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The present study examined the possibility that phonemic discrimination training could improve the phonemic segmentation ability of children with reading disabilities. Half of the 32 children with reading disabilities (14 male and 4 female second graders and 10 male and 4 female third graders, with mean ages of 99.2 and 109.7 months, respectively) deficient in phonemic segmentation skills were assigned to the training group, while the other half acted as a nontrained control group. The trained children were successful at significantly improving their performance on the phonemic segmentation task. The control group made no improvement. Requiring children with reading disabilities to make discriminations concerning phonemic information may have helped them discover properties of the phoneme that they previously did not know.

The present study assessed 486 first-quarter first graders on their reading and phonological-processing skills and intelligence. Based on this assessment, and using the classification data from Hurford et al.'s (1993) study, 99 children were identified as being at risk for reading difficulties: 53 children at risk for reading disabilities (RD) and 46 children at risk for becoming "garden-variety" poor readers (GV). Half of the RD and GV groups received the phonological-processing intervention. Posttraining assessment indicated that the training procedure not only was effective in increasing the phonological-processing skills of the trained participants, but also increased their reading ability. Both of the RD and GV trained groups benefited from the training. Analyses also indicated that the initial screening device was somewhat less accurate in the present study in identifying at-risk children than in our previous studies (85% vs. approximately 98%, respectively). The results of the present study indicate that it is possible to identify children at risk for reading difficulties and to significantly improve their phonological-processing and reading abilities.

The present study examined the development of reading and phonological processing abilities of 209 first graders (118 males, 91 females; mean age = 86.7 months) assessed during the first and last quarters of their first-grade year. The children were arranged into three different groups based on their Time 2 reading and intelligence data (children with and without reading disabilities, and “garden-variety” poor readers). Analyses indicated that the children with reading disabilities and the garden-variety poor readers did not differ significantly on many of the tasks, but both performed differently than the children without reading disabilities. Developmental analyses indicated that all three groups increased their reading and phonological skills; however, the gap between the performance of the children without reading disabilities and the other two groups widened from Time 1 to Time 2. The most important finding of the present study concerned the classification results of the discriminant analysis, which correctly identified the group membership of 207 of the 209 children (99.04% correct).