance of Grade 1 and 2 readers on G-P rules was also demonstrated by their superior oral reading of regular words along with a tendency to regularize exception words (e.g., reading bull to rhyme with dull).
Coltheart
V
V
School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia.
Leahy
J
J
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary