Units of analysis in nonword reading: evidence from children and adults.
Four experiments examined variations in children's (chronological age range: 5 years 7 months to 9 years 10 months) and adults' reading strategy as a function of task demands. Experiment 1 found that less skilled readers (mean reading age: 8 years 8 months), though able to make use of rime-based spelling-to-sound correspondences (reading "by analogy"), predominantly used simple grapheme-phoneme-level correspondences in reading isolated unfamiliar items. Skilled children (mean reading age: 11 years 6 months) were more likely to adopt an analogy strategy. Experiments 2 and 3 adopted versions of the "clue word" technique used by U. Goswami (1986, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 42, 73-83; 1988, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40A, 239-268) and found a much higher incidence of analogical responding by children of all ages, suggesting that reading strategy is task-dependent. Experiment 4 showed that adults' nonword-reading strategy is determined by list composition, in that grapheme-phoneme correspondences are used more when the list context contains nonwords. It is concluded that both adults and young children exhibit considerable flexibility and task-dependence in the levels of spelling-to-sound correspondence (analogies vs decoding) that they use and that grapheme-phoneme correspondences are preferred when maximum generalization to unfamiliar items is required.
Brown
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University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom. G.D.A.Brown@warwick.ac.uk
Deavers
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D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001076:Aptitude; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D011932:Reading