Longitudinal Data on the Relations of Morphological and Phonological Training to Reading Acquisition in First Grade: The Case of Arabic Language

The 
purpose of this study was to examine the development of morphological and phonological 
awareness and their impact on later reading skills. Two training programs 
(morphological and phonological awareness) were conducted in kindergarten and 
were compared to no-intervention control group. Phonological and morphological 
tests and other general abilities were measured for 90 children at kindergarten 
as pre and post intervention tests. Tests in reading and spelling were carried 
out at the middle of grade 1. Results showed that the morphological and the 
phonological intervention programs enhanced both phonological and morphological 
awareness, in comparison to the control group, with a small advantage for the morphological 
group. In grade 1, no significant differences were found between the 
intervention groups and the control group in reading and spelling measures. 
Altogether the results of the current study suggest that the intervention 
programs were less effective than expected in the first graders compared to 
results of Carlisle 
(1995) and Lyster 
(2002), 
but support former findings found by Ibrahim et al. (2007). This result may relate in part to the additional visual complexity of 
Arabic orthography. The psycholinguistic implications of these findings 
including a gender effect are discussed.

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abstract: On the Oldfield-Wingfield Picture-Naming Test, sensitive to subtle chronic dysphasia in adults, dyslexic children name fewer pictures correctly. Even when correct on words with less than 30 per million frequency of occurrence, they perform more slowly than do nondyslexic subjects suffering from minimal brain dysfunction (MBD) or normal controls. However, there is no evidence for “perceptual impairment” underlying dyslexic subjects' low scores and prolonged latencies, as the distribution of their errors is similar to that of normal children. Rather it is the nondyslexic MBD group which produces a high percentage of wrong names, suggestive of mistaking the pictured stimuli for other, visually similar, objects.

title: Dynamic Testing in Selection for an Educational Programme: Assessing South African Performance on the Raven Progressive Matrices
abstract: This article describes the research results of an investigation into the use of dynamic testing for the selection of candidates for an educational programme. The selection of students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds for mathematics-, science-, and technology-based programmes is a problem for which most South African higher education institutions still have to find adequate solutions. Dynamic testing procedures are often seen as more fair to use for selection than single-session tests in situations of unequal educational opportunity. The possibility that a selection instrument using a dynamic testing process could add significantly to the selection effectiveness already achieved in a South African mathematics and science foundation year using single-session tests was investigated. The performance of a group of educationally disadvantaged black South African students on the Raven Progressive Matrices is compared to that of other groups reported in research literature. Considering the disadvantaged nature of the South African group, the group performed well on the Raven test when compared with data from other countries.

title: Phoneme segmentation training: Effect on reading readiness
abstract: Recent evidence suggests that the ability to segment words into phonemes is significantly related to reading success, and that training in phoneme segmentation appears to have a positive influence on beginning reading. In this study, we evaluated the effect on reading readiness of phoneme segmentation training in kindergarten. Ninety nonreaders with PPVT-R standard scores of 78 or higher were randomly selected from six kindergarten classrooms and assigned to one of three treatment conditions: a) phoneme segmentation group; b) language activities group (control group I); and c) no intervention (control group II). The phoneme segmentation group received seven weeks of instruction in segmentation and in letter names and sounds. Also for seven weeks, the language activities group received the identical instruction in letter names and sounds and additional language activities. Prior to the intervention, the three groups did not differ in age, sex, race, PPVT-R phoneme segmentation, letter name and letter sound knowledge, or reading ability. After the intervention, the phoneme segmentation group outperformed both control groups on phoneme segmentation and reading measures. This study provides additional strong support for including phoneme segmentation training in the kindergarten curriculum. Clinical suggestions for teachers are included.

title: What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation.
abstract: All Hebrew words are composed of 2 interwoven morphemes: a triconsonantal root and a phonological word pattern. the lexical representations of these morphemic units were examined using masked priming. When primes and targets shared an identical word pattern, neither lexical decision nor naming of targets was facilitated. In contrast root primes facilitated both lexical decisions and naming of target words that were derived from these roots. This priming effect proved to be independent of meaning similarity because no priming effects were found when primes and targets were semantically but not morphologically related. These results suggest that Hebrew roots are lexical units whereas word patterns are not. A working model of lexical organization in Hebrew is offered on the basis of these results.

title: Changing models across cultures: associations of phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness with vocabulary and word recognition in second graders from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States.
abstract: Using data provided by approximately 100 second graders each from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States, we investigated relations among phonological awareness, morphological structure awareness, vocabulary, and word recognition. Our results indicate that across languages, phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness are similarly associated with one another and with vocabulary knowledge; however, phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness have different associations with word recognition in different scripts among second graders. Specifically, phonological awareness may be more important for reading in English and Korean than for reading in Chinese. In contrast, morphological structure awareness may be more important for reading in Chinese and Korean than for reading in English at this grade level.

title: The interaction between phonological processing, syntactic awareness, and naming speed in the reading and spelling performance of first-grade children
abstract: The performance of 267 first-grade children was examined on tasks assessing phonological processing, syntactic awareness, and naming speed. The children were also given several measures of word and pseudoword reading, reading comprehension, and pseudoword and dictation spelling. A series of hierarchical analyses indicated that three variables (phonological awareness, syntactic awareness, and naming speed) were still predictors of reading and spelling performance after variance in the others had been controlled for. The results, which confirm that syntactic awareness can account for variance in written language after phonological ability had been controlled for, support the hypothesis concerning the relationships between naming-speed processes and written language, and challenge the unitary phonological theory of reading difficulty.

