Psycholinguists from the Center for Language and Brain found that phonological processing skills continue to influence text reading fluency in 15- to 18-year-olds. This finding supports the long-held belief that in this age group phonological processing skills are not involved in reading. The study was published in PLOS One.
Phoneme – is the smallest phonetic unit that helps distinguish one word from another. Previously, it has been suggested that phonological processing skills (ie, the ability to operate with phonemes) are required for the early stages of reading development. However, researchers from the Language and Brain Center (Moscow, St. Petersburg) challenged this assumption and conducted the study with 161 adolescent participants (grades 8-11).
Participants performed various tasks: text reading task, word and pseudoword reading tasks, phonological task. In the phonological test the adolescents were asked to change the sound in a pseudoword: for example, they were asked to change the sound /n/ to /n’/ in the pseudoword “chichina”. These tasks allow assessment of how successfully adolescents revise unfamiliar sound units and perform mental operations with sounds in nonexistent words.
The results of the study showed that phonological processing skills still influence text reading fluency in teenagers. The better teenagers function with phonemes, the faster they read coherent texts. The same correlation was not evident in word and pseudoword reading fluency. The study authors suggest that text reading is a more demanding cognitive task that involves multiple (including phonological) cognitive processes in its successful completion, while word-level reading is mostly automatic in adolescents.
The study authors also explored the role of attitudes towards reading in teenagers. It was found that their reading attitude (ie, whether they like to read or not) significantly influences text reading fluency. This predictor explained a greater share of variance in the results of the text reading test than the phonological test. The assessment of reading attitude was carried out using the specific questionnaire. The results revealed that emotional involvement plays a key role in the development of reading skills.
In addition, this study contains first normative data for a phonological test for adolescents in grades 8–11. The resulting indices can be used by speech therapists and neuropsychologists to identify the risk of phonological deficit in older children.
We were the first to publish the normative data for the Pseudo-Sound Change phonology test for students 8-11. This test is part of a RuToPP phonological test battery, which was developed by Svetlana Dorofeeva and her colleagues at the Language and Brain Center (Moscow). We hope that these normative scores will assist researchers and practitioners as they work with speech disorders in this understudied age group.”
Svetlana Alexeeva, project manager, head of the Center for Language and Brain, St. Petersburg
The authors also reported that their results are particularly important for understanding the nature of dyslexia in adolescents. Although this diagnosis is most consistent in elementary school children, reading difficulties may also be evident in later years.
“Adolescents with dyslexia rarely receive early and effective intervention due to limited attention to their difficulties and the lack of sophisticated age-appropriate diagnostic tools,” says Tatian Eremicheva, a neurolinguist and study co-author. phonological processing skills and to increase interest in reading when working with teenagers’.
The researchers recommend that phonological processing skills development tasks be included in the intervention program. Especially those that require complex manipulations with phonemes. In addition, it is important to consider the emotional side of reading – to help teenagers find pleasure in reading, to maintain reading motivation and interest in books. Such a complex intervention can lead to success in overcoming reading difficulties.
This research was a product of the Basic Research Program at HSE University.
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