Evaluated the effect of training to improve letter-naming speed on beginning reading skills with 39 first graders. Results show that trained students demonstrated significantly faster letter-naming speed as compared to untrained peers. However, this difference did not lead to a significant difference in overall measured reading skill. (RJM)

Reexamines whether probands and affected relatives in dyslexia families reverse easily confused letters more frequently under experimental conditions than normal readers from the same families and whether they show unusual facility in reading geometrically transformed text. Indicates that young dyslexia students reverse easily confused letters…

Examines a recently (1985) compiled list of the 3,000 most commonly used Chinese characters, drawn from a sample of 11 million characters, and discusses the list's potential use as the basis for textbooks and vocabulary study programs, and as a database for computer assisted instruction. (CB)

Examines societies in which varieties and degrees of literacy are possible or ordinary, such as Japan and Korea. Finds that these societies have separate but functionally interrelated writing systems, used for communicatively disparate purposes, differential mastery of which, consequently, has social and economic repercussions. Finds that…

Studied the symbolic knowledge of children, between three and five years of age who knew the alphabet but could not read, in associating letters of the alphabet with the letter's symbolic sounds. (21 references) (GLR)

Two studies examined young children's knowledge of letters' sounds and names and preschoolers' ability to learn various sound-letter mappings. Findings indicated that an important determinant of letter-sound knowledge is whether the sound occurs in the name of the letter, and its location. Children used knowledge of letters' names when learning…

Many introductory courses to cryptology and computer security start with or include a discussion of classical ciphers that usually contemplates some cryptanalysis techniques used to break them. Ganzua (picklock in Spanish) is an application designed to assist the cryptanalysis of ciphertext obtained with monoalphabetic or polyalphabetic ciphers.…

In 3 experiments the authors examined changes in successive exemplar generation percentages within categories defined semantically (e.g., fruit-P, fruit-A, fruit-M) and by 1st letter (e.g., insect-C, sport-C, car-C), with a mixed control condition (e.g., fruit-P, insect-C, disease-M). Retrieval success declined across 12 successive items in both…

When the United States formally took control of Hawai'i in 1898, the eighty-something years of Americans living among the "kanaka maoli," called "Hawaiians" in English, had already positioned them above the "maka'ainana," or commoners. By the end of the nineteenth century 90 percent of all kanaka had died from foreign diseases, and the 40,000 or…

There is a wealth of evidence linking letter knowledge and phoneme awareness, but there is little research examining the nature of this relationship. This article aims to elucidate this relationship by considering the links between letter knowledge and two sub-skills of phoneme awareness: phoneme segmentation and phoneme invariance. Two studies…

Two longitudinal studies were conducted to investigate the development of Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children's ability to spell words in light of Ferreiro's and Ehri's models of spelling development. Twenty children participated in the 1st study. Their spelling skills were evaluated periodically from ages 4 to 6 years. The 124 children who…

A critical step toward becoming a fluent reader is learning to recognize, name and distinguish the letters of the alphabet. This difficult task is often a point of failure. The task, however, can be made easier and less prone to failure. This article, based on research by cognitive scientists, provides guides for how to design a font that will…

Alphabetic knowledge is a strong predictor of academic success. This multiple baseline across subjects study examined the effect of an intensive intervention on the alphabetic knowledge of four pre-school children ages 3;7 to 4;10. Two children with developmental language delay (DLD) and two with typical language development (TL) participated in a…

Children (n = 122) and adults (n = 200) with dyslexia completed rapid automatic naming (RAN) letters, rapid automatic switching (RAS) letters and numbers, executive function (inhibition, verbal fluency), and phonological working memory tasks. Typically developing 3rd (n = 117) and 5th (n = 103) graders completed the RAS task. Instead of analyzing…