title: The characteristics of arabic orthography slow its processing.
abstract: The present study was designed to evaluate whether the complexity of Arabic orthography increases its perceptual load, thus slowing word identification. Adolescent Arabic speakers who mastered Hebrew as a second language completed oral and visual versions of the Trail Making Test (TMT; J. E. Parington & R. G. Lieter, 1949) in both languages. Oral TMT required declaiming consecutive numbers or alternation between numbers and letters. Visual TMT required connecting Arabic or Indian numbers and alternation between letters and numbers. Performance in Hebrew and Arabic oral TMT did not differ. Performance was significantly slower in Arabic visual TMT. These results indicate that Arabic speakers process Arabic orthography (1st language) slower than Hebrew orthography (2nd language) and suggest that this is due to the complexity of Arabic orthography.

title: FEMALES' SUPERIORITY ON PHONOLOGICAL AND LEXICAL PROCESSING
abstract: _____________ Gender differences in Arabic spelling accuracy of 288 Arabic speaking students from grade 1 to grade 9 were assessed. The spelling errors of these students were analyzed according to the paradigm of Abu-Rabia and Taha (2004). The results showed that generally across all ages/grades girls made fewer spelling errors, especially in the phonological and semiphonological spelling errors categories. The results are discussed in light of the international language research findings. ______________ Introduction Cognitive gender differences have attracted the attention of psychological scholars. Many studies have tested the specific differences between males and females, and the first comprehensive literature review was published by Maccoby and Jacklin (1974). They focused in their review on three major differences between males and females: a) females have better verbal skills, b) males have better mathematical abilities, c) males have better spatial skills. Since the review of Maccoby and Jacklin (1974), many studies conducted to test cognitive abilities and gender have indicated differences on verbal performance and verbal cognitive processing (Halpern, 1992; Emanuelsson & Svensson, 1990). The current study tested the spelling ability of students in grades 1 to 9 students. The purpose was to test gender differences in phonological and lexical processing across grades through spelling and spelling error categories. The spelling method of Abu-Rabia and Taha (2004) was used to test phonological and lexical gender differences in spelling. Literature Review Verbal abilities are expressed in different verbal skills, basic academic skills, reading and writing. Wagemaker (1996) found that girls performed significantly better than boys on reading. The subjects were 9-14 years of age. These results were consistent in different countries. This superiority of females in verbal skills was also evident in dyslexic populations. In Miles, Haslum and Wheeler’s (1998) sample of 269 dyslexic readers, 223 were males and only 46 were females, a 4.51 to 1 ratio favoring females. Many scholars argue that the acquisition of reading is related to efficient phonological processing and that processing deficits are the basis of reading disability (Olson, 1994;  2001). Thus we can argue that superiority of females over males in verbal skills means that they are better phonological processors than males. Norrelgen, Lacerda and Forssberg (2000) did not find significant differences between males and females on phonological processing.

title: A Cognitive-Process Taxonomy for Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities
abstract: Females and males show different average patterns of academic achievement and scores on cognitive ability tests. Females obtain higher grades in school, score much higher on tests of writing and content-area tests on which the questions are similar to material that was learned in school, attain a majority of college degrees, and are closing the gap in many careers that were traditionally male. By contrast, males score higher on standardized tests of mathematics and science that are not directly tied to their school curriculum, show a large advantage on visuospatial tests (especially those that involve judgments of velocity and navigation through three-dimensional space), and are much more knowledgeable about geography and politics. A cognitive-process taxonomy can shed light on these differences.

title: Sex and cognition
abstract: In this fact-driven book, Doreen Kimura provides an intelligible overview of what is known about the neural and hormonal bases of sex differences in behavior, particularly differences in cognitive ability. Kimura argues that women and men differ not only in physical attributes and reproductive function, but also in how they solve common problems. She offers evidence that the effects of sex hormones on brain organization occur so early in life that, from the start, the environment is acting on differently wired brains in girls and boys. She presents various behavioral, neurological, and endocrinological studies that shed light on the processes giving rise to these sex differences in the brain.

title: From primed to learn: the saturation of repetition priming and the induction of long-term memory.
abstract: Although practice can make perfect, it is not clear how much practice is needed to trigger long-lasting performance gains on a given task. Here, using a letter enumeration task, we show that the transition of experience dependent performance gains to a relatively stable form, as well as the triggering of delayed, long-lasting, between session gains (both effects are considered manifestations of consolidation processes) is amount-of-practice dependent. We then show (a) that consolidation processes, once triggered, can proceed without further practice as a function of time and (b) that the triggering of consolidation processes is related to repetition priming effects--performance gains in processing a previously experienced item. However, we show that repetition priming effects saturate after a limited number of consecutive repetitions and reflect an initial, but potentially reversible, response to the repeated experience. Moreover, we show that one critical parameter determining the occurrence of repetition priming (but not skill learning) is the presence of interference (by a somewhat different set of items) prior to the primer presentation. Thus, our results suggest that the saturation of repetition priming effects, rather than priming per se, may be critical to the induction of slow learning processes and consolidation.

title: The predictive value of the leveling off of within session performance for procedural memory consolidation.
abstract: In addition to performance gains accrued concurrently with a given training experience (within-session gains) robust, delayed (between-session) performance gains may slowly evolve in the absence of any additional practice in a variety of tasks. The latter is regarded as a behavioral manifestation of skill memory consolidation. It is not known, however, how much practice is necessary for the triggering of these consolidation effects. Here, using an enumeration task, we show that the triggering of delayed gains could be robustly predicted from each individual's performance curve. Delayed performance gains evolved consistently only when practice continued to the point at which within-session performance leveled off (saturation). No delayed gains were found when training was stopped before this individually determined point. Our results support the notion that the triggering of consolidation processes depends on the saturation of a distinct, early phase of learning rather than on the absolute number of task repetitions, and suggest the possibility that training and rehabilitation protocols could be optimized on an individual basis.