Individuals with dyslexia have difficulty generalizing from word identification training. This study compared 2 forms of word identification training to promote transfer of learning by children with dyslexia. Sixty-two children were randomly assigned to one of the training programs or to a study skills control program. One program trained phonological analysis and blending skills and provided direct instruction of letter-sound correspondences; the other trained the acquisition, use, and monitoring of 4 metacognitive decoding strategies. Results provided clear evidence of transfer of learning after treatment of the core reading deficits of these children. Both training approaches were associated with large positive effects, transfer on several measures, and generalized achievement gains. The phonological program resulted in greater generalized gains in the phonological domain and the strategy program in broader-based transfer for real words.Developmental dyslexia is a term applied to those children who fail to learn to read-to recognize language in its visible form-despite evidence of sensory and intellectual integrity, as well as instructional and sociocultural opportunity. Dyslexia typically, although not invariably, is accompanied by deficits in some aspect of speech and language development. A failure to acquire rapid, context-free word identification skill appears to

Gap detection thresholds for speech and analogous nonspeech stimuli were determined in younger and older adults with clinically normal hearing in the speech range. Gap detection thresholds were larger for older than for younger listeners in all conditions, with the size of the age difference increasing with stimulus complexity. For both ages, gap detection thresholds were far smaller when the markers before and after the gap were the same (spectrally symmetrical) compared to when they were different (spectrally asymmetrical) for both speech and nonspeech stimuli. Moreover, gap detection thresholds were smaller for nonspeech than for speech stimuli when the markers were spectrally symmetrical but the opposite was observed when the markers were spectrally asymmetrical. This pattern of results may reflect the benefit of activating well-learned gap-dependent phonemic contrasts. The stimulus-dependent age effects were interpreted as reflecting the differential effects of age-dependent losses in temporal processing ability on within- and between-channel gap detection.

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