Study results do not demonstrate that early reading is made possible by precocity in speech-sound segmentation, blending, or discrimination ability, but that the complex skill involving the manipulation of sounds in temporal order may be more closely related to early reading ability. (AEA)

Reports on a study that examined the effects of decentration training upon second-grade children's responses to reading instruction. Concludes that those who learned to decentrate did better on postinstruction comprehension tests than those who did not learn the technique. (FL)

The question of whether it is easier to learn to read through an ideographic, syllabic, or alphabetic writing system is posed. The linguistic nature of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English are examined in relation to differences in information processing and cultural factors related to reading disability. (Author/SEW)

Suggests that the sex and socioeconomic status of first grade students have little influence on their reading attitudes. (FL)

Describes Cuba's preschool reading readiness program, which emphasizes phonemic analysis. (AEA)

In two experiments, a short-term recognition memory task that varied the number of letters distinguishing target and comparison stimuli was used to assess the ability of prereaders and beginning readers to utilize graphic information in a three-letter graphic pattern. (HOD)

Results of a study in which first graders learned ten unfamiliar function words in two different formats indicated that sentence readers learned more about the syntactic and semantic identities of function words, whereas list readers remembered their orthographic identities better and could pronounce the words faster and more accurately in…

The scores of 60 first graders on the Concepts about Print Test (Sand) indicated that above-average readers were superior to below-average readers in print-direction concepts, letter-word concepts, and advanced concepts about print. (Author/MKM)

The study involving 63 children (6 to 8 years old) compared the effects of two reading programs, the Palo Alto Reading Program and DISTAR, on primary grade children with reading problems. Results indicated that use of an operant reading program (DISTAR) was more effective than the Palo Alto program. (SBH)

Results of a New Zealand survey showed that parents were interested in their children's reading progress but were not aware of the teaching strategies they could use to reinforce school learning. (GT)